S4C

Baroness Wilcox of Newport Excerpts

Thursday 8th February 2024 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Wilcox of Newport]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the report by Capital Law into the working environment and atmosphere at S4C, the Welsh language broadcaster, and what discussions they have had with that broadcaster in response.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Culture, Media and Sport (Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay) (Con)]

My Lords, His Majesty’s Government are committed to supporting S4C, which plays a vital role in the UK’s broadcasting sector. The recent events at the channel raise serious concerns; significant work is required to rebuild trust at S4C and to bring a fresh start. The Secretary of State has therefore written to S4C encouraging its current leadership swiftly to agree a programme of work to address the issues it has faced.

[Baroness Wilcox of Newport (Lab)]

My Lords, we all want to see Sianel Pedwar Cymru succeed and to continue to make its vital contribution to Welsh culture and a vibrant creative economy, but recent events have raised serious concerns about governance, leadership and culture. Can the Minister be a bit more detailed about when the recruitment process for a new chair will begin? Can he tell noble Lords what conversations his department has had with Sianel Pedwar Cymru to ensure that the organisation stays on track while, inevitably, it has an interim chair and interim joint CEO for at least a short period?

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

The Secretary of State and the whole department are treating this issue with the utmost seriousness. The department has been in regular contact with S4C and will remain so. An interim appointment of a chairman will be announced in due course, following consultation with the board; that is consistent with the board’s standing orders. We will move swiftly to launch the process to appoint a new chairman of the channel. That will be a fair and open process run in accordance with the Governance Code on Public Appointments.

Music Education

Baroness Wilcox of Newport Excerpts

Wednesday 9th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wilcox of Newport (Lab)]

I am very pleased to follow the noble Lord, Lord German. When I was a young drama teacher up the road in Newport, he was a music teacher in Cardiff, very well known and very well respected by colleagues. I am also pleased to see the Minister restored to his place; we entered the House at the same time. We may be political opponents, but we are both good public servants.

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Fleet, for her comprehensive introduction and her work on this plan to

“ensure all pupils receive a high-quality music education, strengthen the creative pipeline, and help create the musicians and audiences of the future”—

all children and young people receiving a high-quality music education, all music educators working in partnership, and all children and young people with musical interests and talents having the opportunity to progress.

Many noble Lords know that I spent more than three decades teaching the performing arts. Indeed, Wales is stereotypically the land of song, and music underpinned so much of my work in other areas of creativity. I was very proud to work alongside many inspirational music teachers in my time—people such as Lisa Fitzgerald-Lombard, a graduate of the Royal Academy of Music. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord German, knows her father, Bob Childs, a renowned brass band conductor. Lisa and music teachers like her in Wales will now be working with our National Plan for Music Education, launched this summer by the Welsh Government.

Nerth gwlad, ei gwybodaeth—the strength of a nation is in its knowledge. All children and young people in Wales, regardless of background, will have the chance to learn to play a musical instrument that has previously been for those few whose parents and carers could afford the tuition or those who had a musical tradition in their family. The development of the National Music Service has now ended this inequality and will ensure that the musical skills of the next generation are nurtured in our schools in Wales.

However, today we are talking about the English plan, which builds on the Model Music Curriculum for years 1 to 9, published by the Government in March last year. Its four key areas are singing, listening, composing and performing. The Government described the curriculum as non-statutory guidance,

“designed to assist rather than to prescribe”

in designing music lessons—and here is the first obstacle, as noted by the noble Lord, Lord Black. In my decades of experience, whenever something is non-statutory there is a reluctance to engage with it, despite best efforts. So much is statutory in a curriculum that non-statutory gets crowded out. I respectfully suggest to the Minister that the sooner plans for music education are enshrined in law, the better.

In the early part of the debate, my noble friend Lord Stansgate also raised significant concerns in these areas, including about the exclusion of music from the core curriculum and the pressures that the English baccalaureate has brought on all creative subjects, including music.

Labour is ambitious for every single child and every precious teacher. We have a Children’s Recovery Plan, under which we intend to train up to 6,500 new teachers, including music teachers, and give them ongoing professional development. We should not settle, anywhere in the UK, for less than world-class standards of teaching.

