Creative Industries: Creating Jobs and Productivity Growth

Baroness Nye Excerpts

Thursday 6th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Nye (Lab)]

My Lords, I warmly congratulate my noble friend on a powerful and very moving maiden speech. He will bring a wealth of experience to this House. My noble friend Lord Kinnock, one of his supporters, described him as being equally at home in the senior common room of an Oxbridge college as the saloon bar of a Welsh working men’s club. It was no surprise that his speech was about music: he is renowned as an expert on folk music, a musician extraordinaire and, possibly more importantly, the king of karaoke. We will also need to check our phones after this debate, as he became the first MP to win the social media MP of the year award, beating Nick Clegg and Jeremy Corbyn.

As he said, he is also a member of MP4, but he was possibly too modest to mention that it has raised over £1 million for charity. He is probably the only member of your Lordships’ House who has had a single that reached number two, sadly just missing that Christmas number one slot. The cover version of “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” was recorded under the banner of Friends of Jo Cox, who, as noble Lords know, was so tragically murdered. As my noble friend said, they are currently looking for a drummer and, if anybody from the House would like to apply, I am sure he would be grateful. They do not have to be fluent in Welsh; he has that covered.

Turning to the debate, I thank my noble friend Lady Thornton for securing it. There are many illustrations of how the creative industries have benefited local communities around the country, as my noble friend Lady Thornton so eloquently described in the case of Bradford 2025. Last week in Hull, people were still talking about the impact that the City of Culture status had on the city, as it had in Glasgow and Liverpool previously. In fact, it was so successful that the Hull City fans took to chanting to away teams, “You’re only here for the culture”—not something you hear often on the terraces. Events such as these, as well as the landmark example of the move by the BBC to Salford—the largest relocation of any public organisation this century—have had an enormous impact on employment and business growth in the area, as well as, in the case of the BBC, the multiplier effect across Greater Manchester and the north-west.

The new Labour Government have recognised the transformative power of the creative sector in driving economic growth, and they have rightly designated it one of the vital eight growth-driving industries at the heart of their industrial strategy. The upcoming creative industry sector plan, led by my noble friend Lady Vadera and Sir Peter Bazalgette, will be of huge importance. Their proposals for tackling the skills gap will be crucial in ensuring the continued success and competitiveness of the UK’s creative industries.

The ecosystem of creative industries, however, works only if the pipeline of talent is strong, and our role as a global leader in the future depends on a sustained supply of national talent. We need to identify, nurture and develop this talent from an early age, which means that every single child in whatever school in Britain should have access to a proper creative education. I make no apology for repeating points so eloquently made by my friend Lady McIntosh. That is why the review of the curriculum announced by the Education Secretary is so vital.

The current EBacc is “regressive”, “severely limits learning”, ignores the skills needed for today’s workforce and fails poorer children. Those are not my words but those of the architect of the national curriculum, the noble Lord, Lord Baker of Dorking. A broader curriculum, giving children and young people access to music, arts and drama, will reap enormous benefits, from improved language development to confidence building. The Chancellor’s announcement in the Budget about expanding the creative careers programme, providing 11 to 18 year-olds with the opportunity to learn more about the full range of jobs in the creative sector and directly engage with the workplace, is also necessary to broaden opportunity for all. As has been said, talent is everywhere but opportunity is not.

Over the past 14 years, there has been a serious decline in students taking arts-related GCSEs and A-levels; universities are cutting creative courses or merging departments; and, according to the Sutton Trust, a higher proportion of students in private schools than in state schools are taking creative subjects at university. With fewer students in state schools taking creative arts subjects, the number of specialist teachers has also declined. Specialist art teachers in primary schools are now a rarity and very little professional development is happening. I welcome the Government’s pledge to recruit 6,500 more teachers, but what steps are the Government taking to address the recruitment, retention and professional development of music, drama, art and design teachers, as recommended by the National Society for Education in Art and Design?

Sixty years ago this month, the very first Arts Minister, Jennie Lee, presented Parliament with the first policy for arts, entitled First Steps. It therefore seems fitting that now is the time for this Labour Government to enthusiastically take the next steps.