Supporting the Creative Economy

Debate between Paul Farrelly and Lord Vaizey of Didcot

Thursday 13th February 2014 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Mr Edward Vaizey)]

I am pleased to have the chance to reply to this stimulating debate. It has been extremely wide-ranging, covering copyright, education, Scottish independence and the future of HS2—all four of which I am not formally responsible for, but I will try to address the points that were raised.

I particularly enjoyed the speech of the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson). It included extensive plugs for her son—I would have done the same thing—and his future career in the video games industry. Short of reading his CV into the record, I do not think she could have done more to bring the industry’s attention to the budding talents of Hodgson Junior, as I assume he is called.

The hon. Lady was followed by my hon. Friend the Member for Selby and Ainsty (Nigel Adams)—[Interruption.] He is over here now—he is the acting parliamentary private secretary; he was promoted in the middle of this debate. He refrained from mentioning the success and talents of his son, Ben Adams, in the soon-to-be-world-famous British band Summer City. I regretted that he did not mention it, because then we could have had a contest to decide in the course of this debate whether the offspring of Labour MPs are more creative than the offspring of Conservative MPs. I was particularly pleased to open a copy of my local newspaper to find that the son of my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell)—Conservative—has won the first scholarship from Sky Arts and been picked out by Quincy Jones as one of the most talented drummers he had ever seen. Let it not be said that MPs from all parties are not making their own direct contributions to the success of the creative industries.

It is a good thing that all of us who have spoken in this debate can point to the success of the creative industries. In the spirit of ecumenicalism that often surrounds such debates, I point out that the creative industries were identified by the former Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Lord Smith of Finsbury, who has managed to make an impact on other areas of public policy since then. That was the process by which the UK’s creative industries were put on the map. The process of identifying a rather disparate sector as a coherent whole has been followed by many other countries. Because of it, we can identify the success of the creative industries: more than 1.5 million jobs, over 5% of UK jobs; growth of 8.6% since 2011; a contribution of £70 billion to the UK economy.

This Government have built on the achievements of previous Governments in supporting the creative industries. I was particularly pleased that we have built on the success of the film tax credit, which now brings in roughly £1 billion annually of inward investment in the UK, with the introduction of a television tax credit for high-end drama and a tax credit for animation, which was responsible, incidentally, for more than £200 million in inward investment in its first year. To answer the first question posed, we are expecting an announcement shortly from the European Commission on the video games tax credit. I have been in discussions with the Commission for a time. It has a job to do, and the Government, particularly the Conservatives, recognise the importance of policing state aid and unfair and anti-competitive Government subsidies to industries. It is important that the Commission is convinced that a tax credit is the right thing to do, but we have made great progress and we expect an announcement shortly.

As well as the tax credit support—I was delighted when the Chancellor extended the film tax credit; it is particularly important to support the visual effects industry, in which the UK is among the leaders in the sector—there are other forms of support. I hear what the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) asked about whether the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills has designated the creative industries as a priority sector. We are certainly the first Government to set up a sector council for the creative industries; we now have a Creative Industries Council, which is co-chaired by the Secretaries of State for Business, Innovation and Skills and for Culture, Media and Sport alongside Nicola Mendelsohn, the chief executive of Facebook in Europe.

Alongside that council, which considers a range of issues including access to finance, skills and exports, we have set up Creative England, which is designed to support the creative industries outside London. We take that support seriously. To respond to what my hon. Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins) said, it has received significant support from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills in terms of money from the regional growth fund.

There is also Tech City, which acts as a beacon to show this country’s support for the technology industry. It is important to recognise that Joanna Shields, the chairman of Tech City, has made it an imperative to reach out to all the other clusters across the UK, to bring them together as a coherent whole and to ensure that other parts of the UK also benefit from that extraordinary growth. I have written to the chairmen and chief executives of local enterprise partnerships—many of them already recognise this—to remind them of the importance of the creative industries when setting out their strategies. Some of the city deals, particularly the one in Brighton, have put the creative industries centre stage. With Tim Davie from BBC Worldwide, I co-chair UK Trade & Investment’s sector advisory group, which works to help the export of our successful creative industries and to attract inward investment. There is a hugely successful story to tell about Government support for the creative industries and about the ongoing activity to support the industries.

It is also important to stress that we should include the Arts Council in the mix. The hon. Member for Bishop Auckland talked earlier about the need to support people in employment. The Arts Council has set up a £15 million fund to fund apprenticeships in the creative industries, in addition to the £37 million creative people and places fund to help fund the arts in areas where they have previously been under-represented. The agenda is wide, but there is a huge range of activity to support that agenda.

