Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Minister of State, Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what assessment he has made of the efficacy of existing schemes to promote the creative industries in the regions and nations of the UK.

The Creative Industries Sector Deal was launched jointly between government and industry in 2018 in order to unlock growth for creative businesses across the regions and nations of the UK. The programmes are still underway and their evaluations are ongoing.

Among the Sector Deal programmes are Creative Scale-Up, which aims to increase the profitability, scalability and productivity of small creative industries businesses in three pilot regions – Greater Manchester, the West Midlands and the West of England.

Others include the Creative Clusters programme - which is developing nine world class-creative clusters across the UK, from Dundee to Bristol and Cardiff to York - and the Audiences of the Futures programme, which is working at the cutting edge of tech and creativity, with projects across the nation and with partners such as the RSC in Stratford and Aardman Animations in Bristol.