A further barrier to this plan, as with so many of these plans, is inadequate staffing levels right across the public services. On the education workforce, noble Lords will be well aware of the crisis in teacher recruitment; many noble Lords have mentioned it. In the 2021-22 academic year, recruitment for secondary music trainees was just 72% of the DfE’s target—the largest yearly decrease of any subject. The NFER’s 2022 report predicts that, judging by current application trends, music will meet only about half of its target this year—I have 51% but others have said different figures. Without music educators there is no plan for music education, so I ask the Minister: what is the Government’s plan to stop this totally unsustainable workforce crisis?

However, in positive terms, I am particularly drawn to the statements in the plan about the importance of inclusion in a number of areas. It says that the Government

“will pilot a Music Progression Fund to support disadvantaged pupils with significant musical potential, enthusiasm and commitment.”

In my career—from Brixton to Brynmawr, to Newport to Pontypridd—I saw potential and was able to support that potential, enthusiasm and commitment.

I am going off script because I have suddenly remembered that I had a fantastic pupil called Adam. He used to call himself Billy Sausage; I do not know why but in every book, we could find that name. Adam Parsons was an incredibly gifted young man who won a place at Guildford School of Acting—3,000 applicants for 30 places. He was unable to take up the place through a lack of funding, because it was not grant funded and he lived in Pontypridd with his mum. They were unable to stump up the thousands of pounds. We tried everything: we wrote to Anthony Hopkins, Tom Jones and Shirley Bassey. We tried everything but we could not get Adam to get that place. He would be a West End star now if he had. As it is, he is making a good living—he was out in Europe, and he now does a Tom Jones tribute act—but that lack of funding meant that he was not able to fill that wonderful place he had won. However, I digress.

The report also says that

“all Music Hubs should develop … an inclusion strategy”.

I do not know enough about music hubs, but I picked up what the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, talked about. I have reservations; the money should be in schools. The report also says that all music educators should commit to

“removing barriers, including for children in low-income families”,

and that those teaching music should

“take action to support increasing access, opportunity, participation”.

These are admirable aims, but I am concerned about the follow-through aspect. I ask again of the Minister: how will the Government ensure that these important outcomes are sustained and monitored?

These are not just my concerns; they are shared by music professionals such as the Incorporated Society of Musicians, the professional body for musicians in the UK, which welcomes the national plan, particularly the commitment that music should be a key part of the school curriculum, but also calls for more funding for music in schools and hubs, stating that existing levels are

“almost certainly not sufficient in order to implement the Plan’s broad ambitions”.

It expresses concern, as I do, about the new oversight board, stating that the predecessor, set up under the 2011 plan, “fell into abeyance”. I reiterate that close monitoring and assessment by the Government are vital if this plan is to succeed.

In conclusion, the plan’s ambitions are summarised by this statement:

“This refreshed NPME, realised through dynamic partnerships across the country, will ensure all pupils receive a high-quality music education, strengthen the creative pipeline, and help create the musicians and audiences of the future.”


For the children of England and their artistic ambitions I sincerely hope that this is the case, but it will need strong funding and even stronger political will for it to work in practice.

Sport: Transgender Inclusion

Baroness Wilcox of Newport Excerpts

Tuesday 9th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

I will leave colleagues in the Ministry of Defence to answer about their guide, but the sports councils’ guidance does not contain this wording or offer any advice on language. It aims to helps sports consider how to be inclusive without erasing anybody.

[Baroness Wilcox of Newport (Lab)]

I am sure that the Minister would agree that we should do all we can to increase participation in sport, so does he share the aspiration of the five sports councils to see increased transgender participation in sport and support their message to create novel or modified versions of some sports to increase inclusion?

Telecommunications Infrastructure (Leasehold Property) Bill

Baroness Wilcox of Newport Excerpts

Report stage & Report stage (Hansard) & Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 29th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara [V]]

My Lords, this amendment, which I am pleased to move, is supported by the noble Lord, Lord Fox, and the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, whom I thank. It builds on a very good debate in Committee, which was mainly framed around the existing USO of 10 megabits per second, and the problems that this causes, in terms of how people respond to it in trying to make it feel better than it is, and the reality of living in a household with a 10 megabit per second supply where other users are taking up the bandwidth, making it feel very much slower. To sum up the discussion, the feeling around the House was that the target was the problem. It was a bit unambitious, not least because the experiences gained over the last few months during the pandemic have shown that the whole country needs a step change in broadband capacity, which would of course be signalled if the Government had accepted our amendments to the Digital Economy Act, which called for a USO of 1 gigabit.