I pay tribute to the fantastic Chairman of the Select Committee. He rules the Committee with an iron fist and directs it towards all the pertinent issues of the day. He has, as usual, produced a perspicacious and incisive report that focuses in particular on concerns about the changes to the copyright regime. As the Minister with responsibility for the creative industries, I understand the concern of many in the creative industries about copyright enforcement. I have tried to bring together the different sides of the debate—the rights holders, the internet service providers and the search engines. We take a wide range of action. Let us not forget that existing law has been used effectively by rights holders to seek and obtain injunctions against some of the biggest sites that exist for the sole purpose of distributing infringing material. We also work with City of London police and credit card companies to take down payment sites, and we have one of the most advanced systems, if not the most advanced system, working with the advertising industry to ensure that advertising is not present on many of those websites.

We take a wide range of action, but my response to the Select Committee, which seems to have got a resounding B+ from hon. Members here today—[Interruption.] I might be being optimistic. We want Google to do more, and we will continue to press it to do so.

[Paul Farrelly]

It is a Select Committee, so the B+ is cross-party.

[Mr Vaizey]

I am grateful for that clarification. My excellent officials have provided me with answers to most of the questions that have been posed in this debate. I feel like I should recreate the famous Bob Dylan video when I read them out, but I will address some of the excellent points that have been raised.

Copyright reform began with the Hargreaves review, which has been extensively consulted upon. Many views have been taken into account, and it is important to get the balance right. The hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) knows that I am going to say that we believe that the private copying exception is the narrowest exception in Europe, so we do not think a levy is appropriate. I shall write to her as she invited me to, setting out in great detail why I think that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Vaizey]

I hesitate to commit my Secretary of State or the Government to such a report, but given today’s important speech by the Chancellor about the future of currency in Scotland and the Prime Minister’s important speech about Scottish independence just under a week ago, I am sure that an opportunity will present itself between now and the vote for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to highlight the effect that independence could have on the creative industries.

[Paul Farrelly]

rose—

[Mr Vaizey]

I now give way to the hon. Gentleman not from Stoke.

[Paul Farrelly]

It is almost a Stoke point. Before the Minister concludes, I want to take him back to the beginning and point out an anomaly that was discovered in the definitions and statistics—although I am not going to argue for the inclusion of ceramics in the statistics, which is a Stoke argument. When examining the statistics, we found that, of the £36 billion, £20 billion was attributed to the so-called fashion industry, so I asked the Chairman of the Committee why we were discussing music and film, but not clothes. It seems that the £20 billion attributed to the fashion industries includes pretty much everything that goes by the name of clothing on the high street, so the Minister may want to consider the statistics and how they are gathered and measured.

[Mr Vaizey]

I do not know why the Chairman of the Select Committee would not want to talk about fashion. I would have thought that it was his top subject. As my hon. Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe said, London fashion week begins tomorrow, and I know for a fact that the British Fashion Council would welcome the Chairman of the Committee at any of its events over the next five days.

Arts and Creative Industries

Debate between Paul Farrelly and Lord Vaizey of Didcot

Wednesday 19th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Mr Edward Vaizey)]

I begin by congratulating the hon. Member for South Shields (Mrs Lewell-Buck) on her excellent maiden speech. She is not in her place and is no doubt already working for the people of South Shields elsewhere in the building. I thought she talked about—I will check the record—a new library opening in her constituency. That was music to my ears, because what we have today is a slightly surreal situation: because Opposition Members are determined to attack the Government, they end their speeches by saying that everything is doom and gloom, yet the majority of their speeches were taken up with extolling the cultural vitality of the areas that they represent.

As one would expect, I heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth (Sarah Newton) about the vibrancy of films, film-making and museums and galleries in Cornwall, and from my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris) about his chairmanship of the Northampton Theatres Trust, with 700 performances and audiences of 250,000. We heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins) about the Folkestone triennial and the huge work that the great philanthropist Roger de Haan is doing there, and from my hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes), a former local government cabinet member for leisure, about the thriving scene in Hampshire.

We heard, too, from the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt), who has taken a tour as a judge for the ArtFund to see the great museums all over the country, but he failed to mention the CBE that has recently been awarded to Emma Bridgewater, who runs the fantastic Bridgewater Pottery in his constituency. We heard from the former Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw), about the municipal museums and theatres in his constituency, and from my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Eric Ollerenshaw) about the vibrancy in his area. We heard from the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds) about how successful Manchester is, and I look forward to visiting Manchester next month for the Manchester international festival.

We heard, of course, from two Liverpool Members—the hon. Members for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram) and for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger)—about the success of culture in that city. The hon. Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham) spoke about the Riverside festival and made reference to the success of Gateshead. And so it goes on, from Swansea West and from Strangford, where we heard about the success of both television and film investment in Northern Ireland, and specifically about Derry or Londonderry. [Interruption.] Opposition Members try to shout me down, but the virtues and vibrancy of culture throughout this great nation will not be silenced.

