Apprenticeship Levy Scheme

Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury Excerpts

Thursday 16th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I do not accept the noble Lord’s assertion that the changes that the Government have introduced are not working. Clearly, the context of the last 12 months, with the pandemic, has had a major impact on the confidence and ability of employers to recruit more generally. But, in the year to date, apprenticeship starts are up 17.4% and the number of starts among young people under 25 has risen to 55%, up from 50% the previous year.

[Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury (LD)]

The creative industries have also found the apprenticeship levy scheme to be not fit and have asked for modifications; I thank the Minister for listening to these concerns. Around £55 million of apprenticeship levy funds raised within the creative industries cannot presently be spent to support the training of their own workforce, so we welcome the flexi-job apprenticeship agency pilot project, launched yesterday, which is looking to address these issues. Will she look into how this can be sustainable and affordable for the sector after the initial investment runs out—in other words, beyond the pilot?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness very much for acknowledging that we absolutely have listened to the sector with the flexi-job apprenticeships. She will be aware that there is enormous flexibility for larger employers to spend up to 25% of their levy funds, potentially, with their supply chain, as might well apply in a case like this.

English Baccalaureate: Creative and Technical Subjects

Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury Excerpts

Thursday 14th September 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury (LD)]

My Lords, I join in thanking the noble Baroness for this very important debate at a time when, against the backdrop of Brexit, this country’s need to build on its skill base is ever more important.

I begin with two facts, one of which I mention often, and it has already been referred to by the noble Baroness. It is that the creative industries are the fastest-growing sector of our economy. However, there are currently 17 creative roles on the Government’s shortage occupation list, yet there is hard evidence that creative subjects are being squeezed out of the school curriculum.

Clearly, something is awry, and this appears to be the EBacc. It includes computer science, which is vital to our creative economy, but not any creative subjects. As we have argued often from these Benches, this is a serious omission. Our creative industries are hungry for talent and skills and they are crucial for the future prosperity of this country.

Darren Henley, now chief executive of Arts Council England, back in 2012 in his review into cultural education, noted that this area of cultural education,

“is no longer valued as much as it once was”,

and, further, the EBacc system has so far led to creative subjects being abandoned by state schools. Five years on, there is no improvement. The GCSE results for 2016-17 show a great drop in the uptake of creative and artistic subjects. I will not requote the figures because we have already heard them from the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott.

Yet it is a fact that schools providing high-quality cultural education get better academic results across the board, not least, in my view—I think that the noble Lord, Lord Knight, said the same thing—because it inculcates a love of learning. It is a fact that private schools entice parents with access to culture. Thomas’s Battersea, so much in the news at the moment, offers alongside the national curriculum specialist teachers in art, ballet, drama, ICT and music. Does the Minister agree that what is offered to a Prince should be offered to all?

The Government’s long-awaited response to the EBacc consultation appears not to accept this, and the DfE data publication to which it refers insists:

“There is little correlation between the change in EBacc entry and the change in arts uptake in state-funded schools”.


Can the Minister explain why this does not take into account figures from before the introduction of the EBacc in 2011, or indeed the latest figures from Ofqual, as mentioned earlier by the noble Baroness, and why the DfE excludes design and technology from the list of subjects included in its analysis despite it being the hardest hit subject and such an essential part of the creative process, as the noble Lord, Lord Knight, has mentioned.

The Minister may suggest that it is up to the individual schools as to what is on their syllabus, but there is no incentive for them to offer creative subjects. There are 119 accountability measures that a state secondary school has to consider, and not one of them pertains to the arts. The fact is, as that great creative figure Grayson Perry has said:

“If arts subjects aren’t included in the Ebacc, schools won’t stop doing them overnight. But there will be a corrosive process, they will be gradually eroded ... By default, resources won’t go into them”.