However, we are all now roughly in the same place. All sides realise that we must aim for the very high-speed, gigabit-enabled capacity. The question which follows is: how best do we achieve this? This very narrowly constructed Bill does not make amendments of the type that we would like to run on this topic very easy to get in scope, so what we have before us is a classic approach, which I think the Minister when she responds will easily see through. But I hope that the amendment has sufficient in it to attract her interest about how we might make progress together in achieving the future that we both want.

This amendment requires the Secretary of State to commission a review of the impact of this Bill on the Electronic Communications Code within six months of Royal Assent. That review would assess the code’s suitability to support universal access to gigabit-capable broadband by 2025 and to make recommendations for future amendments to other legislation, if that were required, and to this code. We want to ensure that the Government act as if the USO was 1 gigabit enabled broadband across the whole country and work back from that target date of 2025 to draw up a comprehensive plan for the legislation that would be required to achieve that.

We understand that this is a tough call, but it goes with the grain of what we should be doing as a country. We have not specified in the amendment that in future the Government should regard access to fast and affordable broadband as a utility. We believe that, but we know that will not go well with them. We have not required the Government to introduce access rights for operators similar to those in place in respect of electricity, gas and other utilities, as we argued in Committee. They may be going that way anyway, because a consultation has just been opened on this issue. We have not listed a whole host of other issues that contribute to the future connectivity of the UK— wayleaves, mast rentals, use of existing street furniture and better planning of changes to allow better cabling in roads and pathways. We have not put that in, but it is part of the solution. We expect and trust the Government to recognise what is required and to get on with it.

Everyone, including the Minister, knows that more legislation is needed. This amendment might prompt the Government to think about that ahead of time and bring it forward at the appropriate moment. I hope that the Government accept this amendment in the spirit in which it is moved, and I look forward to hearing the noble Baroness respond. I beg to move.

[Baroness Wilcox of Newport (Lab) [V]]

This amendment would serve a necessary purpose: the delivery of 1 gigabit per second broadband to every home by 2025. It is an ambition stated by the current Prime Minister, but what is the hesitation? The lack of bold leadership and ambition to get this done is of concern. Amendment 7 builds on an amendment tabled by Liberal Democrat colleagues in Committee but is significantly wider in its scope.

A review of the impact of the Act would require consideration of the suitability of other parts of the Electronic Communications Code in facilitating the Government’s aim of universal access to high-speed broadband. It is clear from some of the stories and examples raised during this Bill’s passage that for a variety of reasons there are significant obstacles to meeting the Government’s target. As such, I hope the Minister will recognise that Amendment 7 is designed to be helpful and to bring us closer to the destination that we all agree on.

The country has a mountain to climb after the serious damage sustained to the economy during and after this health pandemic. Millions of lives will be affected by the implications of unemployment and a contracting public sector. The UK, ill prepared for the onset of the virus and constantly playing catch-up during it, has to try to regain momentum in delivering a fair and balanced economy to benefit the majority of its citizens. The recovery programme that must be implemented after the pandemic will be utterly dependent on how we connect ourselves and the wider world. As it is expected that working from home will continue for some and develop and reproduce, we need good and reliable internet speeds across the country to support this. The universality of the service, so that it is available to all irrespective of location, is also an important point, raised previously by my noble friend Lord Adonis.

The mix of cybersecurity-focused big business, a critical mass of small enterprises and GCHQ-recognised academic excellence, promoted by the Welsh Government’s strategy, is presently located in my home city of Newport.

There must be an evaluation of the impact, over at least a six-month period, to aid the recovery of the economy after Covid, and residents of houses in multiple occupation should not be treated less favourably in any aspect that inhibits the rollout of this vital public service. While steps to improve rollout of new infra- structure to multiple-occupancy dwellings is welcome, I ask the Minister what plans the Government have to deal with issues in rural areas. I therefore speak in favour of the amendment.

[Lord Clement-Jones]

My Lords, the purpose of the amendment is extremely clear and should be welcomed by the Government. It is to ensure that the code is fit for the purpose of delivering the Government’s own manifesto commitment—and that personally expressed by the Prime Minister—of 1 gigabit per second-capable broadband to every home by 2025.