I could talk about Margate, Wakefield, Houghton hall in Norfolk, the Yorkshire sculpture park and the Zurbaran painting saved by a great act of philanthropy by Jonathan Ruffer. The fact is that the arts are thriving in this country. That is because of the success of our policies. If we talk about support in the regions, I would mention the Cultural Olympiad, chaired by Tony Hall, that happened under this Government—a huge success, bringing culture all over the nation.

Today, we announced the four cities on the UK capital of culture shortlist—the UK capital of culture created by Phil Redmond, who did so much to make the Liverpool capital of culture such a success. I have just finished reading his excellent autobiography, “Mid-Term Report”. Eleven different places around the UK applied to become the UK capital of culture. That is not a country on its knees culturally; it is a country where all parts of the nation are celebrating the success of cultural and creative industries.

A lot of hon. Members’ contributions were about the northern museums. We have an Adjournment debate on that very matter straight after this vote, so I will say a lot more about it in a few minutes’ time. We heard contributions on this issue from the hon. Members for York Central (Hugh Bayley), for Manchester, Withington (Mr Leech), for Bradford South (Mr Sutcliffe), for Stalybridge and Hyde and for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley). On national museums in general, I can first of all assure hon. Members that there is absolutely no reason at all for any of the northern science museums to close.

The Science museum has taken responsibility for MOSI, with visitor numbers going up by 30%. It is striking a deal with Tyne and Wear museums, too, and the Victoria and Albert museum is working with Dundee. There is the new Tate extension and the rehang, and there are Tate partners all across the country. There is the Imperial War museum in Salford, and the Imperial War museum in London is currently closed because of new galleries to commemorate world war one. There is the new extension at the Natural History museum. During all of this there is the maintenance of free admission to our national museums. [Interruption.] That is another success story. [Interruption.] Opposition Members can try to shout me down, but they cannot deny the truth: success in the regions, success in our towns and cities, success in our national museums.

Because the Opposition cannot deny that, they claim it is their success. I do not deny the successes of the last Government, but nor should they deny the successes of this Government, because we are the ones having to make the difficult decisions because of the budget deficit they left us. They are forced to put forward policies that are imaginary and to suggest we are doing nothing, so they talk about skills and education without acknowledging the first ever national music education plan or the extension of the In Harmony scheme—set up by the last Government, extended by this Government—and they do not acknowledge the achievements of our cultural education plan, the first youth dance company, Film Nation bringing together the film charities, which is a £7 million fund, and Heritage Schools, which is a £3 million fund.

The Department for Education and DCMS are working together to put £50 million a year into education, too. There is also our creative employment programme, run through the Arts Council, and 6,500 creative apprenticeships being supported by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. The Next Gen report is changing the teaching of computer science in schools, and acknowledging the importance of the arts. Creative Skillset has been given £16 million to support skills, and there are the BRIT schools, set up by the last Conservative Government, and acknowledged in this debate.

[Paul Farrelly]

I want to pay the Minister a single, straight-edged compliment. He is very well respected across the creative industries. He has got energy, and from our experience in north Staffordshire with the Wedgwood museum, we know he is a man of action, so could I press him on this? When is he likely to take action on the recommendations of the Sieghart review to extend the public lending rights to e-books and audiobooks in our libraries, and so help authors and this vital element of our creative economy?

[Mr Vaizey]

That was a good question, asked just as our brilliant Education Secretary, who does so much to support reading in schools and libraries, takes his seat. We will be making an announcement on that soon.

On skills, we are delivering; on access to finance, we are delivering with the enterprise investment scheme; and on tax credits, I have not even had time to mention not only the maintenance of the film tax credit, but its extension to television, and the rejuvenation of our animation industry and, soon, the video games tax credit.

The case for our regional strategy has already been made from the Opposition Benches, with Members talking about what is happening throughout the country. Also, my Secretary of State is putting together our international strategy to work with our national museums and performing arts organisations to fly the flag abroad and help Britain punch its weight. May I take this opportunity to welcome the appointment of Ian Livingston, chief executive of BT? He runs a successful company, and he is joining a successful Government to make the case for Britain abroad, to help our companies export abroad, and to help companies invest here because of the skills we have in our creative industries.

Let me say one last thing: DCMS is here to stay. We have moved buildings, but that is a metaphor for this Government. We have better offices, and they cost less, because with this Government we get more for less. We get the tough decisions being made. Opposition Members cannot get on their feet and have a debate about the arts until they come clean. Are they going to put more money into the arts? Are they just going to give a nudge and a wink, and say we do not like this cut here and we do not like that cut there, because they have to go on the record and tell the country and tell the arts what financial support they are going to give? I will give way to any Front-Bench Member who can tell me now—