Tourist Boards (Scotland) Act 2006 (Consequential Modifications) Order 2007

I thank the Minister for giving such a full explanation of these measures before the Committee. I gather that she is already an old hand at taking these Front-Bench presentation positions and I look forward to having my knowledge and understanding increased as we talk across some of the Scottish elements that come through these days. One has to wonder why the legal name of the Scottish Tourist Board has to be changed when a new marketing brand is desired. It seems to me that marketing brands are a bit like the suburban housewife who likes changing the wallpaper. I wonder whether there is a body called ““VisitEngland”” with which the newly-named body will link up to make a more unified presentation for the United Kingdom. Perhaps England has area tourist boards, whereas the Scottish area tourist boards have been done away with. The measure is fairly innocuous, but tourism in Scotland is an important topic, considering that 9 per cent of employment is in that industry and a great deal of investment and encouragement is directed at improving tourism. Noble Lords will know that tourism currently generates some £4.2 billion for the Scottish economy. I was reading the current report of the consideration of these measures in another place; it was either a misprint or a slip of the tongue on behalf of my honourable friend the Member for Scarborough and Whitby, when he said that the tourism industry generated £46 billion for the Scottish economy. If that were true, I have a funny feeling that Mr Alex Salmond would not be looking, as he is, for the oil revenues to be added to the Scottish block grant. In tourism we love the English—despite many of the rather hostile things that Scots can be accused of—because 86 per cent of our visitors come from the rest of the United Kingdom. I gather that overseas visits increased by 14 per cent in the first nine months of 2006. I wonder how much that was due to the name change. That makes the VisitScotland target of increasing visitors by 20 per cent by 2015 seem like a fairly laid-back approach. Perhaps the ambitions will be increased—but certainly the quality should be increased. The second order on the Police, Public Order and Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act is a good measure and has generally been welcomed by Conservatives north of the Border. The successful separation of law and law enforcement has been a great feature of our Union, but modern crime and law infringement has become very sophisticated and powerful. As noble Lords are probably aware, drug crime is a great problem north of the Border and identified drug crime has increased by 46 per cent in the past few years. So we need measures that open up cross-Border co-operation and enforcement—not just between Scotland and England, but between the United Kingdom and other countries. The ability to share information is important. I thought perhaps that a few more interested bodies might have attended this Grand Committee, given that we were talking about football banning orders—and I know that many noble Lords have much enthusiasm for football. I was amused to notice in the order that if a person has, "““reasonable excuse for failing to comply with the requirement””," of a football banning order, he can be excused. However, one wonders at that, given that there are many keen, imaginative minds in football; and while some of the excuses might be rather far-fetched, the provision states ““reasonable””, after all. Someone could say that he just happened to be on a bus that was going in a certain direction. Much will depend on the extent of the banning order. It would be interesting to know if the Minister knows to what degree geographical areas will be covered by the banning orders, or will they just cover the area near the match itself?