Music Industry

Lord Vaizey of Didcot Excerpts

Monday 17th April 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

The noble Lord is right to raise this. I have pointed to the £18 billion energy bill relief scheme and the energy bill discount scheme, which has succeeded it. The Music Venue Trust has been raising the issue of small grass-roots venues. The Creative Industries Minister, Julia Lopez, met the trust last month to discuss its proposals for a levy such as the noble Lord outlined. I am also happy to say that on the trust’s other initiative, Own Our Venues, the Arts Council has contributed £500,000 of public funding towards this community project to purchase at-risk venues and rent them back to the owners as benevolent landlords. We look to creative solutions to these problems.

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

My Lords, I commend the national plan for music education produced by my noble friend Lady Fleet. It truly was a very important intervention for music education in schools. With the Prime Minister talking today about the importance of arts education, it occurred to me: what on earth happened to the arts premium that was promised in the 2019 Conservative manifesto?

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My noble friend is right to point to the brilliant work of our noble friend Lady Fleet on the national plan for music education. She and many others remind us that the arts premium was a commitment in our manifesto. Of course, the pandemic has meant that schools and teachers have had to focus on the lost teaching hours that inevitably occurred, but I continue to make representations to the Department for Education that we should be returning to that commitment as soon as possible, not least through our work on the cultural education plan, which is looking at opportunities in education all round.