My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for coming today. I have no doubt that we are all going to benefit hugely from the rich array of experts, innovators, educators, business leaders and creators in this House who will give of their wisdom to the Government, trying to impress upon them the need to turbocharge their level of commitment to the creative sector in both policy and spending. I greatly look forward to the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Spencer of Alresford—if I have the pronunciation wrong, I trust that someone will correct me. I welcome the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay, to his place. He shows a keen interest in his portfolio.
There is not a noble Lord in this House who does not value the creative sector—at least, I trust that is the case. That applies to the Benches opposite too; it would be churlish not to acknowledge the Culture Recovery Fund thrown, albeit late, to a sector reeling from the repercussions of Covid and Brexit. I hope we will hear today from some of those to whom that really was a lifeline, and that this impresses upon the Government the value of the creative sector to people in every part of this country. But it was the 11th hour when the realisation dawned that this sector, which contributes so massively to the economy—at over £115 billion gross value added in 2019—and which was growing at five times the rate of the rest of the UK economy before the pandemic, was going under. I thank the Government for that fund.
There is not a huge amount in the spending review to say thank you for, but as the Government tend to deflect all criticisms by holding up such fig leaves to hide a lack of genuine priority, drive and belief in the sector, and to save the Minister from doing it at the end, I will do it for them. I genuinely thank the Government for the extension of tax relief for museums, galleries, theatres and orchestras, the £850 million in post-pandemic support for culture and heritage institutions, and the £14 million a year in scale-up funding for creative SMEs. The problem is that the true priority the Government give to the sector lies behind those fig leaves.
The DfE Secretary of State’s letter to the Office for Students demonstrates this precisely. It says that courses that are not among the Government’s
“strategic priorities—covering subjects in music, dance, drama and performing arts; art and design; media studies; and archaeology—are to be subject to a reduction of 50 per cent”,
and, further, that the Office for Students
“should reprioritise funding towards the provision of high-cost, high-value subjects”—
suggesting that creative subjects are not of high value—and that the Government
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, on conducting this debate; it is much needed in the House. I look forward to the Minister’s opening foray into debate on the cultural sector and to hearing from the noble Lord, Lord Spencer of Alresford. I do not think it is the Alresford that is next to Great Bentley, where I come from, but I look forward to the speech nevertheless.
The DCMS defines creative industries as:
“those industries which have their origin in individual creativity, skill and talent and which have a potential for wealth and job creation through the generation and exploitation of intellectual property”.
Never has there been a time when those things are more needed, as we move out of the Covid pandemic and into a time when our economy will hopefully become broader and richer as we open it up.
As the Lords Library briefing note makes clear, the creative sector encompasses a wide variety of industry sub-sectors, ranging from film and television to IT software and computer services. These are powerful drivers in the modern UK economy, contributing, as we heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, an estimated £155.9 billion and 2.1 million jobs to the economy in 2019. Put into context, this contribution to the economy is greater than the automotive, aerospace, life sciences and oil and gas industries combined.
Kingston University, an internationally renowned centre for art and design, says that evidence exists that creative skills drive innovation and growth in all parts of the economy. I ask the Minister: why did Kingston University find that there is a “growing disconnect” between the globally recognised pre-eminence of our cultural sector and the education policies that sustain that success? As Kingston suggests, there is a risk that current policies will severely disrupt the talent pipeline that fuels that pre-eminence.
My Lords, each one of you at some time past made your maiden speech in this Chamber and will no doubt recall what a special, perhaps nerve-racking moment it was for you and maybe your family. That is very much how I feel today. One of the things I and, no doubt, you too noticed immediately on joining this House was the great courtesy and civility extended between all involved here. This is an oasis of traditional manners, helpfulness and politeness that, I am sure, makes this important place of work so much more productive and rewarding. I would like to thank all the many individuals who have extended those courtesies to me since I was introduced here last year: the clerks, the police, Black Rod and fellow Members, especially my two supporters, my noble friends Lord Strathclyde and Lord Marland, whom you may all hold responsible for my presence here.
