Travel: The Minister for American Tourists

WHEN the United States was worried about a downturn in the number of visiting tourists a couple of years ago, it wheeled out the then President, George Bush, to make an emotional 'come to America' plea to the British.

This week Britain sent a high-level ambassador to the US (still our biggest source of tourists, but shrinking) to make a similar appeal to potential visitors. But it wasn't the Prince of Wales, or Princess Diana, or even John Major; our Big Gun in the battle for international tourist bucks was the National Heritage Minister, Iain Sproat.

Still, Mr Sproat's mission is at least a sign that, after years of neglect, the Government has noticed that tourism should be taken seriously (it does, after all, provide pounds 26bn a year in revenue and 1.5 million jobs).

'Tourism hasn't been handled very well in the past. It hasn't been treated as the important business it is,' admits Mr Sproat.

The English Tourist Board, which has seen its budget slashed by the present government, would think this an understatement. After being shunted around several other departments - most recently, Environment and Employment - tourism has come to rest at the National Heritage department, under the supervision of Mr Sproat, whose portfolio also includes royal parks and sport.

But while Mr Sproat is keen to promote tourism to Britain, his plans lack a certain focus: 'I shall be encouraging American Second World War veterans to return to the UK for the D-Day celebrations. But there is probably not an awful lot we can do to influence plans for travel in June. These things should be planned 15 months ahead.'

Mr Sproat will also be telling Americans about his ideas to promote horse-riding in Hyde Park with the building of new stables. How much impact this will have on tourism from the US is not clear.

Mr Sproat explains that much of his energies in the area of tourism have gone towards attempting to remove the red tape that binds small hoteliers: 'Do you know that 65 per cent of all hotels in Britain have fewer than 10 bedrooms? They have to contend with 81 different regulations, all of which impact damagingly on tourism.' Such as? 'Electricity-at-work regulations mean they have to pay someone to check electrical equipment in the bedrooms. And hotels legally have to display eight or nine different signs about things - they have to display the alcoholic content of every drink they sell.'

Clearly the small hoteliers of Britain have found their champion in Mr Sproat, whose parliamentary constituency of Harwich no doubt includes a veritable army of Basil Fawltys in such resorts as Clacton and Frinton.

Where does Mr Sproat himself take his holidays? 'What holidays? Only managed two weeks this year. In Britain.' His last foreign holiday? 'Madeira, three or four years ago. Can't remember when. Quite like France.'

If tourism has been shunted about government ministries, Mr Sproat has also travelled, holding a succession of minor posts before disappearing from Parliament in the 1983 election, returning in 1992. His claim to fame, however, rests not with his political work, but with the fact that he edited the Cricketers' Who's Who and wrote Wodehouse at War, which cleared P G Wodehouse of the accusation of treachery during the last war.

Government ministers like to show off pictures on their office walls. Mr Sproat has Thomas Hardy and the Duke of Wellington from the National Portrait Gallery. On top of his TV set he has photographs of his six dogs: three deerhounds and three West Highland terriers.

But the picture he is most proud of is of one of his ancestors: 'In Gaelic his name was Dhelius - you'd say Gillies - MacBain. He was 6ft 4in tall and killed 13 Englishmen at Culloden (he pronounces it Culloaden) in 1746.'