The UK defunded a £33.6 billion industry to save a few hundred thousand pounds
Key Points
- The UK government cut VisitBritain's business events team from nine to two and abolished a programme returning £35 for every £1 spent,
- The sector is worth £33.6 billion a year and was showing clear growth - particularly outside of London.
- MPs called the decision counterproductive in a report published on 6 July 2026.
There is a particular genre of policy failure in which the government cuts something small, cheap and demonstrably profitable, then expresses surprise when the money stops. The latest entry concerns the business events industry.
Conferences, exhibitions and trade fairs generate £33.6 billion a year for the UK economy, more than half of the £61.7 billion produced by the wider events industry, and support hundreds of thousands of jobs. Notably 38% of them tied to events held outside London.
That is the backdrop against which the Culture, Media and Sport Committee published its report on business events on Monday (6 July), and the backdrop against which VisitBritain, weeks earlier, cut its business events team from nine people to two. The cut also abolished the Business Events Growth Programme (BEGP) outright.
On the government’s own commissioned evidence, this was not dead weight. The programme delivered an independently evaluated 35:1 return on investment, generating £60.6 million in direct economic return from less than £1.8 million of public funding.
Since launch, it supported 167 international business events across 18 UK cities, from Glasgow to Newport.
The pipeline now at risk includes bids for the International Congress of Mathematicians in Glasgow, the World Electric Vehicle Symposium in Birmingham, and the ITS World Congress 2027, also in Birmingham – an event expecting 16,000 delegates.
Robert Wright, Founder and Chief Executive of The Business of Events, told the committee before the cuts emerged that the funding required to support the sector was “modest” – in the “few hundred thousand pounds” – for an industry generating £33.6 billion annually. The government cut it anyway.
Sector representatives told MPs their reaction was one of “total disbelief”, warning the UK had no become the only major economy without a fully funded and resourced business events team.
Eddy Leviten, Executive Director of the Tourism Alliance, called the decision economically counterproductive, arguing a programme with that level of return is a growth asset rather than a cost centre.
A masterclass in dodging accountability
The government’s defence is a small masterclass in dodging accountability.
The Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) told the committee it gave the British Tourist Authority a flat cash settlement, and that decisions on how to allocate constrained funding sat with the Authority itself.
In other words, it set the budget that made the cut inevitable, but it claims that the cut was not its decision.
The Tourism Alliance, notably, refused to accept that framing, writing that VisitBritain did not choose this, that funding reductions forced cuts of around 10% to its salary budget, and that responsibility for the decision and its consequences lay with government.
Within the broader context, VisitBritain’s grant-in-aid funding fell by 41% to £10.57 million.
The parliamentary committee’s verdict was unambiguous. It called the reduction “counterproductive”, urged ministers and VisitBritain to reconsider, and recommended the government maintain funding for promoting UK business events abroad, noting it was “a small investment for the size of the return it generates”.
Clear positive returns
One of the clearest points of comparison is Canada.
Its equivalent scheme, the International Convention Attraction Fund, delivered a 22:1 return – and when it came up for renewal, more than 100 industry partners wrote to the Prime Minister demanding its continuation.
Ireland and Germany, meanwhile, launched 2030 roadmaps for business events in 2026, with clear funding models attached.
The UK, a government nominally organised around a growth mission, spent the same period dismantling a programme that turned £1.8 million into £60.6 million.
The committee’s wider recommendations include a standalone national strategy, a sector-led National Business Events Council, and a transfer of responsibility to the Department for Business and Trade.
This is not a sector that failed to make its case. It is a sector whose case the government never bothered to read.