My journey to this House, no doubt like many of yours, has been somewhat convoluted and varied. I was born in what was then the Federation of Malaya, son of a colonial civil servant father. A few years later came Macmillan’s momentous “wind of change”, and my father judiciously switched careers to join the United Nations and was posted in 1960 as a development economist to Khartoum, that famous and historic city at the junction of the Blue and White Niles. I remember the city and the country very well, and was lucky to learn some Arabic and travel quite widely with my parents. It was then a remarkably peaceful place, despite the enormous size and religious and ethnic diversity of that newly independent nation.
In 1964, we moved to Addis Ababa, headquarters for the UN in Africa. Ethiopia, then ruled by Emperor Haile Selassie, was one of the very few African states that was never colonised, apart from a brief, albeit painful Italian occupation. Although I was educated in England, this was very much my home until we finally left Addis in the late 1970s.
My Lords, I cannot tell you what a pleasure and honour it is to follow my noble friend Lord Spencer of Alresford’s maiden speech. What an excellent speech it was. We started in the City together in the 1980s and, frankly, I have been living in his shadow ever since. As noble Lords just heard, some of his magnificent achievements far outweigh those of most human beings. He is a child of the Commonwealth, as he said. His father was committed to public service. He was a scholar at Oxford. None of those things have I ever been able to attain. In 1986, he built the biggest inter-dealer broker—a truly British company. It went from nothing to being a multi-billion-pound business—a magnificent achievement. As my noble friend alluded to, his greatest achievement—he was modest in what he said—was the more than £150 million that he raised for charity through his ICAP charity day. I therefore think that his addition to this House is remarkable for his own achievement but is also of great benefit to the House.
I also congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, on this truly important debate. Actually, I congratulate the arts because, through these horrible Covid times, many of them, like so many of us and so many other business, have struggled to maintain their existence, to strive and to create, while using the new technologies available to perform. It is a magnificent achievement. I chair a charity called Tickets for Troops. Before Covid, the performing arts gave us around 150,000 free tickets for our Armed Forces each year, so my affection for the performing arts is unrivalled. I have not only lived with the fact that our charity has not had any tickets; I have seen what the arts have had to put up with through this difficult time.
I want to contradict the noble Baroness slightly because I think that our Government have done incredibly well. They have had to struggle with Covid, but they have set aside an enormous amount of funding for the arts. The arts are still thriving and are, for want of a better phrase, ready to roll. The Government are fostering the arts against a lack of insurance, which is a big problem; it is very disappointing that the insurance industry has failed to offer them coverage, which is key for them.
My Lords, first, I congratulate my noble friend Lady Featherstone on both initiating this debate and her excellent opening contribution, which set the scene so effectively. I also congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Spencer, on his excellent maiden speech. I was particularly delighted to hear his perspective on the value of creativity for our future. Of course, we are all familiar with his bringing fun to fundraising through ICAP’s charity day, with many celebrities bashing the phones and appearing in the Evening Standard the day after. I was also interested to hear that we have a common interest in conservation in Laikipia in northern Kenya.
I will talk about the way in which the pandemic has had an impact on livelihoods in the creative, arts and entertainment sectors. I want to talk about a number of current threats to independent producers, our book and fashion sectors, authors and our music industry. I do not quite see the sunlit uplands that the noble Lord, Lord Marland, did.
The first threat is the situation in which our independent film and TV production companies find themselves as a result of competition from the major studios and streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon. The growth of the UK as a destination for film and TV production has been so swift that there are now insufficient skills and crews. If we cut corners, quality will decline. We have a similar situation in competition for access to facilities, with independents being priced out. Steve McQueen, the maker of “Small Axe”, could not afford London—the location where its events took place—and had to shoot in Wolverhampton instead.
We need to tackle the overheating of the sector that is taking place. In particular, we need to expand the training and skills pipeline, as my noble friend described, rather than cutting funding and threatening to limit the number of people taking creative arts degrees. Where is the promised £90 million-a-year arts premium for schools? Where are the reforms to the apprenticeship levy? As my noble friend mentioned, Kingston University’s future skills league table shows that creative skills are in demand right across the economy; of course, the noble Lord, Lord Spencer, also made that point. Independent producers have described their great concern about the Government’s proposal for the future of Channel 4, which commissions hundreds of independent British companies that can exploit the intellectual property in programmes around the globe.
