My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to open this debate on the Government’s role in supporting the craft industry, a sector that combines our economy, heritage, identity and national well-being. In speaking today, I declare my interests as an artist member of DACS and a former craft practitioner, having studied ceramics at Camberwell College of Arts—a course that, regrettably, no longer exists, exemplifying the very crisis that I wish to address today.
I thank Patricia Lovett, who has worked tirelessly to raise the profile of craft in Parliament as the secretariat for the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Craft, for this and her briefing, and those from the Church of England and the UK jewellery, silverware and allied crafts sector. I thank the Minister for meeting with the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick, the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, and me earlier this year to gain a better understanding of the challenges facing the craft industry. Lastly, I extend my gratitude to all noble Lords participating in today’s debate; I eagerly await their contributions.
Craft is not an indulgence. It is profoundly human, combining creativity, skill and joy in ways that connect us to our heritage and each other. It is an economic force, a skills engine, a bridge to education, a custodian of cultural heritage and a foundation for innovation. Yet, despite all this, it remains routinely overlooked in national policy.
Let us begin with scale. In England alone, craft contributes £4.4 billion in gross value added, which is more than the fishing industry and on par with sectors such as electrical goods and sports, recreation and amusements. Approximately 210,000 people are employed in heritage crafts, which is more than in clothing manufacturing. However, reliable and up-to-date statistics remain difficult to obtain. I hope the Minister will commit to publishing new figures to help address the current lack of accurate data, as highlighted in How Do we Measure Craft?, published by the Crafts Council in 2023.
However, economic value tells only part of the story. Numerous creative industries and heritage sectors are rooted in traditional craft practices. Fields such as textiles, ceramics, jewellery, glass, leather, woodworking and metalworking—and a host of other overlooked and unsung heritage crafts that I wish I could single out individually today—demand skills that are not only materially productive but rich in cultural expression.
Craft is also deeply interwoven with wider policy goals. It improves health and well-being, supports education and skills, anchors regional identities, and drives tourism, exports and diplomacy. In short, it sits at the intersection of industrial strategy, education, heritage and soft power.
Yet this vital sector faces an existential threat. According to the latest Red List of Endangered Crafts, 165 crafts are at risk: 94 are endangered and 71 are critically endangered. These include scientific glassblowing—which is essential to advanced research—and the production of encaustic tiles, as found in the Peers’ Lobby.
My Lords, I am delighted to follow the noble Lord, Lord Freyberg. I do not have his credentials as a maker, but I am vice-chair of the APPG for Craft, and I support all the points he made so admirably and succinctly, particularly his emphasis on the economic impact of the craft sector.
People have been making glass since the Bronze Age. The technique of glassblowing was developed by Syrian craftspeople in the first century BC. Across the Roman Empire, vessels and objects were produced in their thousands for drinking, shipping food, storing oils, mirrors, windows and much more. In other words, these handmade vessels were not only beautiful, but immensely useful. The remarkable Charles Ede gallery recently displayed 60 Roman glass pieces, some of them filled with lovely naturalistic floral displays showing that, although now eminently collectable, they are still useful. They are functional works of art transcending time.
That ancient tradition survives today but, like so many other handmade crafts, it is under threat. In his excellent, comprehensive speech, the noble Lord, Lord Freyberg, highlighted many of these threats: the higher costs of materials and energy; cuts to creative education in schools and universities, reducing pathways into the sector; limited apprenticeships compared to other skilled trades; and an ageing workforce where older crafts women and men retire without successors. These are among the key reasons for the decline, and I share all the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Freyberg.
There are some inspiring rescue stories. The Financial Times has a great track record of showcasing the sheer range and quality of UK crafts. It highlighted recently how two young artisans are reinvigorating the art of rush-seated chair making, which has been practised in Britain since Anglo-Saxon times. They were able to do this through the commitment and backing of one person—entrepreneur and estate owner, Hugo Burge. Just eight years ago, that ancient craft was under existential threat with the retirement of the last full-time artisan in the country. Fascinated by the craft and well-advised by the Heritage Crafts Association, Burge funded two apprenticeships. The Hugo Burge Foundation continues to fund apprenticeships to secure the future of this endangered craft.
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Freyberg. I remind the Committee of my registered interest as chairman of the Chartered Institution for Further Education.
