Creative Sector

Lord Bassam of Brighton Excerpts

Thursday 4th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, on conducting this debate; it is much needed in the House. I look forward to the Minister’s opening foray into debate on the cultural sector and to hearing from the noble Lord, Lord Spencer of Alresford. I do not think it is the Alresford that is next to Great Bentley, where I come from, but I look forward to the speech nevertheless.

The DCMS defines creative industries as:

“those industries which have their origin in individual creativity, skill and talent and which have a potential for wealth and job creation through the generation and exploitation of intellectual property”.


Never has there been a time when those things are more needed, as we move out of the Covid pandemic and into a time when our economy will hopefully become broader and richer as we open it up.

As the Lords Library briefing note makes clear, the creative sector encompasses a wide variety of industry sub-sectors, ranging from film and television to IT software and computer services. These are powerful drivers in the modern UK economy, contributing, as we heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, an estimated £155.9 billion and 2.1 million jobs to the economy in 2019. Put into context, this contribution to the economy is greater than the automotive, aerospace, life sciences and oil and gas industries combined.

Kingston University, an internationally renowned centre for art and design, says that evidence exists that creative skills drive innovation and growth in all parts of the economy. I ask the Minister: why did Kingston University find that there is a “growing disconnect” between the globally recognised pre-eminence of our cultural sector and the education policies that sustain that success? As Kingston suggests, there is a risk that current policies will severely disrupt the talent pipeline that fuels that pre-eminence.

Moreover, given the impact of Covid on the economy, we have a national need to encourage the creative industries to help strengthen the recovery. As the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, observed, Oxford Economics reported that the sector could recover faster than the UK economy as a whole. Its recent State of the Nation report projects that the sector could, as has been said, grow by 26% by 2025, contributing £132.1 billion in GVA and creating some 300,000 jobs. I ask the Minister, with his recent DfE experience, why are the Government disinvesting from the cultural industries? This disinvestment comes a time when competitor economies such as China and Singapore are placing creative education at the heart of their plans for growth.

The Prime Minister wants to see a high wage economy—I think we all do. Higher-level occupations account for 83% of the creative industries, compared to 42% across the workforce generally. Higher education is strongly correlated with the creative sector. This work generates job satisfaction and, of course, higher pay. But over the period 2010 to 2020, there was a 37% decline in arts GCSE and a 30% decline in A-level entries. The English Baccalaureate does not include a single creative subject. Why? In the private education system, of course, creative education continues to thrive, meaning that the creative sector will, a bit like cricket, become the preserve of elite education and lack the diversity of backgrounds that the current Secretary of State seems to so crave. In higher education, the OfS confirms that there has been a 50% reduction in funding available for creative courses at universities, with a redirecting of these funds to STEM subjects and others deemed strategically important. It should not, in my view, be a case of either/or, but of both. Does the Minister agree with that view?

To grow the cultural industries, we need to invest; to invest, we need to plan; and to plan, we need ideas and imagination—something the Government lack. Why else would they look to support projects that look back rather than forwards? The creative industries are the future. I hope that this afternoon, the Minister can persuade the House that his Government understand that and set out a coherent arts strategy for the next decade and not just the next spending round.