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones. I agree with virtually everything that he has said. I declare my interest as a composer and broadcaster and welcome this timely and vital debate, brilliantly initiated by the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone. I extend my welcome to the noble Lord, Lord Spencer. He will find that his knowledge of wild animals is enormously helpful in your Lordships’ Chamber and may even recognise the odd elephant of one hue or another.
Our Government tell us constantly that they prize the creativity of our musicians, artists, actors, dancers, fashion designers and writers, but their splendid words are rather undone by their less than splendid stance on creative education and the result of the Brexit negotiations. These two issues, Brexit fallout and education, were compounded by a third, which admittedly was beyond the Government’s control: Covid-19.
The Government’s support for the arts during the pandemic was enormously helpful—and we are grateful for it—as is the doubling and extension of orchestra tax relief in the Chancellor’s Budget Statement last week. However, many freelance musicians and artists, as the Government recognised, fell through the support network during the pandemic and these are precisely the people who, as they try to recover, are now being hit by the problems with touring, particularly in Spain, where the cost of getting visas and the invasive requirement to reveal personal accounts, including bank statements, are exacting real hardship, as publicly described by two of our most gifted singers, Dame Sarah Connolly and Ian Bostridge.
Cabotage is a huge problem, especially for those companies and orchestras who own their own trucks. Why is Spain important and why cabotage? Well, if you are planning a European tour for an orchestra, a string quartet, a dance company or a heavy metal rock group, you must divide the costs by the number of performances that you can give. Geographically and historically, Spain is key to European touring, yet it has more restrictive requirements than several countries with which we do now have bilateral agreements. Currently, trucks are allowed to transit to only two locations before either all the gear must be transferred to a local carrier or you must return home and start again. During this gap, performers must be paid for loss of work and for subsistence, amounting to thousands of pounds.
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, very warmly, on securing this debate and on setting out the issues so very clearly and lucidly. During a long career in the arts and in your Lordships’ House, I have probably opined on most of the things that she mentioned at least once and sometimes many times. I am not sure that I could ever possibly have done it as well as or better than she did today. I also congratulate those who follow, because there is very little that I can add to what has already been said or will be said by the extraordinarily well-informed group which I am privileged to be part of today. I also welcome the noble Lord, Lord Spencer, to the House. He will be a great asset to us. I look forward to hearing from him again in the future.
I want to talk briefly about one of our most important cultural assets, which was referred to, albeit in passing, by the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone: the BBC. We know that there are some people, possibly quite a few, who resent having to pay the licence fee that entitles us all to access the vast range of programming provided by the BBC. Those people would prefer to pay only for what they use. Perhaps we might think about applying that to the NHS. We also know that there is a small but vocal and influential minority who would like to see the BBC diminished because they regard it as a threat to their commercial interests. There are a few people, including some politicians, who are convinced that the BBC is irretrievably biased towards what they see as a liberal metropolitan world view, and would therefore like to see it reined in.
These are all reasonable, defensible positions. I do not agree with any of them but that does not prevent me understanding them. What is not reasonable or defensible is government interference in a well-tried and thus far largely independent process to appoint the chair of a key regulator, apparently to smooth the way for a candidate previously deemed unappointable, whose well-publicised attitude to the BBC is, shall we say, less than supportive. Also not defensible is a senior government figure—a Cabinet Minister, no less—making barely veiled threats about the BBC’s future funding in reaction to one experienced journalist’s momentary and perhaps understandable frustration.
My Lords, I begin by congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Spencer, on a truly interesting—which is often not the case—maiden speech. I also congratulate my noble friend Lady Featherstone on not just securing this important debate but, as the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, rightly said, on her excellent speech, which I hope will influence government thinking.
It seems to me that the Government have a Jekyll and Hyde approach to the creative sector. They rightly talk up its importance and, to be fair, have directed significant sums to help the sector during the Covid pandemic—yet in many ways they fail to understand the sector and its specific needs. This can be illustrated by many examples, such as the furlough scheme failing fully to take into account the sector’s particularly large number of freelancers and part-timers and the Government’s dismal betrayal, in the Brexit negotiations, of musicians and other creative performers whose livelihood comes from touring within Europe. Further evidence is provided, as we have heard, by the Government’s threats to cut the BBC down to size or to privatise Channel 4, failing to appreciate the importance of those institutions in the wider creative sector ecology.