I will speak about an important and brand-new initiative in heritage crafts: the Wren international centre of excellence at St Paul’s Cathedral. It has been created out of a space at the level of the cathedral’s crypt, which was previously used for storage, and obviously named after Sir Christopher Wren, who is buried nearby. The new centre is a workshop and training space for heritage craft skills. Rebecca Thompson, the director of property at St Paul’s, says that it is hoped to be
“a leadership network to address the national shortage of heritage skills”.
Its first apprenticeships will be shortly advertised—in stone-masonry and carpentry—and those appointed will begin practical work in the summer, with concomitant college courses in September.
From 2005, I came into close contact with the heritage skills required at St Paul’s for, as Knight Principal of the Imperial Society of Knights Bachelor, I had the job of supervising the creation of a new chapel there for the knights from an area that had hitherto been used as a depository for office equipment. I was able to prepare the preliminary drawings with the Surveyor of the Fabric and to oversee the necessary work, which obliged me to raise £1 million. It required specialist carpenters, turners, masons, welders, enamellers, silversmiths and bronze workers, and was opened by the late Queen Elizabeth and the late Duke of Edinburgh in 2008.
Innovations of the kind now in train at St Paul’s are very seriously needed. As we have heard, the number of people entering the heritage skills sector is in decline, and in many cathedrals such as St Paul’s, there are teams of conservators and crafts professionals with an ageing demographic, with retirement on the horizon and with the unwelcome likelihood that they will not be replaced.
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Freyberg, for securing this debate and for his expertise.
Like the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chichester, who will speak later, I believe that cathedrals and churches are some of our nation’s most significant and tangible assets, shaping our history and identity, as well as being the beating hearts of our communities. I regret, therefore, that the Government’s decision to curb support for the Listed Places of Worship Grant Scheme affects our ability to maintain and renew this precious inheritance. I hope this has been recognised in the spending review.
The reality is that the Church of England cares remarkably well for the biggest portfolio of listed buildings in the country thanks to local parish endeavour. That is why the decision to cap support, even for projects that are already contracted, budgeted and otherwise funded, is a real body blow. In my diocese, the impact for Holy Trinity Clapham amounts to £1 million, which puts at risk a programme of works that is already in progress. Another large fabric project has been paused.
Church buildings, as your Lordships may imagine, support a bewildering array of craft skills. Should churches cease to do so, many skills would atrophy. I am thinking of masonry and stone-carving, the intricate textiles of altar frontals, banners and vestments, the ceramics of tiles, painting, stained and engraved glass, and all manner of metalwork in buildings, utensils and liturgical objects, as well as woodwork, both functional and artistic. What would become of the sole remaining bell foundry in England were it not for orders such as that from Holy Trinity Church, Roehampton, in my diocese, for the casting of four bells in 2023? How would the skills needed to repair great organs flourish without the refurbishment of the organ at St John the Divine, Kennington, which is also in the diocese of Southwark? It has a massive local music outreach programme for children, with beneficial social impact. Organ-building is a heritage craft at risk.
My Lords, I declare my interest as chair of English Heritage. As well as looking after 400 of the nation’s most important heritage sites, we are one of the biggest investors in building conservation and heritage management in the UK, so English Heritage is well placed to observe and comment on the state of the heritage skills world.
I am sorry to say that it is not good news. For stone-masonry, roofing and thatching, joinery and metalwork, the demand for traditional heritage skills greatly outstrips the availability of people with those skills. For specialist interventions on heritage buildings, such as flint-knapping, which involves repairing a built form and which is no longer practised in new buildings, we are literally at the end of the line. There are few or no new entrants and hardly any training opportunities to continue this ancient skill.
Horticulture in historic gardens is a specialist and skilled activity—a heritage skill of its own—but it is also an underpopulated profession. At English Heritage, we are proud to have run the Historic and Botanic Garden Training Programme—a difficult phrase to say; it is better known as heebie-jeebies—with the support of the National Garden Scheme. Over almost 20 years, we have supported more than 300 trainees, who are now employed across the heritage world. The vast majority of our horticulture trainees have gone on to be highly skilled gardeners at some of the most high-profile historic gardens in the UK and abroad. Much of the credit for this goes to our soon-to-retire head gardener, John Watkins, who engineered this remarkable revival.
The most recent addition to our portfolio of historic properties is Shrewsbury Flaxmill Maltings. This was the first multi-storey iron-framed building in the world and therefore can claim the title of being the grandparent of the skyscraper.
