'Barmy' regulations top minister's hit list

TOURISM is the most underestimated industry in the United Kingdom

according to Iain Sproat, the new junior minister at the Department of

Heritage.

After a decade in the political wilderness, making money outside

Parliament it has to be said, Iain Sproat is back in business, the

business of government. He returned to the Commons at the general

election as MP for Harwich, one of the lost generation of Scottish Tory

politicians who have had to rebuild their careers by finding English

seats, and was given a job by John Major in last month's reshuffle.

Sproat was a man on his way up the political ladder in his first job

as a junior minister at the Department of Trade when he failed to win

Roxburgh and Berwickshire at the 1983 general election. Ten years away

from the Commons is a big gap in anybody's political life and he is now

54. The present Home Secretary did not have a job in 1983 and the new

Chancellor was a junior minister at Health. Had Scotland not abandoned

the Conservatives quite so spectacularly he would by now, with luck,

have been in the Cabinet. Why has he returned to Westminster?

''I enjoyed it very much before,'' he said. ''I enjoyed being a

minister before. I felt there were things I wanted to make better -- and

I did not like being kicked out.''

It is early days yet, he is still reading himself into the job, and

this was his first interview. It took place in the brand new offices the

National Heritage department has acquired in Cockspur Street behind

Canada House, whose facade looks on to Trafalgar Square.

It is a handsome Victorian stone building concealing behind its

traditional facade a high tech pastel coloured palace with the

inevitable atrium with waterfall and an intrictate security system. The

latter is dictated partly by the fact that the two top floors of the

building house a commercial company, and partly by Peter Brook's old job

as Northern Ireland Secretary. The door codes and the plastic electronic

identity tags -- visitors are entered into the central computer records

on arrival -- may have their drawbacks, but the place is a vast

improvement on the back rooms of the Treasury building in Whitehall

where Arts and Libraries used to squat.

National Heritage, a new ministry, has acquired a wide remit which

stretches way beyond the Arts and Libraries to include tourism, the

media, broadcasting, the press and films, and sport. ''It is a very wide

brief and Peter Brook, the Secretary of State, believes we should both

know everything about everything,'' he said. ''A lot of our work is

representational and if you attend a function you have to know what it

is about.''

Although the Scottish Tourist Board does not come under the

department's control, National Heritage does, through the British

Tourist Authority, set the agenda for the whole country. ''I think that

tourism is the most underestimated industry in the United Kingdom,'' he

said. ''It has a turnover of #25 billion a year which represents 4% of

gross domestic product. The problem is how you define tourism.

''I have no idea to what extent, for instance, British Rail's turnover

is part of tourism. But clearly, even at the modest estimate of 4% of

GDP, I would be surprised if there were many industries which approached

that percentage, unless you took manufacturing as a whole.

''I think the importance of tourism has not been properly understood

because it is so diverse an industry. You can have a hotel chain the

size of Trust House Forte and a man with an ice cream cart on Clacton

pier and clearly both are in the same business. But the tourist industry

is so huge it is very difficult to pull together and that is something I

am determined to tackle.''

He said one of the problems was the fact that so many government

departments are responsible for different aspects of the industry. He

was responsible for tourism as whole, but regulations which affected

tourism could come from the Ministry of Agriculture, the Department of

the Environment, The Department of Trade and Industry.

For example, the regulations governing how theatres were lit were the

responsibility of the DTI and fire safety regulations were based on the

assumption that our theatres were gas lit, which was ''barmy''. That was

the kind of thing he was looking into. ''A lot of these regulations are

not necessarily bad,'' he said. ''The problem is that sometimes the

interpretation is inconsistent and over zealous.'' That was something he

would try to change.

On the future for the Arts, he said that this year the department was

spending #225.6m through the Arts Council, which was a lot of money.

''It would build and equip three brand new hospitals,'' he added. ''I do

think it is important that the spiritual health of the nation should be

considered, but that #225m is a serious consideration when you think

about those three hospitals and I am acutely conscious of that. I want

to see the arts in a better condition when I leave here, but the arts

community has to realise that important as the arts are there are other

important things. It cannot be immune from economic restraints which

everyone else has to bear.

''Since 1979 the Arts budget has gone up by 44% in real terms, which

is a lot of money. I am going to do my best for the arts, but I am not

going to be brow beaten into saying it must get more all the time when

others are getting less.''

He sees the role of business sponsorship, currently running at #60m a

year, as vital. In 1979 it was only #500,000. That was not to shuffle

out of the Government's responsibilities for the arts, because

sponsorship was additional money.

Ten years ago at Trade he was the films minister -- his predecessor at

Heritage, Robert Key, paid the traditional pre-moving jobs trip to the

Cannes Film festival last month -- and it looks as if he will be back

trying to help it again, although for the moment Peter Brook is leading

the talks with the industry. There did not seem, he said, to be much

point in coming in half way through, but it seemed that the same people

-- Richard Attenborough, David Putnam -- were saying the same things a

decade ago.

The industry's situation had been summed up by somebody as 'The

British film industry was alive and well -- and living in Hollywood'.

The problem was how to get it back here. The fact that 30% of the Oscars

in the last decade had been won by Britons showed we had the talent.

One task he intends to undertake is saving the Albert Memorial in Hyde

Park, but there is no money and funds must be found somewhere. He is,

although he would be the last man to say it, actually Mister Royal

Parks, and is toying with a flower show which would rival Chelsea using

the royal gardeners' expertise as a possible fund raiser. And when it

comes to monuments to famous men, he is also a devotee of Sir Walter

Scott, also a Melrose man, and is seeking ways to reinstate that most

eminent Victorian as one of our great cultural figures. All suggestions

are welcome.

Since the future of the ITV network falls under his department he is

looking into its structure. He has received, and given his parliamentary

past -- he was MP for Aberdeen South from 1970/83 -- understands

representations from Grampian about the risk of being swallowed up by

Scottish. The argument put to him was that the kind of news appropriate

for the audiences in the North East and the Highlands would not

necessarily be provided and was not the same as was wanted in Glasgow or

Edinburgh. ''I told Raymond Robertson of Grampian, who approached me

with his worries, that I would look at the matter very closely and I

will. That was not a brush off.'' Grampian is, of course, only one part

of the network, and he was using it as an illustration of what he will

be doing.

He admitted to missing representing a Scottish seat, but there was

some compensation from the fact that his new seat in Essex is full of

Scots. Round Harwich in the 1930s most of the farms appear to have been

acquired by Scots emigrants and there is as a result a large Scottish

community which still has strong links with home. Harwich even has a

pipe band, while Colchester has Highland Games.

As for his own roots, the only picture in his office that belongs to

him -- the rest came with the job and will be changed once he gets to

grips with the supplying department -- is of his ancestor, Major Dhilaes

Mac Bain who fought at Culloden, killed 13 English soldiers, and died of

his wounds in spite of the Duke of Cumberland insisting, when he was

captured, that he be spared. It is there, he said, just to show that

Scotland is never forgotten. And he has no intention of succumbing to

the English either.