In the limited time available, I will concentrate on just two other government policy areas to illustrate their failure to understand and respond to the creative sector’s needs: the talent pipeline and the importance of protecting intellectual property. Post-Brexit talk is all about developing homegrown talent yet, as far as the creative sector is concerned, government policies are hindering such development. For example, soon after the introduction of the apprenticeship levy it became clear that there is no one-size-fits-all scheme, and the creative industries argued for a bespoke one to meet their requirements and ways of working. Only now, after several wasted years, are trials of a more appropriate scheme taking place. I hope the Minister can update us on what is happening and that he will acknowledge that the failure to act sooner has meant that, as ScreenSkills has claimed, there are only one-quarter as many creative industry apprenticeships as there could have been.
12:37 pm
20 of 57 shown
Then there is the EBacc, where arts are excluded completely, and the lack of action on the vanished £90 million-a-year arts premium promised by the Treasury in March 2020. In the meeting yesterday, it was mooted that the money could be in the DfE settlement; let us see if the DfE actually allocates it to that purpose. What do we actually see, educationally speaking? A couple of most welcome but inadequate T-levels, because there is no evidence or conviction that the work is being done with employers to deliver even these small policies.
We have only to examine the way the Government negotiated the Brexit deal to understand the value they place on our creative community. For example, our music industry contributed £5.8 billion to the UK economy in 2019—which was obviously before Covid—yet when Brexit slapped our touring musicians and performers in the face, it was clear that no thought at all had been given to this during negotiations. Why? Why were these issues not high on the Government’s agenda before the catastrophe? It hardly supports the Government’s claim of how important the creative sector is to them when there have been 11 different Secretaries of State in DCMS in the last 11 years, serving about a year each. That is a pretty clear indication of the priority and importance that the Government award the portfolio. Although I am not prone to biblical quotations
“By their actions shall ye know them”.
I could go on and on, but your Lordships will be relieved that I will not. The point I am trying to drive home is that the Government have signalled so clearly, at home and to the whole world, that the UK creative sector is not a priority or important, whereas the message should be the exact opposite: it should be one of the top priorities on the government agenda. It is our secret weapon and our soft power success. I am sure that many of the issues noble Lords raise in today’s debate will helpfully point the Government in the direction of actions they must take to encourage, support and grow the sector. This is a moment of both opportunity and necessity, to build back better and level up by using the talents of the most precious commodity we have: our human capital in our unique and original thinkers.
From McKinsey’s 2018 report, Skill Shift: Automation and the Future of the Workforce, we know that creativity, critical thinking, decision-making and complex information processing are going to grow in the coming decade from an already high base. Our children and young people must not be fodder in educational sausage factories where creative thinking cannot flourish. No one should be enslaved by conformity. Not only is that a liberal mantra; it is also the credo for the future economic success of our nation. From Realizing 2030: A Divided Vision of the Future, a report by Dell Technologies and the Institute for the Future, we know that 85% of the jobs that will exist in 2030 have not been invented yet, and that 56% of business leaders say schools will need to teach how to learn, not what to learn, if students are going to be prepared for that. From the World Economic Forum 2020 report, we know that 50% of all employees will need reskilling by 2025 and that creativity, originality and initiative are in the top 10 skills.
So, it has been rough. Along with Brexit, Covid and diminishing fees from streaming, festivals, concerts, theatres, broadcast and record production, print magazines and arts teaching have been decimated, and this has undermined those working in the creative industries. Individuals have been squeezed to the point where their ability to maintain a professional living is vastly diminished, especially with living costs racing in the other direction. Those employers on whom much of the sector depends, whether directly or through production companies, are either cutting back or under threat. Imported production is not enough to take up the slack. Publisher advances for all but the top 150 novelists have all but disappeared. The position for poets and playwrights who are not screenwriters is dire. Local authority cuts are hitting not only local venues and museums but performers who work in the very important care and therapeutic sectors.
As I said, English universities are being told to cut arts subjects and those universities that have creative subject departments are awaiting with dread the Augar review implementation. Many in the arts rely on part-time teaching, research posts and freelance lecturing to supplement their artistic income. Outlets for visual artists, the private galleries that often depend on tourists and customers with high disposable income, are struggling. Not everything is suitable for selling online, and galleries are increasing the commission they charge artists because of rising rent rates and digital costs.
