If you have ever spent a Friday afternoon building a slide deck to justify why your conference deserves next year's budget, Westminster has just done some of the heavy lifting for you. On 6 July, the House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee published its long awaited report into business events, and it reads less like a polite policy review and more like a strongly worded letter on the sector's behalf. According to the committee, conferences, exhibitions and trade fairs pump £33.6 billion a year into the UK economy, support hundreds of thousands of jobs, and have been rewarded for it with shrinking government support and no national strategy.
The committee's chair, Dame Caroline Dinenage MP, did not bother with diplomatic hedging. She called the government's decision to slash support for business events "utterly irrational and entirely counterproductive", according to Conference & Meetings World. When a cross-party committee of MPs starts sounding like an exasperated event director whose AV budget just got cut, you know something has shifted.
What actually happened
The report, titled simply Business Events, follows an evidence session held in Parliament in December 2025 and more than a year of campaigning by industry bodies including the Events Industry Alliance, Liverpool Experience Campus and The Business of Events, whose joint statement welcomed the findings. Witnesses included Faye Dyer of The ACC Liverpool Group, Rachel Parker of the Events Industry Alliance and Robert Wright of The Business of Events, per micebook.
The committee's central conclusion is that business events are not a subgenre of tourism. They are a trade-driven economic sector in their own right, and the government's current approach, which is fragmented across departments and chronically underfunded, is limiting the UK's ability to compete with destinations like Germany, Spain and Italy that fund their event sectors properly.
The Faroe Islands problem
The report's sharpest criticism lands on VisitBritain. At the end of May, the national tourism body reduced its business events team from nine people to two, and withdrew ringfenced funding for the Business Events Growth Programme. As CMW pointed out with visible disbelief, that leaves Britain with fewer people marketing its event sector than the Faroe Islands. A nation of 54,000 people and a great many puffins now outstaffs the world's sixth largest economy on business events promotion.
The MPs want that decision reconsidered, and the industry wants it reversed outright. UKEVENTS, the umbrella body for the UK events industry, welcomed the report and called for the Growth Programme's funding to be restored alongside the team that ran it.
The recommendations at a glance
| Recommendation | What it would mean in practice |
|---|---|
| A standalone national business events strategy | Long-term planning aligned with the industrial strategy, not ad hoc support |
| A sector-led National Business Events Council | A permanent bridge between organisers, venues and government |
| Maintain funding for promoting UK events abroad | Keeps Britain visible when international associations pick host cities |
| Reconsider the VisitBritain team cuts | Rebuilding the specialist unit that wins bids for UK destinations |
| Move business events to the Department for Business and Trade | Treats conferences as trade infrastructure rather than tourism garnish |
| Review cost pressures and simplify visas | Scrutiny of VAT, Air Passenger Duty, ETA charges and business rates |
What this means for event organisers
It is tempting to file parliamentary reports under "interesting but not my inbox". Resist that urge, because several of these recommendations would land directly on your spreadsheet. A review of VAT, Air Passenger Duty, ETA charges and business rates touches almost every line of a conference budget, from venue hire to what your international delegates pay to get here. Simplified visa processing would directly improve show-up rates for global attendees, which is the difference between a half-full plenary and a queue at registration.
There is also a quieter lesson in how this report came about. The committee did not discover the sector's £33.6 billion contribution by accident. Industry bodies spent over a year presenting evidence, and the argument that finally landed was economic data, not enthusiasm. Organisers should take note: the events that survive budget season are the ones that can prove their impact. If your registration data can show who attended, where they came from and what business followed, you are holding the same class of evidence that just moved a select committee.
A select committee cannot force the government's hand. What it can do is make ignoring an entire industry look like a deliberate choice rather than an oversight.
How we got here
The sector has been asking for this recognition for years. Business events were among the last activities to restart after the pandemic, and while the recovery has been strong, it happened largely without the coordinated state support that competitor destinations enjoy. Germany's convention bureau operates with sustained national backing, and Spain and Italy have both increased investment in attracting international congresses. Meanwhile the UK filed conferences under the same departmental umbrella as museums and grassroots football, then trimmed the specialist team anyway. The December 2025 evidence session was the first time in recent memory that MPs sat down specifically to examine whether that arrangement made sense. Their answer, published this week, is a firm no.
Watch this space
Select committee reports are not law, and the government is under no obligation to accept a single recommendation. Convention says ministers respond within roughly two months, which puts an answer in early autumn. Three things are worth watching. First, whether the Department for Culture, Media and Sport defends its turf or lets business events migrate to the Department for Business and Trade. Second, whether VisitBritain quietly rebuilds its events team before being told to. Third, whether the proposed National Business Events Council materialises with actual industry seats at the table, because a council without organisers on it is just another meeting.
From where we sit, the report is a rare thing: a government document that says out loud what every organiser already knows. Events are not a nice-to-have. They are where trade happens, deals close and industries meet themselves. Whether Westminster acts on its own findings is the sequel we are all now waiting for, and for once the events industry gets to be the audience.