However, in the Minister’s letter to me about comparative rights of entry for different utilities—I thank her for it—she describes it as the Government’s ambition to deliver gigabit-capable broadband to every home and business “as soon as possible”; that is my emphasis. All of us, whether at Second Reading or in Committee, have described the importance of delivering what we must now call ultrafast broadband by any appropriate technology by 2025, particularly in the light of the demonstration through the Covid-19 lockdown of our increasing dependence for remote working, education and many other aspects of life on good broad- band connectivity, as the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, described.

It is clear that the Electronic Communications Code needs regular review to ensure that this vital objective is met and that operators have all the rights of entry they need. It is all the more important given that, as all of us know, previous pledges and commitments have not been met—and, this year, we can hardly celebrate the arrival of a universal service obligation of a miserable 10 megabits per second.

I am glad that we have started a genuine debate around whether we can describe broadband as a utility and what the appropriate rights of entry are. The amendment is by no means prescriptive on the point, but it should definitely be a matter of consideration on review, particularly given that, unlike with electricity, gas and so on, the rights of broadband operators are only ever temporary in the code at the moment. The amendment would be an extremely valuable addition to the Bill.

Telecommunications Infrastructure (Leasehold Property) Bill

Baroness Wilcox of Newport Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 2nd June 2020 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Henig) (Lab)]

The noble Lord, Lord Bhatia, cannot be heard, so we pass on to the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox of Newport. We will come back to the noble Lord after that. Oh, she also cannot be heard. The noble Lord, Lord Duncan of Springbank, will not speak in the debate so we should go on to the noble Lord, Lord Liddle—

[Baroness Wilcox of Newport (Lab)]

I beg your pardon —I was trying to unmute myself. It was not working just then but it is now. It was a little technical hitch.

My Lords, no one can fail to recognise the importance of faster broadband, and it will be a vital area of review after this health crisis has passed. A fast, reliable signal is important for young people who need to study and do their schoolwork at home, for our higher education students who need to access online courses, and indeed for people, including politicians, now working at home in these extraordinary circumstances.

One thing is certain: when this pandemic diminishes—let us hope that it will be sooner rather than later and that, with the easing of lockdown, a second wave will not engulf the country—it will be impossible to overstate the importance of broadband access. Indeed, when this Bill was first envisaged and consultations took place with the telecommunications industry, no one could have dreamed how the country, including this Chamber, would be transformed into a home-working economy. The speed of the transformation has been incredible and, although spontaneity is absent from your Lordships’ House during questioning and debate, there must surely be good reasons for the House authorities and the usual channels to look at lessons learned from this virtual Parliament and to explore ways in which we can utilise this technology more readily in the future.

Covid-19: Museums, Galleries and Historic Buildings

Baroness Wilcox of Newport Excerpts

Thursday 21st May 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wilcox of Newport (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome the package of measures amounting to an extra £18 million announced in April by the noble Lord, Lord Elis-Thomas, a Deputy Minister in the Welsh Parliament. However, I fear that this is only a fraction of what will be required to support the cultural sector in Wales.

This virus is having a devastating effect. Most organisations have lost the majority of their income overnight. Many venues have worked hard to reduce their reliance on public funding, but those which generate most of their income themselves now face real difficulty. Of course, councils across the UK are the largest investors in cultural activity and venues make a significant contribution to council budgets through earned income.

Without a clear direction for lifting the lockdown, it is very hard for venues to prepare. The prospect of reopening and having to social distance is difficult to imagine. There is also concern about the public’s attitude and appetite to return to visiting such spaces. Theatres, art centres and museums are not just entertainment venues or places to visit; they are central to communities. They give people a sense of place and they must be protected.

Charitable and Voluntary Sector

Baroness Wilcox of Newport Excerpts

Thursday 30th April 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wilcox of Newport (Lab)]

My Lords, on 27 March the Welsh Government announced an initial fund of £24 million to support Wales’s voluntary sector in response to the pandemic. The fund will support three distinct areas of activity: helping charities and third sector organisations financially through the crisis by providing direct financial support; helping more people volunteer; and helping volunteering services by supporting third sector organisations as well as strengthening essential third sector infrastructure, including the Volunteering Wales platform.

The primary issue for charities, however, is survival. After 10 years of austerity, they had already been cut to the very bone before this situation hit. Sickness levels of staff in charities have gone up, while organisations have seen an increased need for services, and calls for mediation and safeguarding are rising exponentially. Charities are also having to spend vast sums on PPE and sanitation products.

