Craft Industry: Support

Lord Freyberg Excerpts

Thursday 12th June 2025 Grand Committee

Asked by

[Lord Freyberg]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to support the craft industry.

[Lord Freyberg (CB)]

My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to open this debate on the Government’s role in supporting the craft industry, a sector that combines our economy, heritage, identity and national well-being. In speaking today, I declare my interests as an artist member of DACS and a former craft practitioner, having studied ceramics at Camberwell College of Arts—a course that, regrettably, no longer exists, exemplifying the very crisis that I wish to address today.

I thank Patricia Lovett, who has worked tirelessly to raise the profile of craft in Parliament as the secretariat for the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Craft, for this and her briefing, and those from the Church of England and the UK jewellery, silverware and allied crafts sector. I thank the Minister for meeting with the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick, the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, and me earlier this year to gain a better understanding of the challenges facing the craft industry. Lastly, I extend my gratitude to all noble Lords participating in today’s debate; I eagerly await their contributions.

Craft is not an indulgence. It is profoundly human, combining creativity, skill and joy in ways that connect us to our heritage and each other. It is an economic force, a skills engine, a bridge to education, a custodian of cultural heritage and a foundation for innovation. Yet, despite all this, it remains routinely overlooked in national policy.

Let us begin with scale. In England alone, craft contributes £4.4 billion in gross value added, which is more than the fishing industry and on par with sectors such as electrical goods and sports, recreation and amusements. Approximately 210,000 people are employed in heritage crafts, which is more than in clothing manufacturing. However, reliable and up-to-date statistics remain difficult to obtain. I hope the Minister will commit to publishing new figures to help address the current lack of accurate data, as highlighted in How Do we Measure Craft?, published by the Crafts Council in 2023.

However, economic value tells only part of the story. Numerous creative industries and heritage sectors are rooted in traditional craft practices. Fields such as textiles, ceramics, jewellery, glass, leather, woodworking and metalworking—and a host of other overlooked and unsung heritage crafts that I wish I could single out individually today—demand skills that are not only materially productive but rich in cultural expression.

Craft is also deeply interwoven with wider policy goals. It improves health and well-being, supports education and skills, anchors regional identities, and drives tourism, exports and diplomacy. In short, it sits at the intersection of industrial strategy, education, heritage and soft power.

Yet this vital sector faces an existential threat. According to the latest Red List of Endangered Crafts, 165 crafts are at risk: 94 are endangered and 71 are critically endangered. These include scientific glassblowing—which is essential to advanced research—and the production of encaustic tiles, as found in the Peers’ Lobby.

We are witnessing the transition of traditional skills from viable to critically endangered status, often more swiftly than our support systems can respond. Most of these skills are passed down through person-to-person training. They are not widely taught in schools, nor can they be meaningfully learned online. Once lost, they are lost forever.

We see this decline in real time. Newark College has suspended its musical instruments degrees, the only full-time courses of their kind in the UK. In Stoke-on-Trent, three pottery firms have closed recently, including Moorcroft, founded in 1897. These are not isolated incidents; they reflect systemic fragility. Historical craft is a high-value, low-visibility sector, dominated by micro-businesses and sole traders, with limited structural support.

So what could the Government do to turn this around? First, we need urgently to review how government skills policy works for crafts. The current apprenticeship model is fundamentally unworkable for most craft businesses, which are often sole traders or firms with only one or two employees. They cannot meet the requirement for 10 employers to form a trailblazer group, nor can they afford to reduce productivity in order to train an apprentice while still paying their wages.

We welcome the new growth and skills levy, as well as the introduction of shorter and modular apprenticeships under Labour’s post-16 strategy, but we need these reforms to extend to the craft sector specifically, with direct funding for trainers, contributions to apprentice salaries and a reduction in administrative burdens. The new Skills England body has a clear remit to map skills pipelines across sectors. It must treat crafts as part of the creative economy, not an afterthought. Following yesterday’s spending review, how much of the new investment money for skills and training will be allocated to the crafts industry?

