Broadcasting: Children’s Television

Baroness Benjamin Excerpts

Thursday 2nd February 2023 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Benjamin]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to address the decline in production of commercial Public Service Broadcasting children’s television content.

[Baroness Benjamin (LD)]

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper and declare an interest as per the register.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay) (Con)]

My Lords, the Government recognise the unique social, educational and economic importance of children’s television, and that is why we have put in place a range of measures to support it. The ongoing animation and children’s tax relief schemes have supported the production of over 840 programmes. Working with the noble Baroness, we introduced powers for Ofcom to monitor and set criteria for the provision of children’s television. Children’s television was chosen to pilot contestable funding, which has supported more than 280 hours of new content.

[Baroness Benjamin (LD)]

I thank the Minister for his Answer. However, since the early closure of the Young Audiences Content Fund, which offered up to 50% of programme budgets, the amount of newly made UK commercial children’s content continues to decrease. The children’s television production sector faces market failure and a huge challenge. Without funding, television programmes that reflect British children’s lives could disappear from the nation’s screens, and that would be a tragedy. Pact is proposing new tax breaks of 40% to help keep that vitally important sector thriving. So how are the Government living up to their responsibility to ensure that the nation’s children are accessing high-quality British children’s programming? Will the tax breaks proposed by Pact be supported to ensure that we have more UK commercial public service broadcasting of children’s content?