Autumn Budget 2024

Baroness Bull Excerpts

Monday 11th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bull (CB)]

My Lords, I want to start by welcoming measures in the Budget that support the vulnerable in our society—those on lower incomes, those with special needs or disabilities, carers, and households facing hardship—as well as the investment in the NHS. I also welcome additional support for local authorities, which will help them meet ever-growing demand and may, I hope, enable them to reinstate funding for local arts and culture. As we have heard, so many were forced to reduce and even cut it as pressure on statutory services increased.

I intend to focus on the Budget’s impact on the cultural and creative industries and I note my interests as set out in the register. The industrial strategy Green Paper named the creative industries among eight growth sectors. But the term “creative industries” encompasses multiple subsectors and this Budget is largely targeted at those perceived to have greatest potential for growth. There is a new tax relief for visual effects, £3 million for promoting creative careers and the continuation of tax relief for film, high-end TV, animation and video games.

There was some good news for other parts of the sector, with a renewed commitment to tax relief for orchestras, theatres, museums and galleries, and even higher rates of relief from next year. National museums and galleries won increases in both grant in aid and capital funding, but there was no parallel support for local authority-funded museums and galleries, many of which face closure through lack of funds.

By and large, the package of support for the creative industries does not provide the same relief for arts and culture as it does for those subsectors described as “growth driving”. Documents published alongside the Budget revealed that £100 million of local cultural projects allocated funding through the levelling-up fund will likely be scrapped, with spend “reprioritised towards growth”. The UK shared prosperity fund, established to offset the loss of valuable EU place-based funds, will reduce from £1.5 billion to £900 million next year and then be phased out completely.

Of course, difficult choices had to be made, but this is notably at odds with the emphasis of the DCMS Secretary of State on place and the regional agenda, both in the content of her sector speeches and the locations she has chosen to deliver them. Last week, she wrote that

“for millions of people, geography has become destiny … This Budget has put the Creative Industries front and centre of how we write those people back into our national story and drive opportunity, jobs and prosperity into every community, in every region”.

That is a great ambition, but it will be achieved only if investment takes into account the complex interdependencies between the creative industries’ subsectors and the role of arts and culture in nurturing the creativity that underpins the ecosystem as a whole. The Budget overlooks this. It also overlooks the contribution of cultural organisations to local infrastructure and their importance in multiagency place-based partnerships that help raise aspirations, build skills, generate growth and create liveable places in which people can have pride.

Arts and culture have so much to contribute to the growth and opportunities mission, but it is a sector that has been underfunded over the last decade and is struggling to recover from the crises of the last five years. Increases to employer NIC and the minimum wage will pile more pressure on organisations already operating on the edge. Job reductions and scaled-back services will surely follow.

Some 7,500 charities, cultural and voluntary organisations have written to the Chancellor calling for exemption from the increase in employer NIC. They are essential partners in the delivery of public services, yet they will not enjoy the same exemption as public sector bodies. Independent trusts that spun out from local authority control over the last decade to ensure continued provision of services in the face of council cuts, will pay the increased rate, while the same services that remained in the public sector will not.

I conclude by asking the Minister two questions. Have the Government undertaken an impact assessment of the increase in employer national insurance contributions on these organisations and the communities they support? Will the Government commit to working with the ACEVO and NCVO to reduce the burden on their members at a time when their contribution to public services is needed more than ever?