Supporting the Creative Economy

Damian Collins Excerpts

Thursday 13th February 2014 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the Chairman of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale). This is an excellent report. I welcome the Select Committee’s investigation of how we should best support our creative economy. The hon. Gentleman made the case very well in his opening speech.

The UK’s creative industries are known worldwide for their cultural capacity to shape, influence and inspire. As the hon. Gentleman covered in detail, the success of the British film industry and the choice of this country as a location is a great example of that, as is the British fashion industry. Our fashion designers dominate the catwalks of London, Paris, New York and Milan; British musicians, songwriters and composers top the charts and dominate the international airwaves; and British architects and designers shape skylines and create beauty all around the world. That is important for not just our international cultural presence but the benefits to our economy.

As we have heard, Britain’s creative industries account for more than 1.5 million jobs and contribute more than £70 billion to the economy. That should be all the reason we need to know why it is imperative that we do everything possible within our power to support such an increasingly crucial sector, and it is why the report is right to address issues that affect it, such as the protection of intellectual property, tax reliefs and education and skills.

I chair the all-party group on art, craft and design in education, which was set up to champion high-quality and inclusive arts education in our schools. I therefore particularly welcome the Select Committee’s recommendation, as well as the Secretary of State’s intervention during her speech at the British Museum last month, for STEM—the focus on science, technology, engineering and mathematics—to be expanded to STEAM, as we just heard from the Chair of the Select Committee, to improve the status of arts education in our schools. That recommendation must be supported, especially when there are concerns that changes being implemented by the Department for Education—such as those to discounting codes and the exclusion of creative subjects in the gold-standard English baccalaureate performance benchmark—will turn off the talent tap for our creative industries, so undermining their long-term development.

If we are to support and expand our creative industries, that must be through not just reforms to public funding and protection of intellectual property, as the report calls for, but investment in the future work force by ensuring that children not only have access to high-quality, inclusive arts education, but are positively encouraged and supported to develop their skills.

[Damian Collins (Folkestone and Hythe) (Con)]

It is said that many students who attend private schools have the opportunity to develop greatly their artistic talent and flair through their longer school day and study periods. Does the hon. Lady agree with the Secretary of State for Education that we should consider extending the school day to give more young people the opportunity to study the arts and creativity as part of their everyday studies?

[Mrs Hodgson]

I will come on to the difference between the state and the independent sector later in my speech, but I agree that there is room to extend the school day from, say, 8 am until 6 pm, especially with regard to child care. During that extra time, children can obviously be doing all the extra-curricular stuff that is available in the independent sector. That would be ideal, but the issue is how that is funded and who pays. We know that some schools currently offer extra-curricular lessons in music and other things, but they must be paid for. The divide is between who can and who cannot pay. Nevertheless, we should definitely debate and explore that idea further.

Although the traditional subjects of English, maths and the sciences are and will always be important, so that young people are numerically and scientifically literate in the 21st century, it is also important that young people are creatively and culturally literate. As we have heard, the gaming industry is a perfect example of where both the traditional and the creative can be merged to create competitively skilled employees.

At this point, I should declare an indirect interest as the mother of a young man currently at Teesside university studying computer games art, having done precursor courses at Gateshead college. According to figures cited in the Select Committee’s report, the boxed and digital UK video game retail market was worth almost £3 billion in 2011, so I hope that he is going into a thriving industry and will get a job after all his studies.

Web-based games such as “Moshi Monsters” and “RuneScape” have more than 100 million registered users between them. With two out of every three households playing video games—a number that I am sure will keep rising as they become an ever more pervasive feature of smartphones—it is an industry booming like never before, and it is crucial that our education system is geared towards creating the pioneers of tomorrow, including my son, I hope.

It is right that future games developers should be competent in maths and the sciences, and I welcome the introduction of computing to the English baccalaureate, to allow young people to become literate in coding from an earlier age, but we must remember the important creative aspects of the gaming industry such as drawing and design skills. Hence the title of my son’s course: games art. Those skills have created such British successes as “LittleBigPlanet”, “Tomb Raider” and “Grand Theft Audio”, as we heard from the Chairman of the Select Committee. The most recent edition of “Grand Theft Auto” has sold more than 30 million copies worldwide.