Secondly, we must reverse the collapse of full-time craft training. There are now only two single-honours ceramics degrees left. Courses in bookbinding, horology and instrument making are disappearing. The result is that only the independently wealthy can afford to train. We need targeted funding for FE and HE courses, particularly those teaching endangered skills. Many such courses currently fail to qualify for public funding. As with the performing arts, crafts education should not be confined to the privileged.

Thirdly, the Government should move swiftly to deliver on their obligations under the UNESCO convention on intangible cultural heritage, which the UK ratified in 2024. Traditional craftsmanship is one of its five domains. Ratifying states must identify, inventory and safeguard such practices, yet no safe-guarding timetable or funding has been published. If we delay too long, the damage will be irreversible; I hope that the Minister can provide an update.

Fourthly, crafts should be treated like other sectors of similar size. Fishing, for example, receives tax breaks worth up to £180 million and has a £27 million seafood scheme, as well as a new £360 million coastal growth fund. Craft, which contributes over five times the GVA of fishing, receives no comparable support. Would it be too much to ask to invest even 2% of that into preserving craft skills? A £10 million annual fund could transform training, stem skill loss, and generate lasting cultural and economic returns.

Fifthly, post-Brexit trade obstacles have significantly impacted makers. Couriers are unwilling to accept small shipments. Export guidance lacks consistency. Items are being held up at customs. Organisers in the EU are becoming more hesitant to accept entries from the UK. We urgently need a dedicated help desk—a single point of contact for craft micro-businesses to access accurate trade advice. Trade agreements ought to incorporate cultural exemptions for crafts, recognising their importance in both diplomacy and commerce.

Sixthly, crafts deserve a place in creative education. They are too often excluded from discussions about arts in schools, yet crafts improve cognition, motor skills, resilience and mental health. They also open vocational pathways for students who may not thrive academically. Let us ensure that creative education includes making and that schools have the resources to teach it. Again, I hope that the Minister can provide an update on how the spending review will support this.

Seventhly, crafts are not only a domestic concern but an export strength—a soft power asset and a driver of regional growth. Labour’s refreshed creative industries sector plan and its cultural global Britain strategy rightly position culture at the heart of our international offer. Crafts must be at the heart of that strategy. From Stoke-on-Trent ceramics to Sunderland glass, from Leicester’s rattan-weaving to Devon’s thatching, crafts are rooted in place. Small investments in such place-based industries boost local pride, employment and tourism; they also reinforce the UK’s international reputation for excellence and authenticity.

If this debate achieves anything, I hope that it establishes that craft is not marginal or an anachronism. It is a vital, economically significant, socially valuable part of our national fabric. We do not need huge sums to save the sector, but we need a strategy, data and targeted support, and we need them soon because, once these skills disappear, they will not return, and we will have lost not just livelihoods, but irreplaceable strands of our national story. Let us act before that happens.

Arts and Creative Industries: Freelancers and Self-employed Workers

Lord Freyberg Excerpts

Thursday 15th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freyberg (CB)]

My Lords, one of the fascinating facts about the creative industries is the very large proportion of freelancers and self-employed workers in them. In the year to September 2022 there were 3.1 million filled job roles in the creative and cultural industries and, of those, 989,000 were self-employed. This is more than double the self-employment rate in the wider economy, but freelancers and the self-employed face a number of challenges that are holding back this vital sector. Echoing the noble Lord, Lord Hannan, today’s younger workforce wants a different contract with the state. Their expectations of work are very different from those of previous generations. They want portfolio careers, greater flexibility about hours and the places they work, and a better work/life balance. But existing employment rights and our tax, benefits and pension systems make that difficult.

