Creative Industries: Creating Jobs and Productivity Growth

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Thursday 6th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I thank the Whips for their flexibility that has allowed me to participate in this debate without having to sprint between the Moses Room and your Lordships’ Chamber. I declare my interest an as author. I am not sure whether trade non-fiction counts as creative sector, but it is certainly somewhere in the vicinity. My second book is on the way.

Like everyone, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, for securing what has been a very rich debate and for her enthusiastic and optimistic introduction. Like her and a number of other noble Lords, I look forward to Bradford’s year in the spotlight.

The noble Baroness’s question has a fairly narrow focus, on the importance of the creative industries to jobs and growth. I shall leave the debate about a post-growth age for another day, but I will take a moment to stress the importance of the creative sector and of the opportunity for every human being to exercise their creative impulse beyond the economy. This is crucial to human well-being and flourishing—to human life.

Let us think about walking past a cheerful mural painted by a local artist working with local schoolchildren; we need much more public art in our country to enrich our society. Let us think about people visiting a town centre in order to see a temporary installation made out of waste plastic, of which there is far too much; that makes a political point, but it also builds a community. Let us think about people simply being able to express their anger and frustration at the state of the world and the challenges they face in a creative form, which can be absolutely vital for people’s mental health.

Something perhaps slightly less obvious to many people is that, while the Government are very focused on progressing science, the creative sector and the scientific sector are intimately interlinked. It is in the creative sphere that many ideas and developments of scientific thought happen. If noble Lords are looking for an example of this, I have to mention a great book I was reading recently: Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky. It takes the scientific understanding of the intelligence of octopuses and starts to imagine, in ways a scientist never could, what that might actually mean. It is absolutely fascinating.

I will make three brief points in the time available. In particular, I want to pick up on a briefing from the BPI on an issue I have raised in other contexts: artificial intelligence, and the way in which so-called generative AI has, without apparent legal standing or justification, been taking the work of many creative individuals and using it for someone else’s purposes. Generative AI is plagiarism, and we need to see much more action in that space from the Government.

I also want to focus briefly—here I am drawing on a briefing from the Music Venues Alliance—on the collapse of the provision of small-scale venues outside London, and even within London. This particularly applies to music venues, but also to theatres. In another life, I was a reviewer of fringe theatre in London, and some of those venues are no longer functional. I wonder how many of the young actors I saw in those events are still able to be in the creative sector, and how many have been forced out.

That brings me to my final point, and it is one of the reasons why I particularly wanted to take part in this debate. The noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, spoke about how many people, particularly those from disadvantaged communities, are locked out of a career in the creative sector. The noble Viscount, Lord Colville, spoke about how many people are being forced into ill-health by the pressure and the uncertainty. Britain is not world-leading in trialling alternative approaches. The Irish Government are offering 2,000 artists a basic income of €325 a week over three years. The city of San Francisco is experimenting with a basic income scheme for 130 artists for 18 months, and in the Netherlands a music industry organisation is conducting a smaller scale trial. If we are going to have a functioning, healthy creative sector with a wide range of people involved, I put to the Minister and the Government that, surely, they could at least look at trialling a basic income as a way of allowing the creative sector to begin to flourish again.