Arts and Creative Industries Strategy

Lord Foster of Bath Excerpts

Thursday 8th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Foster of Bath (LD)]

My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Viscount on securing this debate and share very much his view on the importance to our national life and economy of the arts and the creative industries, on which I will concentrate. After all, their economic contribution alone is bigger than the oil, gas, aerospace, life sciences and automotive sectors combined.

I believe that any strategy to ensure that we sustain and build on successes to date must encompass many issues, from digital infrastructure and finance to intellectual property and skills. Your Lordships’ Communications and Digital Committee, on which I serve, is considering all these issues and will report early in the new year.

My fear is that there is complacency within the Government at the present time. In the Chancellor’s 17 November Statement, the creative industries were not one of the five areas for growth that he listed. Publication of the Government’s “sector vision” has been delayed, and there appears to be limited cross-departmental working to address the cross-cutting challenges faced by the sector. The DCMS alone cannot address all the challenges faced by the creative industries. For example, BEIS has oversight of the apprenticeship scheme, yet it is poorly designed for SMEs, which make up the majority of the creative sector; the DfE oversees careers advice in schools, which currently does little to promote the sector as offering exciting job opportunities; and the Home Office oversees an immigration process that hinders international collaboration and stopped the flow of talent from the EU previously used to help the sector.

Yet another department is responsible for local government. The LGA has just published its Cornerstones of Culture report, pointing out that councils are the biggest funders of culture nationally. They spend £2.4 billion a year in England alone on culture and related services, with benefits such as creating jobs, underpinning local economies, contributing to levelling up and supporting the creative industries. But local government funding is once more under threat.

The Treasury too has a crucial role. Current tax incentives for film, high-end TV, children’s TV and video games are of course welcome, supporting some parts of the creative industries, but no such fiscal incentive exists for the music industry—an omission that I hope will be rectified. The Treasury could do more. The creative industries rely heavily on freelancers, so the Treasury should amend the tax and benefit system to support them and widen the definition of R&D to include the sector.

Any sector vision or strategy must be the product of cross-departmental working. Can the Minister tell us what exactly is being done to improve cross-departmental working? How much discussion, for example, is his department having with the DfE about skills shortages within the sector and the way in which the school system is exacerbating those shortages? The 40% decline in GCSE entries in creative subjects over the past decade certainly does not help. That decline can be attributed to the way in which the Government undervalue such subjects, as demonstrated by their absence from the EBacc.

Last year, one of your Lordships’ committees concluded that the national curriculum, and the EBacc in particular, was

“too narrowly focused to ensure that it prepares all young people for the modern labour market and the essential, technical and creative skills it requires”.

Mr Robert Halfon is the new Minister of State in the DfE. In his previous role as chair of the Education Committee, he said that

“New Ministers have inherited an education system that is at odds with the demands of our modern economy.”


Now, as poacher turned gamekeeper, he says that there are no plans to change the EBacc. Will the Minister seek to change his mind?

The Minister’s own department also has many ways to support the creative industries. For example, it has responsibility for our public service broadcasters. Recent reports show just how important the PSBs are to the creative industries and to the levelling-up agenda, not least through the Creative Industries Clusters Programme. I hope that, in the light of the damage that it would do to all that, the Government will drop their plans to privatise Channel 4 and call off the dogs in their seeming desire to cut the BBC down to size. I certainly agree with Tim Davie, the BBC’s director-general, who said only yesterday that

“The BBC is one of the most powerful and well recognised brands on the planet and we should be backing it.”


The lifeblood of the creative industries is intellectual property, and here too DCMS has responsibilities. The UK is rightly seen internationally as having a gold standard IP framework, which has enabled the UK’s creative industries to thrive. We weaken our IP laws at our peril—but we are in danger of taking just such a step. Following Brexit, the Government consulted on the future of the so-called IP exhaustion regime. Many of our creative industry exporters, fearing significant losses in income, expressed deep concern about making changes to the current arrangements. They breathed a sigh of relief when the Government concluded that there was insufficient data to make a decision and determined to maintain the status quo, at least for the time being. The resulting uncertainty does not help. Does the Minister agree that any final decision must deliver stability, and that the best way to achieve that is to make the interim decision permanent?

The Government also reviewed the text and data mining copyright exception and made an initial decision to widen it significantly. That would mean that businesses could scrape text and content created by others, repurpose it commercially without payment to the original creator, and, ironically, receive copyright protection for that new work. The creative industries reacted with universal dismay and the Government agreed to reconsider. During a recent Select Committee hearing, I asked the DCMS Minister Julia Lopez whether that reconsideration would lead to dropping the proposed change. She replied:

“I am fairly confident, in so far as I can say publicly, that this is not going to proceed.”


Will the Minister go one step further and give categorical assurance that no changes will be made to the exception?

During the pandemic, the then Government did much to support the creative industries and should be congratulated on that. My fear is that there is now a real danger that complacency is setting in and there will be a loss of focus on supporting a critical part of our economy, with different government departments leaving it to others to address the needs of the creative industries. I hope that I am proved wrong.