The inflexibility and complexity of the benefits system mean there is very little support for those in the creative sector. They are among those for whom some form of guaranteed basic income would make a huge difference, for the rules and regulations governing universal credit make it utterly unsuitable for those in the creative sectors.
There is nothing we need more in terms of building back better, levelling up and recovering from Brexit and Covid, which are, after all, stated government priorities, than the creative minds that will enable the UK to “STEAM” ahead. I said “STEAM” and I mean that. The Government make a false distinction between art and science; both are vital to advance the human condition.
On levelling up, of all sectors, the creative sector is the one that is growing in parts of the country that need new employment opportunities. For example, according to the Creative Industries Federation, between 2011 and 2020, jobs in the creative industries grew by 68% in the north-east and 61% in Yorkshire and Humber. Kingston University carried out interviews with major businesses outside the creative sector, including Deloitte, Mastercard and Lidl, and a weighted sample of 2,000 UK employers to find the answer to two questions: what challenges the UK faces in remaining globally competitive—having Brexited, that will be even more important—and what skills businesses are looking for to meet those challenges over the next 10 to 20 years. Its findings are absolutely decisive. Business across all sectors prioritise creative problem-solving skills and identify emerging economies as the key threat to the UK, because countries such as China and Singapore are investing in these skills to absolutely transform their economies.
We need a Government that understand and value the creative sector, and put their money and energy into it; that respect, capitalise and believe in the creative sector; that support and encourage our broadcast companies, recognising their irreplaceable value as the second-largest exporter of television programmes and formats in the world; that understand and support the BBC rather than undermining it; that stop trying to sell Channel 4 and recognise that it breeds the ecosystem that spawns new and emerging talent, as well as being financially successful; that ensure broadcasters have continuing access to European platforms; that invest equally in developing creative skills alongside science skills; and that fight for the rights of our intellectual property.
We need a Government that recognise that, in challenging times for the UK, the creative industries offer a platform for economic success; that shape our education and economy for the future, because the future will belong to countries who support innovation and creative minds; that recognise the part played by creative courses in the innovation economy and ensure that policies are retained and enhanced; that support freelancers, sole traders, part-timers and those with a portfolio of roles, who people the creative industries; and that ensure that the tax and welfare system supports them to thrive and earn well.
We need a Government that will intensify and strengthen our creative core by promoting creative subjects in schools, further education and university; that ask Ofsted to monitor the curriculum so that no school can easily drop art, music or drama; that encourage institutions and businesses to collaborate with schools to provide cultural education and offer high-quality careers advice; that ensure that high-quality apprenticeships are offered in the creative and digital industries; that increase diversity in the creative industries by working with the industry and listening to its needs, with more support for flexible apprenticeships; and that promote the value of live events, in music, small and public venues, regional theatres, local halls and festivals across the country, especially while we grapple with Covid.
The Arts Council expressed the challenge and the opportunity thus:
“Never has there been a more important time to stimulate the debate, share intelligence, work in partnership with the sector and beyond, so that the benefits of arts and culture are discussed as a mainstream issue”,
not just “at the margins”. The Creative Industries Federation and Creative England’s recent report The UK Creative Industries: Unleashing the Power and Potential of Creativity features newly commissioned data from Oxford Economics, which projects that, with the right investment, the sector could recover faster than the UK economy as a whole, growing by over 26% by 2025 and contributing £132.1 billion to the economy in gross value added. That is over £28 billion more than in 2020 and is more than the financial services, insurance and pension industries combined.
It is clear—and I hope Her Majesty’s Government really heed this debate—that government policy, funding and indeed attitude impact profoundly across the creative spectrum: advertising and marketing, architecture, crafts, design and designer fashion, film, TV, video, radio, photography, IT, software, computer games—this is a massive area—publishing, museums, galleries, libraries, music, performing and visual arts. I am afraid this Government are found wanting. I will finish with a quote from the Prime Minister, although I cannot do impressions:
“You know, sometimes I don’t understand what’s wrong with us. This is just about the most creative and imaginative country on earth – and yet sometimes we just don’t seem to have the gumption to exploit our intellectual property.”