That is backed up by the principal of Ferrers art college, who has,

“spoken to many headteachers who are cutting subjects … in order to feed into the EBacc … So … now the school is saying, geography is in the EBacc, drama isn’t, we really, really recommend you do geography”.

We on these Benches believe in STEAM not STEM. The success of those in the creative industries lies in a fusion of creative and technological skills. It was this fusion that fuelled the first Industrial Revolution. The Victorians understood this. They had a Science and Art Department and invested in what was to become the V&A in order to develop the skills needed to feed British industry. In today’s world, in what is referred to as the fourth industrial revolution, inventors recognise the need for creative skills to maximise the potential of their products, and they are working in ever closer collaboration with those who possess these skills, and vice versa. Notions of “us and them”—a perceived opposition between those who practise science and those who practice the arts—are being proved obsolete.

To ensure that our next generation is a generation of creators, schools need to be encouraged to promote not just either science or art but the arts-science crossover. I know the Government believe, as we all do, in the need for the pursuit of knowledge, but it is unnecessary for bogus battle lines to be drawn between the learning of fact and creative interpretation.

It seems a long time ago, but it was actually the beginning of this year, when the Prime Minister acknowledged the need for investment in skills. She said:

“We will go further to reform our schools to ensure every child has the knowledge and the skills they need to thrive in post-Brexit Britain”.


She also said:

“A Global Britain must also be a country that looks to the future. That means being one of the best places in the world for science and innovation”.


The emphasis on science and innovation is right, but does the Minister accept that the creative industries are an integral part? Does he also accept that the recent proposed reforms of the EBacc will not achieve the Prime Minister’s stated aims and should not be implemented?

Instead, we on these Benches, support the noble Lord, Lord Baker, and the Edge Foundation’s new Baccalaureate, which delivers, as it says in its report,

“a stretching”—

a very good word—

“curriculum which provides a solid academic core alongside creative and technical subjects”—

and one which, crucially,

“links to the needs of the economy”.

We are a creative isle. Our arts and culture enrich us both literally and metaphorically as well as economically. We have hugely successful industries spawned on the back of our creativity that have generated soft power. However, unless nurtured and encouraged, we risk losing at this crucial stage in our history a great success story.

Queen’s Speech

Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury Excerpts

Thursday 19th May 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury (LD)]

My Lords, I remember a time when culture did not make it at all as a subject for Queen’s Speech debates, so it is a cause for celebration today that we are now top billing.

As a country, we have always been blessed with a wealth of creative talents. This creativity has formed industries that are a significant contributor to our economy. The creative industries are fed by the talent, ideas and innovation of Britain’s culture and its arts, and they are the fastest-growing sector of our economy. What has been missing has been a clear sense of what exactly investment in this area provides: the real value of investing in culture, and how to ensure that this value is properly woven into government policy. So this Government are to be congratulated on recognising this and publishing a culture White Paper—the first since Jennie Lee’s, 50 years ago. I also congratulate them on the ratification of the Hague convention, which was signed over 60 years ago.

Now to today. Last week we saw the much-anticipated BBC White Paper. The consultation process leading up to it confirmed that the British public overwhelmingly cherish and support their BBC—so, despite the huffing and puffing of the Secretary of State and the threats delivered via anti-BBC competitors in the printed press, he did not blow the house down. We welcome the fact that there will be an 11-year charter and no top-slicing of BBC revenue, and that the index linking of the licence fee will stay and will cover people using catch-up on iPlayer. We also welcome very much the requirement to improve diversity, and the fact that alongside on-screen targets there are to be workforce targets. These must be delivered.

But, while the edifice still stands, this White Paper messes with its foundations and there are major causes for concern. Let us start with the crucial matter of BBC independence. The BBC, let us be reminded, is a public broadcaster, not a state broadcaster. It must be independent in order to do its job, and it must be seen to be independent, so it is wrong, as the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, has said, that six members of the new governing board are to be made up of government appointees. This body will oversee day-to-day editorial and strategic decisions, including issues around political programming and contentious investigations. Peter Kosminsky, director of “Wolf Hall”, said:

“Think about that for a moment. The editorial board—the body charged with safeguarding the editorial independence of the BBC from, amongst other things, government interference—will be appointed by the Government”.

