Chinese Premier Wen on UK visa visit in January 2009

With the UK government on life-support and the five tier UK immigration system writhing to the agony of as many recent defeats, it seems premature to be getting excited about removing the urinary catheter and intravenous drips just yet, especially following anti-immigration sentiment growing across the UK and EU.

But news in the Telegraph has enlightened my Monday afternoon, to the tune of a good old fashioned fight involving the UK visa system against the EU counterpart of France, Germany, Italy and Spain – the Schengen visa zone.

Might this be a story that will have UK citizens reminiscing back to the good old days of Rule Britannia and 1997 when things could only get better?

Latest government figures show the number of visitors to the UK fell from 7.19m to 6.28m in the first three months of 2009, a fall of 13per cent.

To combat this significant fall in money entering the economy, the UK immigration system wants to introduce a new UK visa aimed at capitalizing on the half a million more Chinese tourists France gets in comparison to the UK.

“Most Chinese tourists want to go on a continental tour. We cannot currently capture that. But we are busily exploring the options… whether we could offer visas as part of a wider European tour,” said Carma Elliot, consul-general in Shanghai.

The excitement surrounding the debate to pinch the wealthy Chinese tourists off our chunnel conjoined neighbours follows concerns raised by tour operators and businesses at a conference in London last week.

The general consensus was the existence of a “disincentive to include visits to the UK in tours majoring on continental Europe.”

The UK has a lot to offer the discerning Chinese tourist, including a large ex-pat community, of approximately 500,000 in the UK, compared to just 300,000 in France and 111,000 in Italy.

Alastair Morgan, UK Trade and Investment director for China, said: “We think there’s a lot of future potential for tourism from China. But at the moment we have far more business visitors. We would like the UK to be performing better like France and Italy.”