Let us hope he listens to this debate for all the answers he needs.
Moreover, given the impact of Covid on the economy, we have a national need to encourage the creative industries to help strengthen the recovery. As the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, observed, Oxford Economics reported that the sector could recover faster than the UK economy as a whole. Its recent State of the Nation report projects that the sector could, as has been said, grow by 26% by 2025, contributing £132.1 billion in GVA and creating some 300,000 jobs. I ask the Minister, with his recent DfE experience, why are the Government disinvesting from the cultural industries? This disinvestment comes a time when competitor economies such as China and Singapore are placing creative education at the heart of their plans for growth.
The Prime Minister wants to see a high wage economy—I think we all do. Higher-level occupations account for 83% of the creative industries, compared to 42% across the workforce generally. Higher education is strongly correlated with the creative sector. This work generates job satisfaction and, of course, higher pay. But over the period 2010 to 2020, there was a 37% decline in arts GCSE and a 30% decline in A-level entries. The English Baccalaureate does not include a single creative subject. Why? In the private education system, of course, creative education continues to thrive, meaning that the creative sector will, a bit like cricket, become the preserve of elite education and lack the diversity of backgrounds that the current Secretary of State seems to so crave. In higher education, the OfS confirms that there has been a 50% reduction in funding available for creative courses at universities, with a redirecting of these funds to STEM subjects and others deemed strategically important. It should not, in my view, be a case of either/or, but of both. Does the Minister agree with that view?
To grow the cultural industries, we need to invest; to invest, we need to plan; and to plan, we need ideas and imagination—something the Government lack. Why else would they look to support projects that look back rather than forwards? The creative industries are the future. I hope that this afternoon, the Minister can persuade the House that his Government understand that and set out a coherent arts strategy for the next decade and not just the next spending round.
I was then working in my first job at a stockbroking firm in London. But although I had left Africa, Africa has never left me. The experience of being brought up in a sub-Saharan country with completely different cultures, religions and ethnicities left a deep imprint on me. I feel hugely privileged for where I have been, what I have seen and who I have met. That time also imbued in me a strong commitment to conservation and related issues. My wife and I are now very lucky to have a property in north Kenya, where we have abundant wildlife, including rhino, elephants, lions, leopards and buffalo, in an unspoiled and protected environment.
In 1986, I decided to start my own business with three colleagues, and we launched an interdealer broking firm called ICAP. I had at the outset estimated our chances of success as 50:50 at best, but the tide of good fortune was on our side. The Thatcher era abolition of exchange controls, coupled with bold economic and tax reforms, followed by the big bang, dramatically transformed the City of London and, indeed, the whole of the UK. There was a huge inflow of capital and expertise, with many foreign corporations setting up their headquarters in London. Our business thrived and head count grew rapidly. In 1998, we went public and in 2006 joined the FTSE 100 index—exactly 20 years after our modest beginnings. By then, we had 5,000 staff in 63 offices worldwide. ICAP was undoubtedly the world leader in our sector. We were a British business unicorn before that term had been invented.
I am happy to say that we were also ahead of the curve in CSR. We started an annual charity day in 1993, a unique idea at the time, when the firm gave all the revenues from a single day’s trading to charity. This project is still ongoing and has so far supported several thousand charities around the globe. This is without doubt one of my proudest achievements and legacies.
Your Lordships may well now be thinking, what on earth has all of this got to do with today’s debate? Well, quite a lot, I suggest. As we have just heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, the creative sector, traditionally viewed as being theatre, film, TV, orchestras, dance, opera, museums, galleries and the like, is hugely important to the UK. But we should widen the definition of the sector to include creative corporations. Who would not say that, for example, Apple, Google and Tesla are creative?
What is without question is that “creativity” and all that goes with it—innovation, imagination, change, design, pushing the boundaries, embracing new ideas and cultures, vision, perseverance, risk taking; all these and much more—are critical components for a vibrant economy, a vibrant society and a vibrant nation. Certainly, we could never have built ICAP to become a world leader without embracing all of this. As our nation emerges now from the cloud of Covid and faces the challenges and opportunities of Brexit, there has never been a time when we have needed to support, invest in and promote creativity, in its widest definition, more.