Between 2017 and 2020, Historic England delivered a programme of heritage skills activities supported by the Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation. Work placements, site tours and training events were targeted at all levels, from students to industry professionals. We want a similar commitment to heritage skills training in the delivery of all large lottery-funded projects like this one.
My Lords, I declare an interest as the vice-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Craft. I congratulate my noble friend Lord Freyberg on securing this debate and on his excellent opening speech. I thank Patricia Lovett for her excellent briefing on heritage craft and, indeed, whose expertise in this area informs us all. I thank the Minister for the helpful meeting she had with my noble friend Lord Freyburg, the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick of Undercliffe, and me.
I am a fine artist, so my view of craft is that of a close and equally significant next-door neighbour; indeed, there is considerable overlap in our practice. Yet, whereas we have debates and Questions in this House on many of the creative industries—many on music—I cannot remember the last time we had a debate on craft, so this one is especially welcome, since the infrequency of such debates is sadly also indicative of a public perception about craft that is entirely at odds with the reality of the importance of this area, not least financially.
It is worth repeating the statistic that heritage craft alone contributed £4.4 billion GVA to the economy in 2012, which is about five times more than fishing, which contributed £862 million in 2023. Unlike the fishing industry, it receives no funding from government, while contemporary craft, which is funded through the Crafts Council, still receives nothing like the investment that is made in the fishing industry. I do not want to press this comparison too much, not least because some of the ancillary activities connected with fishing, such as net and withy pot making, are themselves crafts. We should be on the same side, but the Government need to think seriously about a more equitable distribution of direct investment, particularly as they rightly identify the creative sector as a growth area. While it is good that, through the spending review, heritage venues will be better supported—perhaps the Minister can say something about that—the overall cuts to DCMS funding are worrying and deeply disturbing.
My Lords, it is a great privilege to take part in this debate. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Freyberg, for bringing it forward. I echo much of what was said by my right reverend friend the Bishop of Southwark and by the noble Lord, Lord Lingfield, with whom I worked at St Paul’s.
I would like to stress the importance of capacity for long-term funding in order that long-term planning can be undertaken by these fragile groups. I was disappointed that this morning there was no response from the Minister in the Statement on the spending review to indicate that there will be certainty about the future of the Listed Places of Worship Grant Scheme beyond 2026, which is essential for so many churches, parishes and cathedrals, nor a review of the capping system of the VAT application, which once again destroys much of the benefit of knowing that there is funding ahead.
Though I could simply echo some of the comments about the forms of arts and crafts seen in cathedrals, I am not arguing for special treatment for the Church of England as a discrete group that wants to be okay alone. This is about the impact that the Church of England—its parishes, churches and cathedrals—has in the wider community. For example, the masons’ team at St Paul’s Cathedral offered people, many of them from Essex, the opportunity of a career in masonry. They were often the children of people who had a career in masonry at St Paul’s. This sense that there is something ahead of us is a very important part of the investment that cathedrals contribute through their renovation programmes.
My second point is about the use of conservation—both developing conservation skills and the benefit of conservation for others. In two cathedrals, Rochester and Durham, the display of their inheritance is not only of interest to tourists, which I will come back to, but of profound interest and an education to pupils in schools. School visits are one of the most important ways of introducing children to their inheritance. Both Rochester and Durham are places where there are levels of deprivation which can be very destructive for children, until they discover that they are the inheritors of this beautiful history, which is theirs. Cathedrals have an educational and a formational contribution to make to these communities.
My Lords, I will also speak about the crisis approaching us in building craftsmanship. Here we are, in this temple of British craftsmanship—we are very proud of its history—yet we are in real danger of losing many crafts as the last craftsmen reach the end of their careers without apprentices. On the other side of the equation, we currently have around 923,000 young people not in education, employment or training; that is one in eight 16 to 24 year-olds. These are young people whose potential is being squandered.
You may think that it is a rather unbalanced equation. When you hear “heritage building crafts”, it is easy to think just about the big prestige projects, such as Notre-Dame and the Houses of Parliament, but that is one of the mistakes we have made. We have ended up with specialist crafts all in their own little niches and struggling to be sustainable.
