Spending Review 2025

Baroness Keeley Excerpts

Thursday 12th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Keeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I would like to ask about continued funding by DfE for the music and dance scheme bursaries for talented young musicians and for the outreach work of the national centres for advanced training in dance. It is right that the Government fund schemes such as these, which ensure that dance training is not just for elites and that children from any background can access a world-leading vocational music or dance education. Can my noble friend the Minister convey to the Chancellor and the Secretary of State for Education the need to protect and, when possible, to grow the funding of our leading pathway into music and dance careers for young people from deprived backgrounds?

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

I will do exactly as my noble friend asks and pass that on. The important announcements yesterday that she mentions are incredibly welcome. The Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport and the Chancellor also announced the dormant assets initiative to get more creative industries into more schools, so that the huge advantages and benefits of that kind of creative industry are available no longer only to privileged children but to far more children in state schools.