Liberal Democrat Manifesto - Tourism Related Points

The tourism-related policies

• Support the tourist industry which is vital for many local economies by– Upgrading the status of tourism within government, by creating a Department of Digital, Culture, Media, Sport and Tourism, with a designated Minister of State for Tourism.
• Enabling local authorities to bring in tourist levies to fund local tourism infrastructure. - A Local Tourism Tax?
• A programme of installing hyper-fast, fibre-optic broadband across the UK – with a particular focus on connecting rural areas, ensuring all businesses have access to superfast broadband (30Mbps download and 6Mbps upload)
• Develop the skilled workforce needed to support growth by introducing a new two-year visa for students to work after graduation and a major expansion of high-quality apprenticeships including Higher Apprenticeships, backed up by new sector-led National Colleges.
• Develop a national skills strategy for key sectors
• Create creative enterprise zones to grow and regenerate the cultural output of areas across the UK.
• Prioritise small and medium-sized businesses in the rollout of hyper-fast broadband
• Create a new ‘start-up allowance’ to help those starting a new business with their living costs in the crucial first weeks of their business
• Setting a 20 per cent higher minimum wage for people on zero-hour contracts at times of normal demand to compensate them for the uncertainty of fluctuating hours of work
• Giving a right to request a fixed-hours contract after 12 months for ‘zero hours’ and agency workers
• Expand the apprenticeship levy into a wider ‘Skills and Training Levy’ to help prepare the UK’s workforce for the economic challenges ahead with 25 per cent of the funds raised by the levy going into a ‘Social Mobility Fund’ targeted at areas with the greatest skill needs.
• Maintain free access to national museums and galleries
• Exploring a ‘right to roam’ for waterways and creating a new designation of National Nature Parks.
• Providing £2bn to ensure that all private hire vehicles and new buses licensed to operate in urban areas are ultra-low-emission or zero-emission vehicles by 2025
• Reduce the climate impact of flying by reforming the taxation of international flights to focus on those who fly the most, while reducing costs for those who take one or two international return fights per year, placing a moratorium on the development of new runways (net) in the UK, opposing any expansion of Heathrow, Gatwick or Stansted and any new airport in the Thames Estuary, and introducing a zero-carbon fuels blending requirement for domestic fights
• Allocate £4.5 billion restoring bus routes and add new routes where there is local need including supporting rural bus services and encouraging alternatives to conventional bus
• Allow local authorities to increase council tax by up to 500 per cent where homes are being bought as second homes
• Launch a National Fund for Coastal Change, to enable local authorities to properly manage their changing coastlines.
• Set up a £2 billion Rural Services Fund to enable the co-location of services in local hubs around existing local infrastructure.
• Replace Tier 2 work visas with a more flexible merit-based system

​Lib Dem manifesto - a full version of which can be downloaded from:
https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/libdems/pages/57307/attachments/original/1574267252/Stop_Brexit_and_Build_a_Brighter_Future.pdf?1574267252