One-fifth of all our housing stock in the UK —5.9 million homes—was built before the First World War, using traditional methods and materials generally different from those used in the past 50 years or so. These all require maintenance from craftsmen, such as the plasterers who know how to work with lime and the carpenters who can fix a sash window frame. Some £28 billion-worth of work is done annually on these buildings. Equally urgently, these houses need retrofitting to higher insulation standards to help us meet net zero, as well as an understanding of how their fabric works. Then there is the conversion of old industrial buildings to new homes to help meet housing needs. There is a continuum of building craft skills, from the needs of the small, everyday houses to those of our most treasured and visited heritage buildings. Overall, the numbers of building craftspeople needed are very large.
Now think about the pipeline needed to feed this—that huge pool of young people who do not want to sit in front of a computer or at a desk, seeing their jobs replaced by AI and uninspired by corporate management structures. How do we match them with the thousands of self-employed building craftspeople, mostly in their 40s or older, who are ready and willing to give one-on-one mentoring—absolute training gold dust—leading to well-paid, satisfying jobs that are ideal for those who want to take pride in being able to see something they did and did well?
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We are witnessing the transition of traditional skills from viable to critically endangered status, often more swiftly than our support systems can respond. Most of these skills are passed down through person-to-person training. They are not widely taught in schools, nor can they be meaningfully learned online. Once lost, they are lost forever.
We see this decline in real time. Newark College has suspended its musical instruments degrees, the only full-time courses of their kind in the UK. In Stoke-on-Trent, three pottery firms have closed recently, including Moorcroft, founded in 1897. These are not isolated incidents; they reflect systemic fragility. Historical craft is a high-value, low-visibility sector, dominated by micro-businesses and sole traders, with limited structural support.
So what could the Government do to turn this around? First, we need urgently to review how government skills policy works for crafts. The current apprenticeship model is fundamentally unworkable for most craft businesses, which are often sole traders or firms with only one or two employees. They cannot meet the requirement for 10 employers to form a trailblazer group, nor can they afford to reduce productivity in order to train an apprentice while still paying their wages.
We welcome the new growth and skills levy, as well as the introduction of shorter and modular apprenticeships under Labour’s post-16 strategy, but we need these reforms to extend to the craft sector specifically, with direct funding for trainers, contributions to apprentice salaries and a reduction in administrative burdens. The new Skills England body has a clear remit to map skills pipelines across sectors. It must treat crafts as part of the creative economy, not an afterthought. Following yesterday’s spending review, how much of the new investment money for skills and training will be allocated to the crafts industry?
Secondly, we must reverse the collapse of full-time craft training. There are now only two single-honours ceramics degrees left. Courses in bookbinding, horology and instrument making are disappearing. The result is that only the independently wealthy can afford to train. We need targeted funding for FE and HE courses, particularly those teaching endangered skills. Many such courses currently fail to qualify for public funding. As with the performing arts, crafts education should not be confined to the privileged.
Thirdly, the Government should move swiftly to deliver on their obligations under the UNESCO convention on intangible cultural heritage, which the UK ratified in 2024. Traditional craftsmanship is one of its five domains. Ratifying states must identify, inventory and safeguard such practices, yet no safe-guarding timetable or funding has been published. If we delay too long, the damage will be irreversible; I hope that the Minister can provide an update.
Fourthly, crafts should be treated like other sectors of similar size. Fishing, for example, receives tax breaks worth up to £180 million and has a £27 million seafood scheme, as well as a new £360 million coastal growth fund. Craft, which contributes over five times the GVA of fishing, receives no comparable support. Would it be too much to ask to invest even 2% of that into preserving craft skills? A £10 million annual fund could transform training, stem skill loss, and generate lasting cultural and economic returns.
Fifthly, post-Brexit trade obstacles have significantly impacted makers. Couriers are unwilling to accept small shipments. Export guidance lacks consistency. Items are being held up at customs. Organisers in the EU are becoming more hesitant to accept entries from the UK. We urgently need a dedicated help desk—a single point of contact for craft micro-businesses to access accurate trade advice. Trade agreements ought to incorporate cultural exemptions for crafts, recognising their importance in both diplomacy and commerce.
Sixthly, crafts deserve a place in creative education. They are too often excluded from discussions about arts in schools, yet crafts improve cognition, motor skills, resilience and mental health. They also open vocational pathways for students who may not thrive academically. Let us ensure that creative education includes making and that schools have the resources to teach it. Again, I hope that the Minister can provide an update on how the spending review will support this.