The value of creative subjects lies not only directly in supporting the creative industries, but in imparting the soft skills that benefit young people for employment in other sectors. That is precisely what we mean by a rounded education. As Josie Barnard, senior lecturer in creative writing at Middlesex university, said in evidence to the Select Committee:

“Students who are taught creative writing are taught creative thinking.”

That could be said of all creative subjects, from drama and art to music, all of which involve problem solving and the importance of practice, providing young people with the ability and confidence to overcome situations in the workplace creatively.

Despite all that, reforms implemented by the Department for Education over the past three years have made access to creative subjects harder for young people. According to the Cultural Learning Alliance, the impact of those changes is already being felt, with art GCSE take-up declining by 14% between 2010 and 2013, while geography take-up has risen by 15%. We cannot fail to be cognisant of the effects that the reforms are having.

One of those reforms involves changes to discounting codes, so that subjects such as fine art and photography will be credited as just one GCSE rather than two in the school league tables, even though they have different teaching pathways and practices and distinct teacher specialisms. How is that fair, when pupils are encouraged to take multiple sciences, humanities or languages, with good reason? We would find it absurd to restrict a child by discounting French and German or chemistry and physics, so why do we accept discrimination against creative subjects?

The impact of that discrimination is that schools are pressured to deter or even prevent students from doing similar creative subjects, so as not to effect their league table status. Alongside that has been the introduction of the English baccalaureate as the gold standard performance measure for schools, which has further compounded the focus on the traditional subjects of maths, science and geography, rather than on the creative subjects, to maintain or increase ranking in the school league tables.

In a recent letter to Rachel Payne, senior lecturer in education and media at Oxford Brookes university, the Department for Education stated that it

“recognises that the arts form an integral part of children’s development and believes that every child should experience a high-quality arts education throughout their time at school”.

That prompts the question: why is the Department knowingly and deliberately undermining creativity in our schools? That is not an unsubstantiated criticism. Recent research by Ipsos MORI found that 27% of schools withdrew non-EBacc subjects from their curriculum this academic year, and that art was one of the most commonly withdrawn subjects, at 17%.

Even the Government’s own figures have shown that the take-up of creative subjects decreased in 2012, with design and technology down by 5.1% and art and design down by 2.4% from the previous academic year, while others in the EBacc standard have increased. That decline has rightly drawn criticism from the great and the good of the cultural world. Martin Roth, director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, was recently quoted as saying that

“if subjects such as art, design, music, drama and dance are pushed out of the curriculum, Britain’s creative economy will be destroyed within a generation.”

That is quite a strong statement. Vikki Heywood, chair of the Royal Society of Arts, described the reforms as “half-baked” and warned that they will be detrimental to the potential of our creative industries.

Last November, the inaugural art party conference in Scarborough, organised by Bob and Roberta Smith, was held purely as a reaction to the DFE’s changes. It aimed to promote and celebrate art by providing a forum for discussing the future of art in the UK. That conference brought together organisations such as the National Society for Art and Design in Education, the Art Fund and the Cultural Learning Alliance.

Not only will including art within STEM allow children and young people to gain creative skills, to be dynamic players in the labour market, but it will allow young people from poorer backgrounds to experience the vast array of culture that this country has to offer, and even to have the opportunity to shape our national culture.

I raised this matter in correspondence with the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport late last year, citing concerns that the National Youth Orchestra has been criticised for recruiting extensively from the independent school sector. This brings me to the point made by the hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins) some moments ago. This is not a criticism of the National Youth Orchestra, as all it is doing is recruiting the most talented kids, but this is a shocking indictment of the lack of opportunity and encouragement in our education system for involvement and progression in the arts. The independent sector, rightly, values such involvement highly and, of course, funds it.

Of course, this lack of involvement severely reduces diversity in our cultural sector. That was raised recently by Stephen McGann, who spoke about how young people from working class backgrounds struggle to enter the acting profession, owing to a preference for those in the independent sector who have had access to high-quality drama teaching throughout their school lives.

If the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport is not successful in her campaign to change STEM to STEAM in the eyes of the Secretary of State for Education, the trend in downgrading arts education will continue and a two-tier system will be created, where arts and design subjects are seen as inferior to the traditional subjects, particularly in the state sector.