The self-employed often miss out on careers advice and lifelong learning opportunities in the creative industries, where the pace and scope of technological change are more apt to require new skills over time than in many other areas of the economy. Last year’s announcement of DfE’s flexi-jobs apprenticeship pilot was a good start, but creative industries have struggled to make the most of the apprenticeship levy, so we must learn lessons from it and put in place appropriate measures. Education and training programmes tailored to freelancers and the self-employed in these rapidly growing sectors could play a vital role by equipping them with not only specialist skills but an understanding of business and financial management. Supporting initiatives to enable networking and provide mentorship, guidance and resources can also foster vibrant creative communities.

Frustratingly, as highlighted in the 2017 Creative Industries Federation report, the self-employed in the creative industries feel invisible to policymakers. I would be grateful if the Minister could set out how the Government plan to improve the situation specifically for this group.

In conclusion, if the Government could make moves not just to shore up the rights and benefits of freelancers and self-employed workers but to enable access to lifelong learning opportunities and enhance the support that is available, they would be getting it right for a current generation of creatives who contribute so much to the UK’s appeal around the world, as well as those who aspire to join them in future.

Arts Council England: Regional Distribution of Funding

Lord Freyberg Excerpts

Thursday 15th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freyberg (CB)]

My Lords, as the last speaker before the Front-Bench speakers, I will focus my remarks, as others have today, on opera, and in particular the ENO following the Arts Council’s recent decision to withdraw all national programme funding from this organisation. Like the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, I am concerned that Arts Council England, by its own admission, has made no strategic nationwide assessment of the need or audience for opera, yet, without consulting any opera companies, it has reduced funding across all opera by £32 million. The ENO is asked to relocate with a massive funding cut; the English touring budget of Welsh National Opera is cut by a third, and as a consequence it will no longer tour to Liverpool; and Glyndebourne’s touring budget is cut by half.

With regard to the ENO’s relocation, it is neither realistic nor compassionate for a large opera company to start moving to an as yet undetermined location with 20 weeks’ notice after the withdrawal of most of its funding. As the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, rightly mentioned, when the Birmingham Royal Ballet moved from Sadler’s Wells to Birmingham, it had 10 years from the first conversation to the full move, including five years of audience-building and local investment to grow the audience and brand. You cannot achieve that in a few months. To withdraw so much funding from the ENO at the same time as moving it would make it impossible for regional audiences to enjoy the kind of work that London audiences currently enjoy—which goes against the principle of promoting greater access and fairness across the nation.

It is worth stating that, before ACE’s latest decision, ENO was already far advanced in developing a plan for much greater regional representation, which would be interconnected with its London base. This was based on ENO’s experience that high-quality opera, of all kinds and in all places, is best achieved by maintaining the resources of a permanent company of top-level artists and technical staff. At Arts Council England’s new funding level, this plan is now totally unachievable, as the new funding level makes it impossible for ENO to maintain a high-quality permanent opera company as a base.

The Arts Council seems to see a future for ENO which lies mainly in small-scale projects with an undefined residue of grand opera, but none of this has been made explicit or, it would seem, thought through in any detail. For example, ACE states that it wants ENO to keep the London Coliseum and perform there for some of the year, letting it out commercially for the rest of the time. Yet it does not seem to envisage the ENO as a company that is, in fact, large enough to perform at the Coliseum at all.

The new funding level suggests that the Arts Council model is more one of engaging freelancers as and when required, rather than building quality and talent in a maintained opera company; again, though, none of this is explicit. If the ENO is to be a genuine national opera company, developing talent and creating opera to the highest standards, it is hard to see how it can do that without a permanent company within which to develop and maintain those skills—and that is the case whether or not the Arts Council feels that large-scale grand opera is worthy of support. This is a major structural issue, with ramifications for the ecology of opera nationwide. It requires far more careful consideration and needs to be addressed as part of a coherent national opera strategy.

One of the problems with the Arts Council’s process is the complete lack of transparency in decision-making. The ENO met or exceeded all the ACE targets. ACE considers it to be run in an excellent way, yet it is impossible to find out what criteria ACE used that resulted in it, and other well-run organisations, being removed from the national portfolio. The suspicion is that Arts Council England is no longer quite the arm’s-length body it is supposed to be. I share the concerns of the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty. Dr Darren Henley, the CEO of ACE, said in evidence to the Commons DCMS Select Committee on 8 December:

“We always receive instructions from the Secretary of State about our grant-in-aid investment”


and that it

“needed to move money out of London”.

