Arts and Creative Industries Strategy

Baroness Crawley Excerpts

Thursday 8th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Crawley (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a delight to follow my noble friend and her very prescient questions to the Minister. I congratulate my noble friend Lord Chandos on securing this crucial debate, and on his extremely strong opening, especially his reference to the battle for the survival of Ukraine and the survival of its cultural soul. I will be brief, as we all want to hear the Minister and I am very aware that I am surrounded by people who know a lot more about the arts than I do.

Many of us witnessed sparkly fairies roaming the Committee Corridor recently. It was not a new special committee; it was members of English National Opera dressed up to lobby parliamentarians on the Arts Council’s pre-Christmas surprise for it: move out or no more money. Even if you think that London gets far more than its fair share of the national arts budget, what a way to consult, as my noble friend Lady Andrews said. ENO reaches so many of the targets set for it, such as creating a far more diverse audience, cheaper and free tickets, and attracting a younger following, which is so important for the future of the arts. None of it seemed to be enough to convince Arts Council England in the case of ENO.

As a patron of a very small, community-based youth orchestra in London, Musico Musica, I see first-hand how important it is for young musicians and their skills development to have access to the outreach work of major cultural institutions, such as ENO, whether those institutions are in London, Bristol, Manchester or Cardiff. I am not convinced that a Government so keen on centres of excellence within the NHS see that policy transferred to the arts. Perhaps the Minister will convince me otherwise.

Fair access across the country to creative arts has been Labour policy since for ever, as my noble friend Lady Whitaker said, long before the current tendency to put together “levelling” and “up” so frequently. I was one of several chairs of regional cultural consortiums in the early noughties, under the last Labour Government, whose aim was to promote and attract inward investment into the regions for the arts. Labour has this week reaffirmed its commitments to the nations and the regions as a future Government.

The performing arts sector alone, such as theatres, concerts, live music, creative arts and writers, contributed more than £8 billion in gross value added to the UK economy in 2021, according to the ONS. These sectors supported more than 100,000 jobs in 2021. These are major growth providers. But if we take the music industry in 2021, according to UK Music, an umbrella organisation, it contributed £4 billion to the economy in gross value added terms, down 31% on the £5.8 billion it contributed in 2019, pre-pandemic. UK Music assesses that Brexit-related barriers, alongside a lack of international touring, has restricted export recovery after the pandemic.

So we come to the present difficulties faced by all touring British artists, who, as a result of Brexit, can no longer work and tour completely freely across the European Union. The lack of specific provisions in the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement means that UK performers have to comply with regulations in each and every one of the 27 EU member states, often with different sanctions within each of those regulations. Transport of equipment for tours has to comply with customs regulations set out in the TCA. As a result of leaving the customs union and the single market, UK touring artists face administrative hurdles and costs that they should not be facing. Although the guidance from the Government this summer on dual registration for specialist events hauliers was welcome, it does not answer the problems of artists using medium-sized hauliers or of orchestras with their own purpose-built vehicles. What a tangled web we weave when first we exit from the EU, as Sir Walter Scott might or might not have said. An EU-wide waiver from the TCA for creative industries has been called for, and the UK-EU Parliamentary Partnership Assembly, of which I am a member, has also raised the issue of cultural exemptions for touring artists.

We are in a serious pickle and our wonderful musicians and performers are paying the price. What further plans do the Government have to assist touring artists? Their creativity, their freedom and their earning capacity are being hobbled and it is not good enough for a country with a cultural heritage such as ours. The creative industries are a major driver of our economic growth and economic future. The Government’s new strategy for the arts has been delayed far too long, as many speakers have said. When will we see it?