Tony Blair with men dressed as Vikings from a local visitor attraction during a tour of York. Picture: AP/Dave Caulkin

£120m boost for tourism

This article is more than 23 years old

Government loans for tourist industry
Burial mound suggestion for carcasses
Slaughterman dies after shooting incident

Election 2001: foot and mouth

Special report: foot and mouth

Government ministers were out in force today to promote British tourism in advance of the Easter holidays. The prime minister, Tony Blair, was in Yorkshire reassuring potential visitors that the foot and mouth outbreak would not interfere with their holiday plans.

The government today pledged £120m of guaranteed loans to the tourist industry, after ministers confirmed yesterday that bookings are down 10% across the country and up to 80% in areas of Cumbria and Devon.

The initiative targets those businesses hit by cash-flow problems by offering loans of between £15,000 and £250,000.

Many rural businesses such as B&Bs are already eligible for loans under this scheme, but the move means that businesses such as garages, restaurants and souvenir shops can also now apply.

In addition, the maximum time for repayment will be increased by a year to 11 years, and capital repayment breaks will be increased from two to three years.

Meanwhile, the deputy prime minister, John Prescott, went sailing on the Norfolk Broads today in an attempt to persuade tourists to return to the countryside. Mr Prescott was in Brundall, near Norwich, to meet officials from the Broads authority to discuss the problems facing the tourist industry in East Anglia.

Many footpaths and mooring areas around the Broads are closed because of the disease, but Mr Prescott urged visitors to head to East Anglia this Easter, saying there was still lots of things to do.

"Even though some footpaths are closed there is still plenty to do and the countryside is still open," he said.

The cabinet minister, Mo Mowlam, was visiting Warwick castle today to deliver a similar message.

Cumbria county council was today removing road signs banning walkers from the countryside because the signs do not fit in with the "open for business image", the county council said.

A committee concluded that the signs are "absolutely necessary" in the areas already infected, as well as in the 3km culling zones, but said some would be removed in other areas.

While Britain struggles to convince the world that the countryside is not off limits, the Irish tourist industry today launched a promotion to win back visitors from the UK in the face of a forecast £417m shortfall resulting from the crisis.

The campaign coincided with similar moves by the holiday trade in Britain and Northern Ireland.

Newspaper advertisements will appear in Britain this weekend, assuring would-be visitors that Ireland is open for tourism business.

The development was welcomed by the Irish Tourist Industry Confederation, but a spokesman said similar tourism campaigns would be required in the US and other parts of Europe to salvage the approaching holiday season.

The Aer Lingus national airline has predicted that tourist numbers could be down by as much as 30% over the next three months, with advance bookings from the UK currently doing particularly badly. The ferries in Dublin said that they were experiencing a 35% drop in car and passenger services on services across the Irish sea.

Back in England, a clay mound the size of a football pitch to be filled with 30,000 decomposing sheep and cattle has been suggested for the west country to solve a crisis of unburied animals.

The Ministry of Agriculture is so desperate about carcasses lying in fields and barns that it refuses any longer to publish the figures, and is considering the mound plan, put forward by the National Farmers' Union.

A slaughterman died in hospital last night after having been shot with a gun used to kill animals at a foot and mouth burial pit. Steven Smart, 28, from St Leonards in East Sussex, was culling healthy sheep on Wednesday at Great Orton airfield in Cumbria when a three-inch retractable rod was fired into his head from a bolt gun used to kill livestock.He died at Newcastle general hospital at 5pm yesterday.

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More on the election and foot and mouth
Politics: foot and mouth

What's going on?
Full list: outbreaks
Graph: rise in cases
Full list: closed & cancelled
Causes and effects
The issue explained

The front line: meet those affected by the crisis
03.04.2001: Straws in the wind
06.03.2001: Meet our panel

Interactive guides
How the virus spread across Britain
The countryside in crisis

More on the countryside in crisis
27.03.2001: Hard times

From the Guardian archive
28.11.1967, leader: indecision on foot and mouth
18.11.1967: 'Slaughter must seem a cruel remedy'
16.11.1967: Foot and mouth may cost agriculture more than £12m
11.11.1967: Emigrant flights to Australia stopped by foot and mouth
01.11.1967: It is cheaper to kill than to prevent cattle disease

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