Public service is a funny old concept and it’s a weird thing to do as a job. And other things Rachel Reeves must have been thinking over the past few months. The public is a curious enough beast at the best of times; refusing to be homogenous is just the start of its troubles. And serving it is guaranteed to come with no thanks, so why bother?
Politicians over the years have varied in their interpretations of public service. Barack Obama wanted to inspire the public to get into public service too, in a kind of double-entry book keeping fashion. Tony Blair thought it was a higher calling and seems to continue to. The current incumbent in the White House seems somewhat disjointed from it. But when it comes down to money in the bank, it means getting paid to make things better for the public.
Did Reeves manage that in the world’s longest Budget run up? It’s hard to tell on day one – but in this case, only the OBR’s opinion counts anyway. What counts for the hospitality sector is that the public thinks that better is on the way, because, without wishing to go all TikTok, we are very much a vibes-based community.
There can be no doubt that Reeves and now all the mayors think of hospitality as the goose overwhelmed by golden eggs. Whether you think hotel guests will cancel trips because of an extra payment or not, it was disappointing to see that the money raised by an overnight levy will not go back into tourism, but to fill local cash holes.
Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government Steve Reed said: “Tourists travel from near and far to visit England’s brilliant cities and regions.
“We’re giving our mayors powers to harness this and put more money into local priorities, so they can keep driving growth and investing in these communities for years to come.”
King of the North/Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham said: “I’m proud that nearly two million people from all over the world choose to visit Greater Manchester every year. The money they spend contributes about £9 billion annually to our economy, supporting over 100,000 jobs
“The levy will allow us to invest in the infrastructure these visitors need, like keeping our streets clean and enhancing our public transport system through later running buses and trams, making sure every experience is a positive and memorable one.”
So bin collections then. Exactly the areas where local government has been forced to cut back because of funding cuts. Now, while it’s true to say that tourists don’t love it if the bins are overflowing, this is not a direct driver of more tourism such as might benefit our sector.
Earlier this year Horwath HTL’s Joe Stather wrote describing how, in the US, overnight levies are used to fuel borrowing to drive more facilities such as concert arenas. Might’ve been nice to have some of that in the UK. The government was happy to talk about how giving the mayors more powers was decentralising and the country certainly needs to move away from its London bias. But will people travel to see a regularly-emptied bin? I guess Kansas has the world’s largest ball of twine, so maybe.
So Reeves is serving the wider public and its rubbish, if not the hospitality public, as we are again overlooked for support and so we trot onwards.
The issue for us as a sector is we’re not viewed as productive. You may not feel that way as you finish work at 3am, feet or eyes – or both – bleeding from the effort of service or trying to balance the books. But what we see as entry-level jobs which could lead to being CEO, the government sees as low-paid jobs. We should all be in AI, probably.
So we’re never going to get the attention we feel we should have. But we knew that. There is something in Reeves’ gift which would be ever better than a sane overhauling of the Business Rates multiplier – the promise to stop fiddling for a while at least. We can’t go through another pre-Budget kite-flying few months again. Investment has stopped and the consumer has been hoarding cash in a panic about what might lie ahead.
Which is why, of everything announced today, the most heartening comment of all from the Chancellor was: “Going forwards, to support our commitment to a single fiscal event and further strengthen our economic stability. I will follow the recommendations of the International Monetary Fund by assessing the fiscal rules just once a year at the Budget.”
Because as all those people with £2m houses who are about to get taxed will tell you, the best servant is a silent one.
