Marcus Wood

Anne Milton MP our front bench spokesperson for Tourism and Licensing (and gambling) came down to see us yesterday.

Anne and I are friends from before the last election - we were PPC's appointed at about the same time in 2002; and I was delighted that she won her seat and even more pleased when she was elevated by David Cameron into the Shadow Cabinet.

We invited a coupe of dozen people from within the local leisure industry to have a working lunch with Anne so that she could take account of their views as part of the Tourism Task Force programme set up by our party and due to report by the Autumn.

This will map out a range of policy options that a future Conservative Government could enact to help make our Tourism business (One of Britains biggest industries for both employment and foreign exchange) more successful and more sustainable.

Like most Conservatives I am suspicious and a bit cynical of Governments abilities to 'help' industries, it usually amounts to a new quango, a new business levy, and a wasteful generic 'public information' campaign.

In this case we were therefore very pleased to hear the line of thinking being adopted by Anne and her committee which revolves much more about enforcing some proper joined-up thinking across all Government departments about the impact (positive and negative) of their decisions on anything from immigration to fire regulations on our tourism industry.

The invited guests I think enjoyed having the opportunity to put their thoughts to Anne directly and we will hopefully repeat the exercise again soon.