Pembrokeshire is miserably lagging behind the rest of the UK in the tourism stakes. And until the government gets a grip on the situation, tourists will continue shunning the county for many years to come.

So says Cardiff-born presenter, comedian and heritage conservationist Griff Rhys Jones in a no-holds-barred article published in the Daily Mail.

He states that a report from the Welsh Affairs Committee recently pointed out that very few international tourists are visiting Wales.

“It lags behind Scotland, Northern Ireland and even that part of the Cotswolds where Jeremy Clarkson lives,” he writes.

“Of the 41 million foreign visitors to Britain before Covid, just over one million ventured into Cymru. Of the £28 billion spent in the UK by international tourists in 2019, only £515 million was spent in Wales.”

These figures are a sad reflection given the history, culture and sheer geographic magnitude of the nation.

“It's extraordinary and sad,” he continues.

“The most glorious part of the UK [is being] missed out in favour of places like the Cheddar Gorge. Not that the Welsh Labour leader, Mark Drakeford, is exactly helping matters.

“He and his allies in the Senedd, Plaid Cymru, have decided to introduce a new tax on tourists.

“The levy will be on visitors who stay in commercially let overnight accommodation, leading a group of Welsh farmers to warn that this could 'decimate' rural businesses.

“Drakeford and his supporters say it would provide another stream of income to spend on infrastructure: 'From signage to facilities to the myriad of public-realm improvements that make places attractive,' as the Bevan Foundation, the charity that first proposed the tourist tax five years ago, has suggested.

“I don't think Aneurin Bevan, that great Welsh statesman after whom the charity is named, would have agreed that more signs will ever make a place more attractive. But there you go.

“The point is that currently, across Wales, one person in ten works in the tourist industry but in Pembrokeshire, it's one in five.”

Griff Rhys Jones said that a recent survey by the Welsh Association of Visitor Attractions showed that 47 per cent of its members had fewer visitors last year than in the 2019 season, while that 60 per cent were pessimistic about the coming season.

A Welshman through-and-through -“I am as Welsh as Mark Drakeford. My full name is Griffith Rhys Jones and there is not a drop of English blood in my body” – he first fell in love with the Trehilyan estate which sits nestled into the hillside near Strumble Head, after discovering it during visit to the area in 2004.

It was run down and derelict after years of pummelling by storms from the Atlantic.

And so began an18-year restoration project which has seen the buildings regain the majesty they once displayed “By comparison with modern, off-the-shelf, tin-farm buildings, these stone structures were made to last,” he writes.

“But this was no labour of love. Love is free. It was a labour of quite big expenditure. I inwardly, and indeed quite outwardly, invested in Pembrokeshire.”

Griff Rhys Jones tries to visit the property as often as his work allows, and when he isn’t there, the cottages operate as holiday lets.

“Sometimes people tell me, unbidden, online and often quite forcefully, that the cottages I have restored and now let, are depriving the young people of Pembrokeshire of places to live.

“I get their point. But I do have to explain that we were only given permission to rebuild as long as they remained holiday lets for ever.

"They cannot easily enter the housing stock. Nor, to be honest, are they wholly suitable. Like quite a lot of rentable holiday cottages, they are developed near the coastal path and a long way from the amenities of Haverfordwest or Pembroke or Milford Haven.

“They are there for tourists — people who spend money and create jobs in Pembrokeshire. And my fear is that Drakeford's plans to tax visitors to Wales will do nothing for a tourism industry that, as the MPs' report shows, is already in the doldrums.

“Pembrokeshire is now levelling up. It is experiencing the same dismal housing inflation as the rest of the country.

“But work in tourism will disappear if the visitors stay away. Builders and van drivers and plumbers and carpenters and electricians 'doing up' derelict farm buildings will lose bountiful business.

“Tourist Pembrokeshire needs incentives, not punishments.

“It is hampered by poor communications and underinvestment. And some tourist economic attitudes that are stuck in the 1950s, with beachside teahouses closing dead on teatime.

“But it is still one of the most glorious places in the world.

“Mr Drakeford knows of these glories, of course. He has a 'chalet' in Pembrokeshire. It's his personal holiday home, though he piously informs us it is not a second home at all.

“Mind you, why should I worry? If his plans work, then the beaches, walks and hills of Pembrokeshire will be exactly as I like them. Completely deserted.

“Perhaps he's thinking along the same lines.”