Seventhly, crafts are not only a domestic concern but an export strength—a soft power asset and a driver of regional growth. Labour’s refreshed creative industries sector plan and its cultural global Britain strategy rightly position culture at the heart of our international offer. Crafts must be at the heart of that strategy. From Stoke-on-Trent ceramics to Sunderland glass, from Leicester’s rattan-weaving to Devon’s thatching, crafts are rooted in place. Small investments in such place-based industries boost local pride, employment and tourism; they also reinforce the UK’s international reputation for excellence and authenticity.
If this debate achieves anything, I hope that it establishes that craft is not marginal or an anachronism. It is a vital, economically significant, socially valuable part of our national fabric. We do not need huge sums to save the sector, but we need a strategy, data and targeted support, and we need them soon because, once these skills disappear, they will not return, and we will have lost not just livelihoods, but irreplaceable strands of our national story. Let us act before that happens.
This is far too precarious a way forward for the future of our amazing craft industries. There are a number of barriers faced by skilled makers in relation to apprenticeships, such as the impact on makers’ time, and therefore income, of helping to transfer skills. A more imaginative, flexible and focused approach is needed to ensure that craft skills can continue to flourish, and I hope my noble friend will in her reply offer some hope that this is indeed how she sees the way forward.
The very effective secretary of the APPG for crafts has, as the noble Lord, Lord Freyberg, said, done sterling work in showcasing many of these crafts and, in particular, demonstrating the economic contribution that they make, yet they remain largely invisible in policy terms. I would not necessarily have expected a specific reference to craft in yesterday’s spending review announcement, but I hope that the Minister will be able today to give us some real confidence that it will figure strongly in subsequent departmental allocations, as well as in the soon-to-be-announced creative industry strategy.
I know my noble friend is passionate about this agenda. She made that clear in her recent meeting with the noble Lord, Lord Freyberg, the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, and me, and I hope she will reiterate today her determination to raise the profile of the craft sector and ensure that it fulfils its potential. I hope she will undertake to ensure that the new Skills England body specifically recognises crafts as an integral and invaluable part of the creative economy, our national fabric and our shared heritage.
We of course sit today in a world heritage site, and it will face the huge task of restoration and renewal in the coming few years. This will require a large number of trained heritage crafts professionals. Attractive jobs here will inevitably entice talented people away from other sites, such as cathedrals, exacerbating the shortages of skills that already exist.
In our several debates on restoration and renewal, I have recommended to your Lordships that we have a duty to construct, when R&R details become clearer, a Palace of Westminster scheme to showcase apprenticeship. It should be a subject of contract, between the House authorities and the firms fulfilling the necessary heritage craft tasks here, that they will guarantee to employ and teach apprentices. It is vital that restoration and renewal is not just a consumer of crafts skills but an active source of training for future careers in these important heritage areas.
I have recommended that all apprentices working here, or on associated projects off the site, should be registered with the Westminster apprenticeship scheme and, at the successful completion of their training, receive a special certificate. I have already persuaded the Speaker and the Lord Speaker that they should present them when the occasion arises. We want these young people to be proud of being part of the history of the Palace of Westminster and to come to understand the craft vision of Sir Charles Barry and of Augustus Welby Pugin that underpins it. I commend that initiative to your Lordships.
Again in my diocese, at All Saints Church in Kingston upon Thames—the place of coronation for West Saxon kings including, in this anniversary year, that of Æthelstan, the first king of all England—there is an ambitious and contemporary textile project depicting seven Anglo-Saxon monarchs. How will contemporary embroidery fare without the commissioning of large and challenging works such as this; or traditional stonemasonry without commissions such as the repair of the tower and wall at St Mary’s Church, Beddington? Indeed, how will any of these skills survive without this activity? Every bishop in every diocese can recite many telling examples. Yet the Department for Culture, Media and Sport does not list bell-founding, organ-building, stone-carving, stained or engraved glasswork, masonry or wood-carving as core craft activities. I ask the Minister to explain this and expand the current list.
In summary, the reduction in the Listed Places of Worship Grant Scheme announced in January and concerns over its future beyond March will have a direct effect on commissions and contracts awarded to skilled craftspeople and artists. It will inhibit apprenticeships and dampen economic growth. As a final point, I ask the Minister, if only on grounds of economic utility, to please guarantee an expanded future scheme.