As the noble Lords, Lord Macdonald and Lord Fowler, mentioned, the BBC charter is to be reviewed every five years—always, by the way, coinciding with a general election. It is,

“an opportunity to check the reforms are working as we intend”,—[Official Report, Commons, 12/5/16; col. 731.]

said John Whittingdale in his Oral Statement. “We intend” are chilling words, whoever is in government, and they surely hand that Government the opportunity to usurp the 11-year charter. Both these measures introduce controls that attack the BBC’s independence. There should be no five-yearly review and all members of the new unitary board should be appointed by an independent appointments committee.

Then there is the matter of “distinctiveness”, which seems to have replaced “scale and scope”. The Secretary of State was clear that,

“we will place a requirement to provide distinctive content and services at the heart of the BBC’s overall core mission”,

and the new licensing and governance regime,

“will ensure its services are clearly differentiated from the rest of the market”.—[Official Report, Commons, 12/5/16; col. 730.]

In short, the BBC’s creative freedom to make popular entertainment will be gradually curtailed.

I fear that there is a Trojan horse element here. It was anticipated by actor and writer David Mitchell in an article a couple of weeks ago in which he wrote:

“An overt challenge to the corporation’s existence remains politically unfeasible—the public would miss it too much. The first step, then, is to turn it into something that fewer people would miss—and eventually, over time, to make it so distinctive that hardly anyone likes it at all”.

Then there is the matter of how to justify the licence fee. On the matter of the licence fee, it is not public money but the public’s money—and there must be no more raids. Using the public’s money to pay for government policies such as free licences for the over-75s is double dipping. The licence fee income is for the use of the BBC and the BBC alone. Does the Minister not agree that the process of setting the licence fee should in future be transparent and that the level should be recommended by the new regulatory body?

We believe in an independent BBC, and in a BBC that belongs to the licence fee payer, who wants it to continue to educate, inform and, yes, entertain in the brilliant way it does today—and to provide recipes. Whatever was wrong with the trust, it represented the licence fee payer. Who does that now?

I wish to echo rather than repeat the words of the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, on Channel 4, and await with interest the Minister’s answer.

Finally, our creative industries benefit massively from our being a member of the European Union. The British music industry contributes £3.8 billion to the UK economy, and Europe is its second-largest market. The UK is the second-largest exporter of television in the world. Membership of the EU means that these music and television producers and retailers can export and import freely across the continent. It means that they have unrestricted access to the world’s largest free trade area; and the free movement of people to work and travel across Europe without the need for visas both facilitates and fuels the exchange of culture, creativity and expertise, and generates better commercial and artistic opportunities.

Alexandra Shulman, editor of Vogue, said about Brexit’s likely effect on the fashion industry:

“It would make everybody’s job much harder because they all operate internationally … Of course it is going to impact on companies … many of our fashion students when they graduate get great jobs working abroad. That would be much harder for them. Versace, Prada, Yves Saint Laurent—they use our designers”.

There is also the Creative Europe programme, which has a budget of £1.1 billion. UK applicants for this funding have a success rate almost double that of the EU average, and this year the programme is introducing a new bank guarantee, the Cultural and Creative Sectors Guarantee Fund, which will underwrite bank loans to creative businesses.

Across the country there are examples of the EU enhancing UK culture. York’s Pilot Theatre is leading the £1.6 million PLATFORM shift+ project to help young theatre-makers in nine countries develop productions and skills for young audiences in the digital age. Tate Liverpool is participating in the Collaborative Arts Partnership Programme, which has secured more than £1 million in EU funding to support the training and development of artists working in local communities. No fewer than seven British films that received Oscar nominations this year were EU-funded. The EU provides a continuing stable and mutually beneficial partnership. Materially, it adds value. Culturally, everyone benefits—practitioners, consumers, communities and individuals—and there is the unquantifiable added value of furthering mutual understanding.