I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, for tabling this important debate, giving me this opportunity to make my maiden speech, and my noble friend Lord Parkinson for what will no doubt be an excellent reply. I look forward to contributing my best endeavours to this great House.
The noble Baroness and the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, were quite right to talk about the future, because this is about the future, how we build on success and what the Government do to make it. As noble Lords will know, I was an international trade envoy for the Prime Minister and one of the founders of the GREAT campaign. We recognise the importance of promoting the arts globally.
However, there is a failure in the system. Look at the movie industry. Take the James Bond films; they are magnificent productions. We have the actors, studios and technicians in this country, and then we produce the product. Look at the music industry, which the noble Baroness referred to earlier. Again, we have the talent, production studios and orchestra halls in this country; we therefore have the product. Then look at the creative industries, including fashion, design and architecture. We can design the product but cannot produce it. The focus for the Government in the next few years should therefore be creating enterprise zones and freeing up the banking system so that, in this post-Brexit Britain, production can be created to supply rather than things having to be produced elsewhere. I would like to hear my noble friend the Minister’s views on this.
Again, I welcome my noble friend Lord Spencer to these Benches and congratulate him on his excellent maiden speech. I look forward to hearing my noble friend the Minister’s response.
I come to our renowned, world-class book sector and the consultation over the post-Brexit copyright exhaustion regime. Copyright is key to the book trade, as it offers a bundle of rights that enable authors to protect their intellectual property and benefit from it. This right means that authors or their publishers can control the distribution of their book in a particular market, as long as their rights have not been exhausted. However, the IPO is currently considering a change to the UK’s copyright exhaustion framework—specifically, the introduction of an “international exhaustion regime”. This would have a devastating impact on UK publishing and a huge knock-on impact on UK authors’ incomes.
By the same token, the impact on the fashion industry of a switch to international exhaustion, in particular on our global London Fashion Week, could be significant. What is the Minister doing to ensure that the creative industries’ concerns, including those of the publishing and fashion sectors, are properly taken into account? What analysis has his department done on the impact that an international exhaustion regime would have on the UK’s publishing and fashion sectors, or on the UK creative industries’ exports?
Post Covid, many authors are in a very difficult situation. The Society of Authors survey found that
“49% had lost more than a quarter of their income by October 2020 … Only 28% got help from the first two payments of the Self-Employment Income Support Scheme.”
Hundreds of libraries have closed across the country over the past decade, which has reduced public lending right income. The single most effective thing that the Government could do would be to increase the public lending right fund available for distribution, which currently stands at a mere £6.6 million, has been frozen for a decade, and is half the amount of the ones in Germany and France.
Finally, I turn to the threats to the music industry, with which I have a long association. UK Music recently unveiled its annual report, This Is Music 2021. It has revealed the devastating impact of Covid-19, which wiped out 69,000 jobs—one in three of the total workforce. Studios and venues were forced to close, and musicians and crews were unable to work. In a sector where three-quarters are self-employed, many were not covered by government support schemes. UK Music has drawn up the music industry strategic recovery plan, which outlines five key areas where swift action is needed: tax incentives; urgent action to remove the barriers to touring, which my noble friend Lord Strasburger will talk further about; a permanent reduction in the VAT rate on live music event tickets; more funding and support for music exports; and boosting funding for music education and for the self-employed to secure the talent pipeline. Where do the Government stand on these requests to help to save some of our critical creative sectors?
Regarding Spain, I have a little suggestion for the Minister. We know how many UK citizens love and welcome their Spanish holiday. We know how Spain values their contribution to the Spanish economy. Surely there is some leverage here, à la France and fishing. “You want us on your beaches so make it easier for us to tour or maybe we will have to help reach our carbon targets by further taxing flights to Spain.” Of course, there are many complex issues surrounding this problem with Spain, including a national and endemic bureaucracy and the strong and febrile feelings over Gibraltar, but there must be a way through. Could we not perhaps go back to pre-European Union rules? What are Spain’s arrangements with other countries outside the EU— America, for instance?