But these are examples of best practice; the picture across the country is far too fragmented—much more Jackson Pollock than Picasso. It is difficult for enthusiasts to find entry points for specialist heritage skills. There are few placement opportunities in heritage organisations and very little on-the-job learning. Once the training is completed, pathways to employment are ill-defined and hard to identify. Employment opportunities are often small scale, insecure and poorly paid. Short-term funding means that even large organisations such as English Heritage can no longer permanently employ in-house teams of construction professionals, as was the case many years ago.
In allowing professions such as heritage skills to dwindle and die, we have not just deprived the country of important construction skills and neglected the UK’s great heritage assets; we have also allowed traditions, customs and local communities to disperse and almost casually disappear. In your Lordships’ House, we are assiduous about maintaining our own traditions. We should also have a care for the traditions and communities of people less high profile, but, perhaps over the long run, even more important than us.
I will concentrate the remainder of my remarks on the effects of Brexit on the craft sector. That effect is profound. Europe is the most significant trading partner for craft goods. However, Brexit is not behind us: as in all the creative industries, artists and artisans have to live with it daily. Most immediately, it makes us face enormous concerns over paperwork, costs and delays, but the exchange of ideas, tools, materials, teaching and training between the UK and the EU in the craft industry has all but stopped, including the display of work at European craft fairs and exhibitions. The shop window that such exhibitions afford, even when no work is sold, is hugely important in terms of initial cultural engagement as a precursor to trade. Will the Minister look at this?
Will the Minister consider expanding the list of eligible occupations in the creative sector to include heritage craft practitioners? This would enable knowledge exchange for residencies and collaborative projects under the PPE visa. Will she look at the huge challenges faced by journeymen and apprentices in such areas of itinerant work across Europe due to both Brexit and funding, which is either scarce or non-existent due to rigid eligibility criteria tied to fixed business premises?
Finally, I make a plea that the Government reinstate tax-free shopping for tourists, which would benefit both high-end fashion and craft goods. The Centre for Economics and Business Research found that its removal has deterred 2 million tourists a year from visiting the UK and is costing £10.7 billion in lost GDP, with much of that loss, of course, being the EU’s gain.
My third point is about textiles. When I was at St Paul’s, we were fortunate to be funded, through the generosity of many of the livery companies, to commission textiles. This was not simply for the use of a small group of people worshipping in that building; it put us in touch with Central Saint Martins, which ran a competition for international students to win the prize of commissioning and designing these textiles. As a result of that, a group of local people who were interested in broderie was started, and it continues now. It gives the local community—not necessarily Christians but beyond that confine—an opportunity to identify with something that will create a heritage for the future.
Finally, I turn to music. For children, access to cathedral choirs is one of the most important ways of enlarging their educational experience and giving them intergenerational experience of working with adults in a professional way. It has also been used by the Probation Service as a way of bringing people who are at risk of offending into finding purposeful skills for which they receive applause.
These are all ways in which crafts overflow from the Church into the wider community.
Here in the Lords, we know all too well that the hereditary system of jobs being passed from parent to child has pretty much gone. That potentially opens up opportunities more broadly, but we need to provide its replacement. Surveys show that half of young people have never considered a career in trades; nearly 40% said that they were discouraged from them. We need to inspire them with what these careers can be, and we need to make the pathways for them clearer and easier. Hands-on and heritage skills need to be part of all mainstream construction training.
Then there are the individual apprenticeships and small courses sponsored by the Church of England, the King’s Foundation, the parliamentary R&R programme, English Heritage, the traditional craft guilds and so many more. They are all doing their absolute best, but they need to be greater than the sum of their parts. Thankfully, though, there is no shortage of enthusiasm, ideas and—crucially—deep knowledge and understanding of what can be done. We have some really good reports, and so many organisations are ready to help. I thank especially the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, the Building Crafts College, Cadw, the parliamentary R&R programme and the Natural Stone Industry Training Group for helping me understand the situation.
What we need now is to bring together the vision and knowledge from industry and the Government’s ambitions. I spoke to Marianne Suhr, one of this country’s leading experts in traditional building crafts and the presenter of the BBC programme “Restoration”. There is no one more inspirational. She is absolutely fizzing with ideas, passion, deep experience and knowledge to help. Will the Minister and others in government please meet Marianne and a small group of experts to see how we can turn their great ideas into reality? To borrow the motto of the movement in France that seeks to support its traditional crafts, Les Compagnons du Devoir, be one of those who build the future.
Craft Industry: Support · Order Paper · Order Paper