Creative Industries

Chris Law Excerpts

Thursday 7th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Chris Law (Dundee West) (SNP)]

Frankly, in any discussion of the creative industries, it is essential to begin by reminding ourselves of the deep complexity and real significance of the activities that this topic covers. Yes, the creative industries include large enterprises in areas such as film-making, computer games, fashion and publishing, and they have many thousands of employees and trade globally. And yes, the creative industries involve countless numbers of individuals and groups who are active in fields such as art, music, dance, poetry and many other things. In addition, however, there are those who support the creative industries through their contribution as teachers, curators of galleries, event organisers and other support roles. All of that adds up to the colourful, diverse and beautiful tapestry that makes our lives so enriched. I am sure that everyone in the House is wholly thankful for the wonderful contribution that those people make to our lives.

It has been estimated that the creative industries employ 1.9 million people in the UK as a whole, and 174,000 of those are in Scotland. Believe it or not, the creative industries are worth more than £9 million pounds an hour to the UK economy and this is the fastest growing sector in the UK. Yet it is not sufficient for us as legislators and policy makers to view the creative industries purely in economic terms. The key message is that the health and vitality of the creative industries should be an issue that is of crucial significance to this House.

Where better, of course, to reflect upon this than in my own constituency of Dundee—quelle surprise!—which has a long and distinguished history in leading the creative industries. Within the University of Dundee, for example, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, first established in the 19th century, is now one of the leading art schools in the UK. This creative hub is now the centre of a thriving network of studios, artists, designers and architects and has been instrumental in supporting the development of the Dundee Contemporary Arts centre, which opened at the end of the last millennium.

As part of the current £1 billion regeneration of our waterfront, Dundee was chosen, out of all other cities in the UK, to build the new Victoria and Albert design museum, which will be completed in two years’ time. I would welcome all Members visiting us. The Dundee repertory theatre is home to both Scotland’s only full-time company of actors and the Scottish dance theatre. Dundee is also well known as the home of many iconic and best-selling children’s comics, such as The Beano, The Dandy, the Judy and the Jackie, which is now a west end musical. I recommend all Members to see it at their earliest opportunity. If they visit Dundee today, they will find an iconic trail of 55 sculptures of one of our famous comic characters—Oor Wullie. After all, he is Oor Wullie, Your Wullie and A’body’s Wullie!

In 2014, Dundee was the first UK city to win the UNESCO City of Design award.

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

My hon. Friend has name-checked a number of important characters and creations emanating from Dundee, including Oor Wullie, but I think he forgot to mention The Broons.

[Chris Law]

I must apologise to the House. My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Ma and Pa Broon would be disgusted with me for forgetting to mention them. “The Broons Annual” is a fantastic Christmas present.

Believe it or not, in addition to all that, there is more. With the assistance of investment and facilities at Abertay University, Dundee’s creative tradition has found a new outlet. The city is now an internationally renowned centre for video game development, and the birthplace of some of the biggest names in game history. Abertay offered the first computer games degree in the world, in 1997. That bold move was subsequently copied by higher education institutions around the world, and helped to cement Dundee’s reputation as a centre of excellence for video games.

Let me give a few examples. In the 1990s, the Dundee company DMA Design created the game “Lemmings”, which sold over 50 million copies on multiple formats. It also developed “Grand Theft Auto”, which today is the biggest selling game in the world. I urge you to get your hands on a copy as soon as possible, Mr Deputy Speaker. Most recently, Chris Van Der Kuyl’s 4J Studios developed the global gaming sensation “Minecraft”. There are now more than 100 video games companies based in Dundee, and I am pleased to say that the number is growing rapidly.

As we heard earlier from the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington (Chris White)—he and I co-chair the all-party parliamentary group on video games—the video games industry is vital to the UK economy. As a whole, games companies generate high-quality, high-productivity jobs. The UK boasts the highest number of mobile games jobs in the EU, with 5,000 full-time employees, and 64% of all registered games companies in the UK have been incorporated in the last five years alone.