[Damian Collins]

Perhaps the hon. Lady is using too broad a brush. There are many excellent schools in the state sector. I highlight Brockhill Park school for the performing arts, in particular, which is a comprehensive school in my constituency with an outstanding record in the arts and in getting young people passionate and excited about them. There are many great successes across the state sector, still.

[Mrs Hodgson]

I agree. We can all highlight the exceptional state school that is really good at music, drama or dance, but regarding the majority, the figures speak for themselves. These subjects are being dropped, and in the teaching profession numbers are dropping in initial teacher training for arts and drama teachers. We have to look at this long term. In the short term, we will not see any damage, but if this trend continued in the long term, I definitely believe that we would.

If we are to have high-quality, inclusive arts education, we must have highly qualified teachers. However, there are concerns about the numbers of qualified art and design teachers entering the state system, with just 350 initial teacher education places allocated for art and design teachers in this academic year, compared with just short of 600 in 2009, which is much fewer than the vast majority of other subjects. To respond to the hon. Gentleman’s intervention, those figures show the decline. This is further proof that the Government and the Secretary of State for Education are marginalising creativity, because they regard creative subjects as soft and do not value the opportunities that studying these subjects can bring, and that is why I hope that the Minister can assure current and future parents that their child will be taught to a high standard by a professional teacher who knows how to do it, especially in subjects that not only fill their minds but feed their souls.

If we are to maintain our cultural importance around the world and the creative power of UK plc and, in addition, create a diverse cultural sector made up of people from all walks of life—not just as contributors, but as consumers—we must invest in high-quality, inclusive arts education and allow children to find and develop their talents or simply express themselves through the various artistic mediums available. If not, where will we find the next Julie Walters or Idris Elba—not from our state sector?

If we do not give children the opportunities to creatively express themselves, we will end up jeopardising recent growth and the substantial economic input from our creative industries, owing to a weakened and depleted creative labour market and, indeed, lessened patronage of creative works from a generation who have never been inspired.

The creative subjects feed our soul, so reminding us of the creative capacity of humanity. Why do we all love to listen to music, visit art galleries and see a play or a musical, a ballet or an opera? Because they move us in ways that nothing else can and connect us to our deepest emotions. I hope, therefore, that the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport and this excellent Select Committee report prevail over her Cabinet colleagues on the issue and that the Government take seriously the Committee’s many other recommendations.

--- Later in debate ---

[Damian Collins (Folkestone and Hythe) (Con)]

It always seems when we debate the creative economy that it falls at a good time, because something interesting, exciting or dynamic is always happening. That is particularly true now, as we have the BAFTA film awards, where we anticipate British success, London fashion week, which has gone from strength to strength as one of the major international fashion weeks, and the BRIT awards, where British creativity and excellence is being celebrated. In the nearly four years of this Parliament, we have had many debates on the creative economy and industries. Warnings and concerns have often been raised, some of which have been legitimate and some less so, but we always have these debates in the context of increasing strength, popularity and ingenuity in the creative industries nationally, regionally and locally.

This debate has seen considerable discussion about copyright and IP, so I do not intend to dwell on them too much. Instead, I want to discuss the economic development of the creative industries and, in particular, the role of tax incentives for investment and of clustering, which was considered by the Culture, Media and Sport Committee in its report.

The bedrock of the underlying strength of the UK’s creative industries is Britain’s talent pool and unique heritage, as a recognised leading performer in music, film, drama and arts over many years. Why businesses are coming to this country and investing now has much to do with the tax regime that has been put in place. The production tax credits for film, video games and high-end television drama are bringing production to the UK, and it would not be unfair to say that those industries—in particular, film production and television production—are booming in this country. That is not only good for companies that work in that sector directly, but for the great infrastructure—the great web of businesses—that relies on that investment. The post-production, including the sound production, for a film shot at Pinewood studios would probably take place in Soho and use the talents of a great number of people in that production process, from technicians to musicians and artists, as well as actors.

[Mr Vaizey]

On that note, will my hon. Friend join me in welcoming the advent of the new Industrial Light & Magic base? ILM is the special effects house that grew out of Lucasfilm and it is setting up its UK base in Soho imminently to coincide with the imminent start of production of “Star Wars”.

