Tourism: Music

Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke Excerpts

Thursday 11th July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke]

My Lords, I join others in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Storey, on securing the debate. It is timely for all sorts of reasons, which I shall come to in a minute. It is also important to focus attention, as has the noble Lord, Lord Black, on the huge potential that we have in the United Kingdom. I echo his remarks about the visa regime for incoming musicians. It is a challenging issue. I see my noble friend Lord Boateng in his place. He and I have both struggled with visa difficulties that international musicians face in coming to Britain. I should draw attention to the fact that I am a non-executive director of VisitBritain; that is in the Register of Members’ Interests.

The noble Lord, Lord Storey, talked about the Glastonbury festival, the biggest and one of the most exciting music festivals in the world. I want to begin by talking about another music festival that I attended last weekend, the East Neuk Festival in Fife. The East Neuk of Fife is a tiny corner of Fife. At the north, there is St Andrews, famous as the home of golf and also as the meeting place of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. Nobody is 100% certain where the East Neuk ends, but it is probably about 10 miles further down the road.

The East Neuk Festival began because of an initiative by half a dozen people 10 years ago. It is largely a chamber music festival with poetry and other elements. Last Friday, I attended a concert in Crail parish church by the wonderful musician Christian Zacharias. It was standing room only, and outside there were two coaches that had come from the west of Scotland, a journey of about two hours on not particularly good roads. Last year, the East Neuk Festival attracted just short of 19,000 people to three events and sold 6,000 tickets for concerts in church halls, scout halls and a nuclear bunker. It is not “Your Hundred Best Tunes”. You will get Schubert, Schumann and Chopin. Last Saturday afternoon, I listened to the “Inuksuit” percussion suite by John Adams. I did not think I would enjoy it, but it was stunningly done in a walled garden. The festival is a lure to people not just in Scotland but even more widely.

Tonight, 20 miles away at Balado in Kinross-shire, there will be tens of thousands of people making their way to T in the Park. Balado is not in the Highlands. The great advantage of T in the Park is that it is an hour from Glasgow and an hour from Edinburgh. Each day, 85,000 people will make their way to Balado, a former RAF base whose day job is as a poultry farm. T in the Park is in its 20th year and is internationally renowned. My daughter is a marketing executive with T in the Park and you have no idea how popular that makes me with some Members of your Lordships’ House and the other place when the tickets come on sale.

Festivals like that are a key part of the GREAT strategy to promote tourism that brings in UKTI and the British Council. It is about celebrating everything great about Britain. A few months ago in New York there was a major presentation as part of the GREAT strategy of Britain’s modern music interest. One part of the GREAT celebration is King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut; it is not quite a cabin, but it is getting there. It is one of the great venues for modern indie bands. In case noble Lords do not believe that I have been to King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut, I have. I confess that it was for a very nice lunch, but if my favourite indie band, the Black Hand Gang, plays there, I will be first in the queue.

The reason I make these points is that we are blasé about the fact that we have all this. The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, is in his place. The Last Night of the Proms is a global phenomenon. I have watched it in far-distant corners of the world; it brings a focus and a determination to people to visit this country. In the world brand index we are the fourth best nation for culture out of 50. That is partly driven by our ranking third for contemporary music, films, art and literature.

That sounds like a great story, but it could be a much better story. We are not doing as well as we could for music tourism. We need to have more resource behind promoting our music tourism. We need to address the visa issue. The opening and closing ceremonies of the Olympic Games were a wonderful marketing opportunity. Music tourists spend more than most other tourists. Overseas music tourists account for 5% of music tourism but 18% of music tourism spend. We need to encourage more people to come here to benefit from what we have to offer in our musical offering. As the noble Lord, Lord Storey, pointed out, it is very interesting that it is Brazilians, New Zealanders and Norwegians who come here. I have come across many young people all over the world who would love to be able to come to Britain. Some of the challenge is the visa issue and some is cost. However, I will not say anything about air passenger duty—although I just have. Issues such as those act as inhibitors. We have a huge opportunity to showcase our best.

I hope that when the Minister replies to this debate she will concentrate to some extent on what is going to happen to the budget of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. With my VisitBritain hat on, I am delighted that we have taken only a 5% cut in our budget. If we keep cutting and cutting, however, we are going to get to the stage where we lose the critical mass that allows us to promote industries such as the music industry all around the world. It is a potentially enormous earner. At the same time, it is here in Britain that many modern technological developments such as the iPod have allowed more and more people to listen to music. People have been able to buy into the nature of the culture that we have.

To coin a phrase, we have something that is great. Let us celebrate it, but let us not be gooey-eyed about how good we are at it. We can be better—we can be world leaders. We have the talent, the determination and the worldwide focus. Let us make this a key pillar of our tourism strategy into the future.