King’s Speech
Baroness Debbonaire Excerpts(3 weeks, 3 days ago)
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Baroness Debbonaire (Lab)
My Lords, it really is a pleasure to speak in a debate after two such excellent maiden speeches. During them, I realised all the things I had done wrong in mine, so apologies, for instance, to my sponsors, who I never thanked—thank you to my noble friends Lord Alli and Lady Winterton. Thank you to the doorkeepers et cetera.
In that spirit, because I am half way down the speakers’ list, I can simply say I agree with everything the noble Lord, Lord Smith, said, everything the noble Baroness, Lady Bonham-Carter, said and everything the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, said. I agree with quite a lot of things—but not everything on Brexit—that the noble Lord, Lord Blackwater, said, and very little that the noble Lord, Lord Swire, said, other than his tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Blackwater. Obviously, I pay tribute to my new noble friend Lord Hobby. His expertise in education is clearly going to be very welcome.
I must declare up front that my registered interests include being a very part-time chief executive of the UK Opera Association and, currently, chair of the Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction for 2026. Being half way down the list also means that I can dispense with anything that has already been said, which is really handy. So I am going to spend just a couple of minutes talking about the political economy of arts, culture and heritage.
If arts, culture and heritage are, as I believe, the important features of our national life that they truly are, we need a well-articulated political economy which deals with both the demand and supply sides, as well as the most important bit of all: the joy. I think the joy is self-evident, and so many august Members in your Lordships’ House have spoken of it eloquently—far more eloquently than I can. I have experienced it myself as a cellist and musician for 56 years now, and so many of your Lordships have done likewise. But for that to work, we need a political economy with political arguments made for economic questions.
Those economic questions are about how we make sure that, from early childhood, every child is given the education and, to pick out bits that have not yet been mentioned, the specialist education—the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, did mention this—that includes conservatoires but also specialist music schools, as well as music hubs, which serve slightly different needs for slightly different groups of young people. They are both important if we are to have world-class musicians, as are art schools and the arts and humanities departments in universities.
If we attend to the careers, we also need to attend to the employment conditions. The Employment Rights Act, which I was proud to support, does not really deal with the freelance conditions experienced by most creators in the arts, culture and heritage sector, and so I welcome the small business late payments Bill. I hope that, by the time it becomes law, we will have named a freelance champion. That has been well trailed, and we need such a freelance champion, if only to make sure that freelancers actually know what their rights are.
I confess that I am slightly confused about the ticket touts legislation. First, I saw “draft” and I was irked, because quite a few of us in my former Commons team, as well as my dear friend Sharon Hodgson, campaigned on this long and hard, and it was in the manifesto. Then I saw that there is mention of ticket-touting in the Sporting Events Bill. I gently ask my colleagues on the Front Bench whether, as an amendment to the Sporting Events Bill, we can just insert the entire ticket touts Bill. I would really like to know, as we have done loads of work on this already. We know how much it is going to save. The only people who benefit from a delay to the ticket touts legislation are ticket touts. The corollary to that is we will give more joy if we bring it forward.
What else is needed? My noble friend Lady Rebuck mentioned so much, and I meant to say, “And everything Gail said”. My noble friends have said so much about the importance of reading, music and the BBC, and of sorting out the AI legislation, but I want to finish on this. If we want a thriving creative sector, we need a political economy that articulates how we train, sustain, develop and grow the body of work that makes our country so great, that identifies the UK to so many people, at home and abroad, and that helps bring us together in a series of national stories, which matter now perhaps more than ever.
Independent Review of Net Zero
Baroness Debbonaire Excerpts(3 years, 4 months ago)
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