Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee
27 October 2026
Contents updated on 27 Oct 2026
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Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee Actual start House of Commons
Follow its sittings14:22 - 15:28
Order, order. Welcome to this meeting of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee. Today we're holding our second evidence session on tourism. For our first panel, I welcome Anthony Breach, who is the Director of Research and Policy at the Centre for Cities. I welcome Bernard Donoghue OBE, the Director of the Association of Leading Visitor Attractions, and Alistair Handyside MBE, Executive Chair of the Professional Association of Self-Caterers UK.
Gentlemen, thank you very much for joining us this morning. It's really, really good to have you all with us. Before I begin, I just need to remind members to declare any interests at the point that you ask your questions. I'm going to kick the questions off, and I'm going to start with you, Bernard. What is... we hear lots of discussion about the government's proposed overnight visitor levy.
There's very strong feelings in... both for it and against it, including on... including on this panel. But what problem do you think it's actually attempting to solve, and is it going to be the most effective way of addressing it?
15:28 - 16:08
Bernard Donoghue
Director, Association of Leading Visitor Attractions
Um, I think it's attempting to solve three distinct problems. The first is the paucity of local government finances over several decades. And that local authorities have seen not only their failure to fund their statutory services properly, but also the voluntary services, those non-statutory functions such as tourism and culture. So this prevents presents an opportunity for new new cash to local authorities and to regional mayors. The second is I suppose precedent, in that many countries overseas and indeed many cities have this model to get more money back into their own visitor economy.
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