With the recent government reshuffle, the question again arose: should the responsibility for tourism within government remain with DCMS or should it be transferred to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, the new name for the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (where, presumably, regulatory reform has now been thrown out of the window)?

Should tourism be linked with the UK's cultural and historic heritage or, as one of the UK's largest economic sectors, generating £19bn per annum in export earnings and employing up to 2.1 million people, should it be relocated to DBIS where it would be treated more as an industry than a cultural activity?

Change came there none. So tourism remains part of the culture and heritage scene, despite it being by far the biggest industry in the department's portfolio.

Thus, it came as a surprise that when DCMS announced its plans to create 5,000 to 10,000 new jobs using money from the Future Jobs Fund (£1.1bn challenge fund where organisations compete for funding to create jobs for the young long-term unemployed and others with disadvantages in the workplace), the tourism sector hardly rated a mention rather than it being a core component of the strategy.

The strategy, Lifting People, Lifting Places focuses on investing in culture, media and sport as a way of helping the economy recover. Many of the initiatives highlighted are simply a rehash of existing initiatives (for example, the Seachange funding is deemed part of the initiative even though it was announced two years ago).

But what the document does highlight is the government's view that by investing in arts, culture and sport, there will automatically be an increase in tourism. The whole emphasis of the strategy is that the benefits provided by tourism are a product of the investment in culture, media and sport.

This is a ludicrous assumption and ignores the £5bn business spend by overseas visitors every year. It is this closed thinking that is behind the current initiative to develop a British City of Culture competition. The idea is that if government investment is focused on regeneration and developing the cultural and sporting facilities of destinations, there will automatically be an increase in tourism numbers - thus negating the need for any direct government investment in tourism marketing activities - which is considered something that is better handled at the local level or by the private sector.

So while we are debating which government department should be responsible for tourism, the government seems to be debating whether it should be a responsibility at all.

Is this an omen for the future?