A letter has been sent to Boris Johnson on behalf of cross-party MPs, demanding urgent action over the crisis facing musicians and crew touring the EU. The All-Party Parliamentary Group on Music, endorsed by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Classical Music, of which I am a co-chair, has also revealed plans to hold a cross-party inquiry into the costly barriers and delays facing musicians, particularly emerging artists. Details of the two initiatives come after Sir Elton John warned in June that the UK music industry risked losing a “generation of talent” and branded the situation a “looming catastrophe” for artists.
Regarding education, the amount of time devoted to arts subjects, including music, has been steadily declining in our schools over the last decade. I feel more passionately about this than any other aspect of creativity, even those that I have mentioned, because we are depriving future generations of the opportunities that we all enjoyed. In terms of levelling up and diversity, we all celebrate the wonderful playing of the cellist, Sheku Kanneh-Mason. A few months ago, his mother, Kadie Kanneh-Mason, told me on Radio 3 that what upsets her about current music provision in schools is that if Sheku was a pupil now, he and his siblings would not be where they currently are; the privileged and well-off can get music lessons but the poor in our society are stranded.
Ideally, we should get these creative subjects back on to the national curriculum, but, failing that, let us augment hubs and target underprovided areas, as suggested by the Local Government Association. When the Minister rises to tell us how valued the creative industries are, as I am sure he will, will he consider whether we will still be able to say that in decades to come if we have denied our children the means to develop into the musicians and artists of the future that they, and we, deserve?
I am sure that the Minister, who I know takes his brief very seriously, will want to give the House a different perspective on these problem issues, and I look forward to hearing what he has to say, because I believe that the BBC, despite its flaws, of which there are many, is a public good and matters to our culture, creativity, politics and international reputation in more ways and for more reasons than this Government sometimes seem to understand—or perhaps they understand them all too well. Either way, those who would like to see the BBC taken down should be careful what they wish for.
While the Government are at last beginning to listen in relation to apprenticeships, the same cannot be said for what is happening in our schools—an issue raised so powerfully just now by the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley. The failure to include arts and creative subjects within the EBacc has led to students being discouraged from studying them and encouraged instead to focus on subjects that form part of the EBacc. Government workforce statistics show this very clearly, with a sizeable decrease in the teaching of non-EBacc subjects. For example, in the past 10 years art GCSE entries have declined by 37% and design and technology entries by nearly 60%. Not surprisingly, A-level entries in arts and creative subjects have also declined dramatically. A-level music entries are down by 44% since 2011. This is hardly a recipe for developing homegrown talent in the creative sector.
That is why we on these Benches have long argued for the inclusion of creative subjects within the EBacc—and we are not alone. The Commons DCMS Select Committee recommended it way back in 2013, and in June of this year the Commons Education Select Committee made a similar recommendation. To date no Minister has given a convincing justification for rejecting such recommendations, so I will listen with interest to our Minister’s attempt. And, while he is doing it, recalling that his party’s 2019 manifesto promised
“an ‘arts premium’ to secondary schools to fund enriching activities for all pupils”,
will he tell us when it is coming?
Now creative subjects in our universities are under threat, with an inevitable impact on the talent pipeline. The universities regulator has confirmed that it will be cutting its funding for arts subjects by 50% and, worse, we now hear that the Treasury is pressing for a reduction in the number of students studying such courses on the grounds that they are less likely to pay back their student loans. I hope the Minister can assure us that such pressure from the Treasury will be resisted.
To date, the Government have not listened to concerns about the talent pipeline, but I hope they might do about intellectual property. The generation and exploitation of IP is a defining feature of the creative industries. Piracy is a major threat to that exploitation. One of the problems in tackling it is that digital service providers do not verify the identities of those using their services, so pirates can make millions from their illegal activities without being identified. The Government have now said that they will look at how Know Your Business customer regulations might be introduced to deal with this problem. Can the Minister therefore update us on how that work is being taken forward and when he expects it to be concluded?
Finally, I have previously asked the Minister about the future of the IP exhaustion regime and the possibility that the Government may introduce an international rather than a national one—a move the sector believes will be devastating. So far, we have been told that the options are being reviewed and a decision will be made in due course. Given the importance of the issue, can the Minister say why it is taking so long, when we are going to hear and why the Government are even considering an option that could be an existential threat to our creative industries? The Government talk up the creative industries but must do more to understand them.