Creative Industries: Creating Jobs and Productivity Growth

Baroness Griffin of Princethorpe Excerpts

Thursday 6th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Griffin of Princethorpe (Lab) (Maiden Speech)]

My Lords, it is an honour to make my first contribution in today’s debate and I look forward to visiting Bradford, a city I love, with my fellow co-operator, the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton.

I led on the copyright legislation in the European Parliament, and Kevin and I worked together. With everything ranged against us—big money—we won that legislation. It was precisely about the proper remuneration of creatives and artists. This is not part of my speech, but I am thrilled that in this debate we are talking about the fact that we cannot maximise the economic contribution of the creative industries unless we nurture education, children, the arts and artists. I had the privilege of writing the creative industry strategy for the north-west of England, so I am passionate about the creative industries, but it needs to be about all of this.

I am sitting down due to my chronic arthritis, so noble Lords may have to catch me when I fall—and I am certain that they will.

First, I thank noble Lords from all sides of the House for their generosity. I also thank the clerks, doorkeepers, police and staff of the House, without whom I could not have found my way to any debate. I was trained as a young councillor in my 20s in Liverpool by a marvellous woman called Margaret Simey. She said to me, “Theresa, remember that the two most important people in any public building are the cleaner and the caretaker and you’ll never go wrong”. I am so grateful to my noble friends Lord Kennedy of Southwark—I am not a Londoner; I hope I said that right—and Lady Smith of Basildon for their wisdom and kindness.

The first economic impact study of the arts was commissioned in Merseyside in 1988 by the sadly late visionary Peter Booth. This led to evidence to place the cultural industries as a major driver for growth in the Objective 1 European funding programme for Merseyside in the 1990s, a first in Europe. It was European investment that transformed Liverpool when others disgracefully said that that wonderful city could go into managed decline. It culminated in Liverpool being European Capital of Culture in 2008, and I had the privilege of chairing economic and European affairs for Liverpool as a city councillor at that time.

As my colleagues, friends and noble Lords have said, to maximise the creative industries in the Government’s growth agenda—and I know our Ministers will take this—we need to invest in art and artists, designers, regional and youth theatre, writers and the commissioning of new work and cultural programmes in our schools that exclude nobody. It is the creators and the creatives who will drive the content of those industries in the future. We have to invest in people. I am delighted to see the noble Lady, Baroness Benjamin, here today. Her cultural, fun and creative approach to education so inspired me.

In the mass car factory closures of the 1970s, my father was made redundant. There was no plan, no just transition—literally thousands of people unemployed in an instant; they, their families and local communities facing destitution. My dad left school in Donegal at 14, as there were no more schools. A very bright, compassionate man, driven by work to support his family—unemployed. In my young teens, I remember him walking through industrial estate after industrial estate, looking for work.

I am passionate about the right to decent employment, the creative and green agendas, workers’ rights, gender, disability and cultural equality. As an MEP, we commissioned research which proved the link between cases of childhood asthma and the burning of dirty fossil fuels. I had the privilege of chairing and being the president of the European Forum for Renewable Energy Sources. I became Energy MEP of the Year in 2017 for our work in fighting energy poverty. No one should be disconnected through the inability to pay. No one should have to choose between eating, heating or cooling their home. I also had the privilege of moving the resolution to declare a climate emergency across the EU, supported by 28 member states and all EU political parties, apart from the far right. Hearing “27 member states”, not 28, still makes me cry.

In AI, we need ethical and social frameworks. In creating jobs and productivity growth, and in the creative and green sectors we need a just transition, working with our trade unions in advance to train and upskill existing workers and to equip our existing and future workers and our children to access the high-GDP, clean jobs of the future and to drive economic growth and social cohesion—a just transition that leaves no worker, family or community behind. I look forward to working with you all in the future.