The charity Llamau works with young homeless people in Wales, and its chief executive, Frances Beecher, recently told me that her staff, who are working with vulnerable and already traumatised young homeless people struggling with lockdown, need all the expertise, resources and help to support them. The other big issue she raised was the lack of fundraising opportunities to bridge the gap between the income that charities receive and the cost of delivering services. It has been decimated: Llamau will lose over £600,000 this year.

Charities started as people were falling through the net of statutory support. The safety nets are now mainly with charities; it is where the knowledge and expertise are left. Many charities, especially regional and service delivery ones, will go to the wall. The fight to end youth homelessness or to combat domestic abuse will be stalled; the human cost will be huge. However, the financial costs will also be huge for statutory services, the criminal justice system and, indeed, mental health services. More support must be leveraged into the charity sector to prevent it being decimated. The Welsh Government have implemented measures, but they too need more funding. Can the Minister ensure that the UK Government also support charities and the voluntary sector with extra funding during these extraordinary times in which we live?

BBC and Public Service Broadcasting

Baroness Wilcox of Newport Excerpts

Thursday 5th March 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wilcox of Newport (Lab)]

My Lords, I also thank my noble friend Lord Young for bringing this timely debate to the Chamber today. For almost two decades I taught media studies and the media industries, at GCSE and Advanced Level. At the core of every syllabus, at every level, was a deep analysis and evaluation of the British Broadcasting Corporation.

Media studies grew out of literary criticism and early cultural studies; indeed, it is concerned with the popular. That is one of its strengths. It is firmly grounded in society: in the communication, cultural understandings, concerns and sometimes even manipulation of the mass of ordinary people. Long before anyone else, media studies questioned the once utopian view of the internet, examining race and gender representation and analysing the economic and political power of media moguls.

I tried to demonstrate to my pupils the essence of the BBC and why it is still so important to us in our multichannel, online media culture. It is a British cultural institution, held in highest regard across the world, in fierce competition with other broadcasters.

I will mention the programme “Blue Planet II”, an eight-part documentary about our oceans, which took four years to produce but ultimately profoundly changed the world’s understanding of two-thirds of our planet’s ecosystem. Commercial and satellite operators could only dream of such influence and reach. Moreover, I am sure that the unconfirmed proposal that the Six Nations is to go to paywall TV would be an unmitigated disaster for the sport.

Some of the BBC’s key content, such as documentaries, children’s programming and extensive news coverage, would not be prioritised in the commercial demands of the free market. Advertising revenues are shrinking, and the broadcast marketplace is expanding. The BBC under commercialisation would run the risk of being squeezed both financially and in terms of the high standards of its production quality. One example is BBC Bitesize, the educational website. It is outstanding, and there is no way that content such as this could be funded without the licence fee.

According to reports, the BBC is to be massively pruned back, and the licence fee scrapped and replaced with a subscription service. Senior government sources insist that they were “not bluffing” about changing the way the corporation is funded: in her excellent speech today, the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, called their bluff. Plans being drawn up include forcing the sale of the majority of 61 radio stations, reducing the number of television channels and scaling back the BBC website and the very important World Service. It must be protected. The BBC offers more services, across more platforms, with greater longevity and choice for viewers and users, at a lower cost than ever before. I would often ask my students to compare the cost of the licence fee with subscription services, and they were astounded that it was less than half the price.

The BBC is not perfect: in my political roles, I have been dragged around the houses by many a political journalist, from both television and radio—mainly in Wales, of course. But I defend their right to do so in our open democracy. I have yet to make it on to “Newsnight” or be interviewed by Andrew Neil, as many noble Lords have, but unlike some elected politicians, I certainly would not turn down Andrew Neil’s request if that opportunity arose in the future.

Well over 90% of the population consumes BBC programming and content every week. Despite its faults, the BBC remains the gold standard in multiplatform broadcasting. My noble friend Lady Morgan of Ely, in her role as the Welsh Government’s Minister for International Relations, has put a strong focus on the creative industries, and we have huge productions going on in BBC Wales—“Doctor Who” and “Sherlock”, to name but two. Despite its faults, the BBC remains the gold standard. It is a basic universal service, and if the Government make it a subscription service, then health and education could be next.