These are just some of the examples of industries and businesses that give Dundee its creative pulse, and are reflected in many other areas of Scotland and the rest of the UK. So how do we support these activities that are so important both to our individual wellbeing and to economic prosperity? Artists, designers, musicians and games programmers are not merely creative individuals; they also need to be entrepreneurs. Like other small businesses and start-ups, they need advice, information, and access to funding and financial support.

In Scotland, we have a more culturally ambitious Government than ever before. Set up by the Scottish Government, Creative Scotland promotes enjoyment of the arts, and helps to identify and develop talent. It also chairs Scotland’s Creative Industries Partnership, in which public agencies work together to share intelligence and research on the creative industries, co-ordinate opportunities, and clarify and signpost agency support. However, only some aspects of creative industries are devolved to Scotland.

In January this year, the Scottish Affairs Committee, on which I have the privilege to serve along with two of my colleagues who are present—very fine colleagues indeed—published a report on the creative industries in Scotland. It identified three key issues: tax incentives, broadcasting, and links with the EU.

A number of tax reliefs are available to the creative industries. There are film, animation, television, video games and theatre reliefs. They allow qualifying companies to claim a deduction when calculating their taxable profits, and they are very valuable to the creative industries as a whole. However, we found that they had been of limited use to the creative industries in Scotland, partly owing to the smaller scale of most creative enterprises in Scotland and partly because tax reliefs do not incentivise the locating of production outside existing industry hubs, which are predominantly London-based.

Our report made a number of specific recommendations for enhancing the responsiveness of tax relief regulations to the specific needs of the creative industries in Scotland. I urge the Minister, and his colleagues in the Treasury, to treat this as a matter of the utmost priority, and to consider the possibility that the most effective means of resolving these issues would be to devolve responsibility for tax reliefs for creative industries to the Scottish Government.

Public service broadcasting, in the form of the activities of the BBC, represents a crucial driver of the creative industries in Scotland, as well as representing a central pillar of our cultural life. There is widespread dissatisfaction with the output of BBC Scotland. There is also a striking economic imbalance, with licence-fee income of over £320 million generated in Scotland, but a BBC Scotland budget of less than £200 million.

The BBC has been slow to respond to these issues and has been less than transparent in its decision-making process around them. Within the past few days, a report from the inquiry “A Future for Public Service Television”, chaired by Lord David Puttnam, has been published. It recommends that the only effective solution to the growing mismatch between the needs and aspirations of the Scottish people in respect of public service broadcasting and their increasing frustration with the BBC is to devolve an appropriate proportion of the overall BBC budget to Scotland, and allow BBC Scotland to commission programmes and design schedules as it sees fit. While acknowledging the independence of the BBC from Government, I urge the Minister to express clear and unequivocal support for this proposal, which has the potential to allow Scotland to develop as a hub for high-quality television and film output and contribute to an expansion of employment in this field. I share Lord Puttnam’s view that little in the BBC reflects

“the current constitutional settlement with Scotland.”

The recent Scottish Affairs Committee report devoted little attention to the EU dimension of creative industries because, other than in areas of intellectual property, the individuals and organisations that we consulted were largely satisfied with the opportunities and benefits to the creative industries that flowed from EU membership. However, all this has changed due to the fear and uncertainty created by this Government in their misguided EU referendum. This is a troubling situation. Many aspects of the creative industries in Scotland are embedded in our broader cultural European tradition, which requires ongoing collaboration with colleagues in other countries. At the very least, this situation requires that the creative industries should have full and active representation in future negotiations with the EU, and that the particular needs of the creative industries in Scotland should be specifically championed through the presence of members of the Scottish Government.

Having talked briefly about the issues and challenges facing the creative industries in Scotland, I would like to sum up by making one final point. Scotland is undoubtedly an outward-looking, internationalist and progressive society—a “mongrel nation” where all Jock Tamson’s bairns reside—yet it is also distinctive and different, and demands to be heard. However, cultural life, and the funding decisions that go with it, are still dominated by London, stifling Scotland’s creative industries as a result. This is not a zero-sum game, however. Successful broadcasting, film-making, computer games and festivals in Scotland reach out to an international market, and do not diminish the significance of London and Manchester as global centres of creative endeavour. In this, we can all be winners.