Covid-19: Entertainment and Arts Venues

Lord Bird Excerpts

Tuesday 14th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

The noble Baroness is absolutely right. This is about not just the enjoyment that the arts bring but the contribution they make to our economy and society. The Culture Recovery Fund was testament to that—money from the Treasury to make sure that our vibrant and expanding cultural sector was still there and in good health as we emerged from the pandemic. That is why we keep that under review and are keen to ensure that it can continue to grow as quickly as it has been.

[Lord Bird (CB)]

As most people get their entertainment from television and from Netflix and Amazon, is there a way that we can tax these much more severely because they take so much out of our live music, our theatres and all sorts of things? Can the Minister not start petitioning for a real tax of Amazon and all those others?

Social Capital

Lord Bird Excerpts

Monday 25th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I absolutely agree with my noble friend about the impact the pandemic has had on young people. That is one of the reasons that the Chancellor announced a review of youth provision outside schools, which will be reporting in May this year. I thank my noble friend and his colleagues at Onward for providing excellent analysis and research on the year to serve, and I am happy to continue a further conversation with him about that proposal.

[Lord Bird (CB)]

Is the Minister aware of small organisations such as Social Echo, which works in Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire? I declare an interest, because I am part of the team that put it together. It has been building on the enormous social kindness that broke out last year and is trying to stitch organisations and businesses together—the estate agent with the homeless organisation, et cetera. They are the backbone on which we have to rebuild the social capital that we are talking about.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I agree with the noble Lord and thank him for his tireless work in this area. I share his recognition of the outpouring of social kindness. Our efforts, in the funding that we have provided the voluntary sector in particular, have predominantly focused on small local organisations, for exactly the reasons that the noble Lord sets out.

National Trust Acts

Lord Bird Excerpts

Thursday 3rd December 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I am sorry to disappoint my noble friend, but we have no plans currently to do such a review. The National Trust conducts its own governance review every 10 years and any external review of its activities should be left to the Charity Commission.

[Lord Bird (CB)]

I shall take a different angle on the National Trust. I have been approached by people who live in National Trust properties and I know that there are all sorts of plans to modernise the relationships between staff and the tied cottages. In places, these relationships are medieval—very much like the buildings —Victorian or Edwardian. I would like to see a change to the Acts so that we can make sure that the trust is carrying out its social duty for social justice and we do not allow a situation where the tenants are living in the past while the big landlord, the National Trust, is riding high on the hog.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The noble Lord makes an interesting point. I hope that the trustees of the National Trust will read Hansard and pick up on his remarks.

Public Libraries

Lord Bird Excerpts

Monday 3rd February 2020 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Bird]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, following the publication of the report by the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals and The Big Issue, Public Libraries: The Case for Support, on 15 October 2019, what plans they have to invest in England’s public libraries.

[Lord Bird (CB)]

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question in my name on the Order Paper, and I bring to the attention of the House my interest in this product.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Baroness Barran) (Con)]

My Lords, the Government are committed to supporting a sustainable, long-term future for libraries in England. We want libraries to be resilient and equipped to meet local challenges—to thrive, not just to survive. The Government announced proposals in December 2019 to increase local government resources by £2.9 billion, meaning spending power will rise by 4.4% in real terms in the year 2020-21. The Government are also investing £125 million, through the cultural investment fund, in regional museums and libraries over five years, starting in 2021.

[Lord Bird]

I thank the Minister for that reply. Might there be a cross-government problem whereby the Minister for the creative industries is in charge of promoting libraries while the local government Minister actually spends the money? In recent times, 6,000usb people have lost their jobs in libraries and we have had 10% shrinkage in libraries, and there has been no intervention by the ministry of culture.

[Baroness Barran]

I start by thanking the noble Lord for the work he does in this area and for his beautiful blue report, which I have a copy of with me and which makes good reading. He makes a good point about the need for close working between government departments and I would like to think that we have made real progress on that, with the establishment of the Libraries Taskforce, together with the Local Government Association, and the establishment of a clear five-year strategy up to 2021, the Libraries Deliver strategy, which the noble Lord will know. For the first time, we have some clear data about libraries; not so long ago, we did not even know how many libraries we had. We are now building a dataset that will allow both departments to make good decisions.