Instrumental Music Tuition

Alison Thewliss Excerpts

Monday 25th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Douglas Ross]

My hon. Friend, despite the terrible pun at the beginning of his intervention, makes an extremely important point. We have just got six or seven copies of Hansard heading up to his constituency tomorrow because of that.

I want to look briefly at two other points that were raised by the Scottish Parliament’s Committee about the wider benefits to the economy of a musically enabled society. This evidence came from Kirk Richardson of the Educational Institute of Scotland, who pointed out that Scotland accounts for 11% of the UK’s live music revenue and that music tourism brings about £280 million a year to Scotland and secures more than 2,000 full-time jobs. In 2015 alone, 720,000 foreign and domestic visitors came to the country for festivals and major music concerts. He said:

“If music tuition is allowed to die, there will be a huge commercial loss to the country. We need to wake up to that.”

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

Much of Celtic Connections is based in my constituency, so we really see the benefit of music tourism. Does the hon. Gentleman agree about the benefits for young people within communities? I am lucky to have the Sistema Big Noise orchestra based in Govanhill, and it brings young people from various schools together to bring the whole community together. Does he see the value in having such organisations providing things that go right across different schools?

[Douglas Ross]

I could not agree more with the hon. Lady. The Moray Youth Orchestra meets every Saturday, and transport is provided to take in kids from all schools from all over—they come from Aberlour and Milne’s to Elgin. They meet once a week to get excellent tuition, but they also bond with other pupils from schools across Moray.