Oral Answers to Questions

Jo Stevens Excerpts

Thursday 5th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Oliver Dowden]

I share my hon. Friend’s desire for that to happen, and I know what a champion of Wicksteed Park he is. As he will know, the park received almost £250,000 from the heritage emergency fund in June and almost £250,000 from the culture recovery fund in October; that was on top of other awards totalling £2.7 million over the past couple of years.

[Jo Stevens (Cardiff Central) (Lab)]

Does the Secretary of State have a plan for live music and other live performances reopening fully—stage 5 of the route map after 2 December? Will he give an indicative date to allow businesses to plan ahead and take the decisions they need to in order to allow our world-class creative professionals to get back to what they do best?

[Oliver Dowden]

The hon. Lady raises a very important point. There are three main elements to it. First, I very much hope that socially distanced performances will be able to return once we are through this lockdown period. Secondly, we are providing support throughout the covid crisis through the culture recovery fund, and hundreds of millions of pounds have gone to that sector. Thirdly, I very much want to give that date for return. At the moment, I hope that the hon. Lady will appreciate that it is very difficult to give an accurate date, given the wider context. I want to be able to do that as soon as we can.

[Jo Stevens]

The Government knew on 21 September—nearly seven weeks ago—that a national lockdown was necessary to slow the spread of the virus, so why did the Secretary of State encourage cinemas, theatres, venues and other organisations to spend large sums of money on preparing, resourcing and marketing loss-making, reduced capacity productions, knowing that almost all of them would have to close for an extended period of time?

[Oliver Dowden]

As the hon. Lady will know, we sought to have a regionally based approach, and that was working. Ultimately, though, we could not sustain it, so we had to have this period of lockdown. I am hopeful and confident that once that period of lockdown ends, those productions will be able to continue. I note that we have ensured that rehearsals for them can continue behind closed doors during this lockdown period, which was not the case previously.