However, in a Written Answer published two weeks ago by the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay, the Government stated:

“All decisions on which organisations to fund … and by how much, have been taken by Arts Council England. In line with the long-standing principle that the Arts Council makes such decisions at arm’s length from Government, there are no plans to ask it to reconsider these decisions.”


This is, of course, a contradiction. More clarity from both sides is therefore required.

In conclusion, in the interests of all opera companies, audiences and stakeholders, Arts Council England must remedy the confusion it has caused by urgently conducting a nationwide review of the provision of opera, taking into account audiences and need. It should, if necessary, be prepared to amend its decisions accordingly and it should be fully transparent about the criteria it uses in its decision-making process.

Data Protection Bill [HL]

Lord Freyberg Excerpts

Monday 14th May 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mitchell (CB)]

My Lords, the words in the Bill and the words on the screens above us summarise my position. This is the Data Protection Bill, and my amendment is solely about protecting data—our data; our data of national significance; and in particular, our data owned by our National Health Service. Who do I wish to protect it from? From the predatory big tech companies, which see a huge financial opportunity in developing this NHS data and creating data algorithms; they can then sell those for billions of pounds, leaving us with precious little in return. The very same companies, by the way, pay minuscule corporation tax in our country and, indeed, it is the same in their own country. They are clever, immensely well funded, and very focused—they run rings around the NHS.

I feel that I have to prevent this happening. I seek to set in motion a process which will keep the value of this data for the benefit of our NHS so that it can use these proceeds either to plug its growing budget deficit or fund significant critical medical research—or, indeed, both. If I let my imagination go even further, I would like to see the setting up of a sovereign health fund into which these proceeds could be channelled and administered, in the same way as the Norwegians set up a sovereign wealth fund. What they have done with the proceeds of their North Sea oil we can now do with our data bonanza. As many have said throughout the Bill’s proceedings, data is the new oil—and we have struck a gusher.

If I may be permitted to extend the analogy even further—like oil in the ground, this data is crude; it needs to be refined. Huge investment will need to be made to create a data refinery which will be able to synthesise the millions of records that will produce the algorithms. It should be seen as a national co-production, perhaps with private and public partnership.

At Second Reading, I stated that it was my judgment that the market value of NHS longitudinal data could be worth billions of pounds. In all honesty, as I progressed, I fully expected someone to disagree with me and tell me that I was wrong. But no such person has come forward. All the experts seem to confirm my position. I made the point that the longitudinal data owned by the NHS was unique, with tens of millions of patient records going back to 1948 and even earlier. No other country has access to such a treasure trove. Even better, our population is diverse, with the records of people whose family members come from all corners of the globe. We have a perfect dataset.

The reason big tech companies are so interested in this data is that with the combination of sophisticated software, ultra-fast data processing, artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities, they are able to produce algorithms which are tremendously powerful. These can be used to predict organ abnormalities to the extent that clinicians can save time and money, and ultimately people’s lives. And who can disagree with that? It is wonderful for all mankind.

By way of an example, DeepMind, which is based in London—it is a subsidiary of Alphabet, which owns Google—has been working with the Royal Free in anticipating acute kidney injury. Like knights on white chargers, DeepMind has financed the digitisation of millions of patients’ data and produced algorithms that are already making a major contribution to improving difficult-to-diagnose conditions. It has cost the Royal Free next to nothing and, unsurprisingly, its staff are over the moon. What they do not realise is that the algorithms produced by DeepMind have international value and will be monetised all over the world for the benefit of Google, not of our NHS.

