Economy: Creative Sector

Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury Excerpts

Thursday 20th March 2014 Grand Committee

[Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, for this debate. I think that we all agree that the UK’s creative industries are one of our greatest assets. An IPPR report published last month states:

“The creative industries survive or fall on innovation and the discovery of new talent, so skills are critical”.

As the noble Baroness said, in this area we do not face a jobs problem but a skills problem. However, work is being done.

As the noble Baroness also mentioned, BIS and DCMS have established the Creative Industries Council, on which I sit. It is a joint forum attended by practitioners and government. It is an attempt to corral the very disparate members of the creative industries sector and focuses on areas where barriers to growth face the sector. We are hard at work on a soon-to-be-launched creative industries strategy, at the heart of which is establishing an education and careers system that inspires and supports the next creative generation.

In 2011, Ian Livingstone and Alex Hope published the Next Gen. report, which argued that our education system was not keeping up with the times, in particular the way in which ICT was being taught. The coalition Government listened and a programme of study for ICT including computer programming and a GCSE in computer science were introduced this year. Computer science is now part of the EBacc’s science strand.

Before the last election the Lib Dems produced The Power of Creativity in which we pledged to enable businesses to offer more apprenticeships. We have achieved that. A record number in the creative industries are now being government funded. In the Budget yesterday, funding was provided for more than 100,000 additional incentive payments under the apprenticeship grants for employers scheme and we hope that large numbers of these will be creative. According to Arts Council England, 81% of those surveyed who had taken up an apprenticeship are now employed in the creative industries. It is estimated that the 2011-12 apprenticeships will deliver net gains of £2.4 million to the UK economy.

I am sorry if I am speaking rather fast but I want to get to what I really want to talk about; namely, that it is clearly money well spent but that there is a major problem in the area of diversity. Last week Lenny Henry gave the BAFTA TV lecture. What he had to say was horrifying. He told us:

“Between 2006 and 2012, the number of BAME’s working in the UK TV industry has declined by 30.9 per cent. Creative Skillset conducted a census that shows quite clearly that Black, Asian and minority ethnic representation in the creative industries in 2012 was just 5.4 per cent—its lowest point since they started taking the census”.

As the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, will know as well as me, when it comes to the performing arts we should not be worried about just the lack of “front of camera”, it is the producers, the directors, commissioners and board members who set the scene. How is this for a fact? Of the key PSB bodies—Ofcom, BBC Trust, ITV and Channel 4—where the Government have some influence, 42 board seats are available, of which just one, a BBC trustee, is not white. All 15 seats on the BSkyB board are filled by white appointees. ACE and the BFI have just one non-white board member each.

The DCMS Minister Ed Vaizey has recognised the problem and set up a group, of which I am a member, alongside the noble Baronesses, Lady King and Lady Benjamin, and representatives from the industry, which meets monthly. We are determined not to be just a talking shop. Action is required and one of our priorities is data. To make people accountable, you need detailed and timely data.

What a waste. It is essential that the creative industries reflect the 21st-century UK: our vibrant, creative and multicultural country that attracts so many people from overseas because it is just that. The most important thing, as this debate highlights, is to ensure that we continue to create the creators, and in doing so we must stop excluding so much potential.