Creative Industries (Communications and Digital Committee Report)

Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury Excerpts

Friday 7th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury (LD)]

My Lords, I also welcome this report. We are an island with a wealth of creative talents, which have shaped and illuminated our history and national identity, and our modern and wonderfully diverse United Kingdom, and we must remain a brilliantly creative nation. However, we cannot be complacent, because the sector is fragile; it needs attention and nurturing to continue to flourish.

This is an excellent report from the Communications and Digital Committee—sadly, I no longer sit on the committee—and I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, the chair, and whoever came up with the title. Plaudits there, as it is very apt. The report addresses that complacency and points out that, despite annual, biannual and more red carpet back-slapping, our creative industries continue to be undervalued and undercapitalised. Further congratulations are due because, as the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, mentioned, the Government’s Creative Industries Sector Vision document was published last month and has taken on a lot of what the report says. Since the publication of the committee’s report, as the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, said, the Chancellor has identified the creative industries as one of the five key growth sectors.

I shall become a little repetitive, I am afraid, but it is important that people from across the House mention what I know the Minister knows I am going to talk about—the problem that we have with our education system and skills. Why do the Government not understand the importance of creative and cultural education, which supports and feeds into the skills pipeline of this incredible sector?

This Government say that arts subjects are not strategic priorities. Do they not understand that arts and culture education is integral to what they recognise as a priority sector? No—they persist with a STEM-obsessed EBacc. As Grayson Perry said many years ago—and he was so correct:

“If arts subjects aren’t included in the Ebacc, schools won’t stop doing them overnight. But there will be a corrosive process, they will be gradually eroded … By default, resources won’t go into them”.


That is what has happened. Compared to 2022, entries at GCSE have fallen dramatically in art and design, drama, music and performing, and expressive arts—I shall not give figures—and it is the same at A-level.

It is suggested that it is up to individual schools to choose what is in their syllabus, but in the state system there is no incentive to offer creative subjects. There are 119 accountability measures that a state secondary must consider and, as I understand it, not one of them pertains to the arts. Just look at the stark difference with the private sector, which recognises the benefits, because it is a fact that schools providing high-quality cultural education get better academic results. It is a fact that private schools entice parents with access to culture. As Mark Rylance has said:

“If, in modern day England, an institution like Eton deems drama important enough to have two theatres, why are we allowing the government to cut arts education from the life of the rest of our young people?”


As Lib Dems, we have always argued for STEAM, not STEM. There should not be a choice between arts and science—they are symbiotic. As the committee report says:

“Employers are increasingly calling for a blend of creative and digital skills. This interdisciplinary approach needs to be encouraged at school”.


The noble Baroness, Lady Rebuck, mentioned the Jony Ive case. Sir Peter Bazalgette, co-chair of the Creative Industries Council and co-author of the sector vision, has said:

“Our global competitiveness will increasingly depend on the fusion of creative and technological innovation”.


He also asked:

“Wasn’t the last industrial revolution powered by steam? There’s a lesson there for us”.


Indeed, the Victorians understood that it was this very fusion that fuelled the first Industrial Revolution. They had a department of science and arts, and invested in what was to become the V&A to develop the skills needed to feed British industry of that time. To ensure that the generation of the fourth industrial revolution is a generation of creators, schools need to be empowered to promote not just science or arts but the arts-science crossover. Sadly, this is an area in which the Government are not in listening mode, and there will be no move on the EBacc.

This report recommends that Ofsted’s outstanding ratings should be given only to schools that can demonstrate excellence in creative and technical teaching—something the Lib Dems have long called for. Does the Minister agree, and, more importantly, will he convince his colleagues in the education department?

The disparity between access to creative subjects for children in state schools and those in fee-paying schools leads to a pipeline of talent that has become ever more dependent on the affluence of parents. Research by the Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre has found that people from more privileged backgrounds are twice as likely to be employed in the cultural sector. This means less diversity in every sense.

There are T-levels, which should be able to provide a vocational route into creative occupations and help alleviate this problem, but in their present incarnation they are not user-friendly for the creative industries. The requirements for workplace placements are hard for SMEs to follow, and the sector is full of SMEs. Training pathways are confusing for students and employers; clearer routes into the industry are needed. I am sure my noble friend Lord Foster will speak more on this, but the present apprenticeship system is also not flexible enough.

Then there is HE, as the noble Baroness, Lady Rebuck, mentioned. Lately, there has been an unhelpful rhetoric about the low value of creative courses, emanating from the Department for Education. This is both a case of misunderstanding and short-sighted. Many of those starting out in the creative industries work flexibly in freelance roles, so will take time to generate higher salaries—their jobs are not only very worthwhile but they contribute to one of the highest growth sectors of the UK’s economy. I am not sure that Minister Lopez, in her reply to the committee’s report, understands that. She refers to

“stringent minimum numerical thresholds for student outcomes”.


Does the Minister not accept that reducing outcomes to salary alone is both unhelpful and simplistic?

Finally, I come to the issue of careers advice or lack of it, again mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Rebuck. We need institutions and businesses from the creative industries collaborating properly with schools. My noble friend Lord Willis chaired the Youth Unemployment Committee, which recommended that careers guidance should be a compulsory element of the primary and secondary curriculum. This committee’s report recommends the same: expanding programmes that provide guidance for routes into the creative sector. I hope the Minister agrees with that. On which point, would it also be a good idea, as recommended by the report, for the Secretary of State for Education to sit on the Creative Industries Council alongside the DCMS Secretary? This would surely help co-ordination between creative business needs and skills.

However, not all is gloom. There is money promised for cultural education in the sector vision, and this provides the opportunity to plan and fund new activities taking place within and outside schools. It is essential that creative subjects are not shoe-horned into the corner of a crammed school timetable.

Another big positive is the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, who everyone holds in high esteem and who we will hear from in a minute. She is chairing a group coming up with a national cultural education plan. I am glad to say that, in this instance, it appears that the DfE is working alongside DCMS. Let us hope that when the noble Baroness and her team deliver a solution to righting the wrongs I have been discussing—which I am sure they will—the Government will listen and will provide adequate funding support.

To go back to the gloom, this Government’s record is not very good. Where is the arts premium, a manifesto commitment lost? Music hubs have been reduced from 116 to 43. But what a good report. I hope the Government understand that to continue to flourish in this area—in which we excel—we need to invest in our future and our future talent. I end with the words of the noble Lord, Lord Bragg:

“Athens managed to become world-renowned through its arts. Two and a half thousand years later, we still gaze at the results with awe”.