DeepMind and companies like it are swarming all over the NHS. For my part, to put it bluntly, I want to stop them gathering the benefits of our data on the cheap. My new amendment would water down previous amendments that your Lordships agreed to on Report—an amendment that the Commons in its infinite wisdom decided to annul. Frankly, I am still at a loss to understand why a Conservative Government would not want to maximise this goldmine; I always thought they were the party of business.

I have, however, taken on board the points made by the Information Commissioner. She said the amendments went beyond her powers. I have reduced them to a minimum. In substitution I have inserted a requirement for the Secretary of State to require the National Audit Office to prepare a code of practice for data controllers, for guidance on how to obtain best value in relation to the commercial exploitation of personal data of national significance, and for the NAO to report annually to Parliament on the commercial explication of the very same data.

The Minister and his team have listened to what I have had to say and I am very grateful for his kindness and attentiveness. Our last meeting was very helpful, and I look forward to him confirming the points that were made. I beg to move.

[Lord Freyberg (CB)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 53A, moved by the noble Lord, Lord Mitchell. In doing so, I wish to make two specific points that follow on from his speech today. First, the amendment crucially recognises the importance of measuring what we as a nation are doing with data of significance before we take important, industrially strategic decisions on how we make the most of this vital national resource.

The noble Lord and others have made the analogy of data as the new oil. That analogy works particularly well for personal data as, like oil, it is potentially as toxic as it is valuable, and it must be carefully handled and not allowed to be released into the environment without due care. If we are to best manage, protect and distil it, we must first learn where and how it is being moved, used and commercialised. Can we as a nation easily answer the question that we are asking of Facebook or the former Cambridge Analytica: how much data are we commercialising at home and abroad, and to whom? If not, why not? Progressive and young, emerging nations are reviewing how they use their national data for national advantage, and we must make a concerted effort to do the same.

My second point is how the amendment therefore recognises that this measurement should be done centrally, not burdening already stretched government departments with developing their own approaches. While these departments must remain involved to provide domain insight into certain data types—for example, health and social care—the National Audit Office or other bodies should take charge of a cross-departmental process for measuring and tracking these flows of significant and valuable data. In this way we should be able to develop a consistent, coherent view of how we are handling our data reserves, which will give us the best possible evidence upon which to base our decisions on a secure approach to maximising their impact for our future national good. I therefore hope the Minister will be able to shed some light today on how this process is being thought through.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I support Amendments 53A and 53B, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Mitchell.

I must express my general frustration at the Bill. There is so much information, so much data of national significance that, it is clear, will be abused by the Government, whether or not they know that they are doing so. The Windrush scandal showed just how badly the Home Office gets things wrong, and the Bill’s provisions allow the sharing of people’s data which would further the “hostile environment” policy. I am very disappointed that the Government have not tabled amendments to curtail the broad powers in the Bill that will allow for such abuse.

There are so many cases of people who are victims of serious crime—of rape, violence and people trafficking—who are being reported by the police to the Home Office and then being arrested, detained and deported. At least 27 police forces have admitted that they do this. Ministers cannot possibly claim to be learning from those instances, just as they appear not to have learned from Windrush, while they continue to include such cruel and intrusive powers in the Bill. The fact that the Government can get things so horribly wrong is why the amendment should be included.

We have heard that data is more valuable than oil. It is more valuable than oil or gold. It is the boom industry of our times, and the temptation for government to allow its exploitation by the commercial sector—the predatory big tech organisations to which the noble Lord, Lord Mitchell, referred—will be overwhelming, especially in this age of austerity when money appears to be so short.

This is not just an issue of exploitation in a negative sense: there are lots of opportunities for government data to be used to empower communities. We can do things such as monitor air pollution and hold the Government to account by using this data. I am excited by those opportunities, but they need proper regulatory oversight to ensure that data is used for good. The control and processing of nationally important data must be properly overseen by the Information Commissioner and the National Audit Office. The Government recognised this in the Bill as drafted, and I do not understand why that has been removed—perhaps the Minister could explain.

I really hope that the Minister will support the amendments, but I rather suspect he will not.