Brexit: Cultural and Educational Programmes

Lord Foster of Bath Excerpts

Thursday 30th November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Foster of Bath (LD)]

My Lords, UK-led bids for funding projects from Creative Europe have been increasingly successful. Many of them are cross-country projects such as OperaVision, which involves 30 theatres in 19 different countries. As the Minister has already said, the Government have agreed to underwrite the funding of those projects post Brexit, but will they also guarantee the freedom of movement of non-British people involved in such projects, regardless of salary or qualifications, to ensure that the real benefits to the cultural and creative industries of such projects will continue?

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen]

The UK will certainly continue to have world-class arts and the DDCMS is working closely with the Home Office and the independent Migration Advisory Committee to ensure that the needs of the arts and cultural sectors are understood. In recognition of the critical importance to the sector of access to world-class talent, the Government recently doubled the number of tier 1 exceptional talent visas available for a number of key sectors, including the creative and cultural sector.