EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement

Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne Excerpts

Friday 8th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne (Con)]

My Lords, I warmly welcome the trade and co-operation agreement and I seek its strengthening. My alma mater is the Royal Academy of Music and therefore I ask: how soon, and how, will the Minister reach agreement on the missing element of the trade and co-operation agreement—namely, music and the creative industries?

Music is key to the global and growing success of our creative industries, whose annual value of £111 million, with 3 million jobs, makes them our second biggest exporter after financial services. We have been the single market’s cultural hub, thriving on the inward and outward exchange of skills afforded by freedom of culture, music and movement—especially of musicians. Indeed, as Shakespeare tells us on soft power:

“The man that hath no music in himself,

Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,

Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils.”

Julius Caesar does not trust Cassius because

“he hears no music …

Such men as he never be at heart’s ease”.

Right across Shakespeare’s plays and poems, we find that he is always on the side of music: seeking, praising and glorying in it, and recognising its powers to move, enhance the moment and express love. He famously refers to music as the food of love, and he mistrusts an absence of music, and those who prevent it in others. That is perhaps a reason why music is the heart of our true soft power.

A single example of our great success in global music is the British Council’s “Selector” music show, which chooses the best UK music every week and shares it with the world. The programme is now broadcast in 30 countries around the globe, including Azerbaijan. It connects a global audience to anything and everything that is exciting in the UK just now. It takes an audience on a virtual tour of the UK, dropping people into cities such as Bristol, Belfast, Cardiff and Glasgow to listen to the best emerging music. The UK-Russia Year of Music reached 48 million Russians regularly. “The Voice” reached 23 countries and 1.5 million children everywhere. But musicians need the capacity to move swiftly and cheaply and to study at the lowest cost. Can the Minister reassure me that his every effort will be trained on achieving those crucial imperatives, without which our world leadership in this most important of creative industries cannot survive?