As I said at the beginning, we are a creative nation, and so far as the creative industries are concerned we are ahead of the game. Let us make sure that we stay there. That means a properly funded cultural sector, a truly independent BBC, an unprivatised Channel 4 and a positive, progressive future within Europe.

Education: Henley Review

Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury Excerpts

Tuesday 15th March 2016 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they have taken to implement the recommendations of the review by Darren Henley on cultural education in England.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Nash) (Con)]

My Lords, the Government accepted the vast majority of the recommendations in Darren Henley’s review. Our response was published in 2012 and was followed by a cultural education document in 2013. Since 2012, we have invested almost £0.5 billion in music and cultural education programmes. This includes £270 million for music hubs, more than £100 million for the music and dance scheme, £57 million for the dance and drama awards and almost £20 million in a portfolio of cultural education programmes. A further £75 million has been announced for music hubs for 2016-17.

[Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury (LD)]

I thank the Minister for that Answer, but we have a skills crisis in the creative industries and it starts at school. Why in their written response to the Henley review four years ago did the Government list second of,

“those issues that we will address immediately … A National Plan for Cultural Education”,

and why has this “immediately” still not happened? Can the Minister say when the promised national plan will happen?

[Lord Nash]

The Prime Minister recently announced a cultural enrichment programme through the cultural citizens programme. I think that the noble Baroness should wait to see how that develops.

Schools: Arts

Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury Excerpts

Monday 19th November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury]

My Lords, last February, in response to Darren Henley’s admirable review of cultural education, the Government committed to immediately drawing up a national plan for cultural education. It is now November and as “immediately” has still not occurred, can my noble friend tell me when we are going to see this plan?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

We have already announced and taken steps on some of the elements of Mr Henley’s excellent plan. The formal response is not as immediate as he, others and my noble friend would have liked, but we are expecting it early in the new year.

Education: English Baccalaureate

Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury Excerpts

Tuesday 17th May 2011 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what criteria they use in determining which subjects count towards the English Baccalaureate.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Hill of Oareford)]

The English Baccalaureate reflects vital subjects—maths, English and science—where pupils should have the option to take exams leading to A-level, and history, geography and languages, which have been in decline. However, these are not the only valuable or rigorous subjects. We are also making detailed performance information available so that the public can look at schools’ results in any combination of subjects.

[Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury]

I thank the Minister for that Answer. Does he not share my concern over a recent survey in which 60 per cent of the schools that responded said that they would no longer be teaching art and design at GCSE as a result of the introduction of the English baccalaureate as they have to concentrate on the subjects that it encompasses? The qualifications that count towards the current EBacc provide limited scope for the development of creative skills. Does the Minister not agree with me that, considering how important the creative industries are to the present and future prosperity of this country, that is really rather short-sighted?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

My Lords, I agree with my noble friend about the importance of the creative subjects in terms of the contribution they can make to the creative industries, as she says, and as a good in themselves. It is right and good for children to learn about these subjects for the benefit of education, not just for some gradgrindian economic benefit. I agree with her very strongly on that. The thinking behind the EBacc is not in any way to undermine or diminish the value of other subjects that are not in the EBacc. The starting point is that all of us in this House are keen to encourage social mobility. The fact is that children, particularly from poor backgrounds, have not been having the opportunity to study the kind of academic subjects that will enable them to progress to higher education in the numbers that one would like. We are all keen for children from poor backgrounds to become doctors in the way that those from more affluent backgrounds do, yet only 4 per cent of children on free school meals take physics or chemistry. Any further measure we take will not help those children become doctors. We hope the EBacc will give children who want it the opportunity to study academic subjects. Children, however, come in all shapes and sizes and vocational, arts and creative subjects are equally important.