[Damian Collins]

The Minister gives an excellent example of the sort of investment that the film industry and production industry are bringing to this country. Of course, as he will be aware, we anticipate success in the film awards this year for “12 Years A Slave”, which of course is a film that Britain can be proud of. It is based on a book published many years ago by Penguin. Writers involved in the film industry are an important part of the talent mix. Whether the writers of original scripts or writers who adapt books that have previously been published, they are all part of the same ecosystem.

When I worked in the adverting industry, I was always impressed that Soho could draw on the talents of such a broad base of people, which is why people from around the world come to be here. A film company seeking to make a big feature film can come to the UK and know that we have the facilities to make it and the talents to complete the job at every level. That is what makes working in the creative industry in the UK so exciting.

The development of creative centres of excellence, not only in London but around the country, is an important part of the ecology of the creative economy and its future success. We do not want our creative industries purely to be centred and located in the traditional centres of excellence in London and the south-east; we want to have a strong network of them right across the country. We can see that happening now. Particularly with the investment in Media City at Salford Quays and projects such as the Sharp Project, Manchester city council has come together with members of the business community to create a hub for creativity in that city. Such developments are helping to make Manchester the fastest growing media city, or creative city, in Europe. In Birmingham, there is an important and growing creative hub and community in Digbeth, and in Belfast, around the Titanic centre and the Titanic quarter, near the old Harland and Wolff shipyards, there is another important centre of the creative economy.

Yesterday, I attended an event focused on the creative industries in my constituency and the rest of east Kent, where we looked at the development of creative and digital clusters around the east Kent coast, particularly in Folkestone, Ramsgate and Canterbury. In my constituency of Folkestone and Hythe, we now have more than 200 businesses that can be considered as part of the creative technology economy, according to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport’s definition of that economy. It is a rapidly growing sector employing a large number of people, and that growth is only accelerating in the scope and range of the tasks that the sector is undertaking, as well as in the number of opportunities for work that exist within the sector.

One of the challenges is how we link together these different centres of excellence—these different hubs and clusters—and how we ensure that we have good links, both through broadband infrastructure and transport infrastructure, that connect the hubs in places such as east Kent to the centres of excellence in Tech City in London and elsewhere.

Sleeping Giant Media is a search engine optimisation and social media marketing campaign company based in Folkestone. A few years ago, it was started from nothing and it now employs more than 20 people. There are many reasons why such a company chooses to locate in Folkestone. The quality of life in Folkestone and the low cost of doing business there will be among them, but Folkestone is less than an hour by high-speed rail from one of the world centres of excellence in the creative economy—Tech City in London—and that is a key reason why those businesses are in Folkestone.

Businesses in Digbeth in Birmingham, working in places such as the Fazeley Studios and the Custard Factory, have a great place to do business and a great community of people to work alongside, but it is their proximity to a major global centre of excellence in London that makes it so attractive to be there.

We can have the physical infrastructure and facilities to support an expanding creative economy. The Select Committee underlines the importance of these hubs and clusters. It was right that the Committee visited silicon valley as part of its study tour, because that is a great example of a successful cluster that has given birth to a number of great companies.

It is interesting that companies such as Facebook and Google have been born out of research laboratories and facilities, not only of universities such as Stanford, but out of precursor companies in that industry, such as Hewlett-Packard and Xerox, the success of which spawned further companies. We hope that in London new businesses will come out of our creative and digital economy as it develops, in turn spawning the creation of further businesses down the line and employing yet more people.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer set out his ambition that London should be the tech hub and creative hub for Europe. We are well on the way to achieving that, if it has not already been achieved. One key aspect of making that possible is attracting businesses, investment and talent. We want to see as many people as possible born in Britain taking advantage of the opportunities to work in such a centre of excellence. We also need to ensure that we can bring in the best talent from around the world. At the moment, the industry is growing apace, but we do not currently have enough people to satisfy all the demand. Therefore, having the right policy on visas that allows the most talented people to work in the UK is a crucial issue facing development.

Another element of that development is ensuring that young people have the skills that they need and the understanding to take part in this growing sector of the economy. The importance of young people’s having the opportunity to develop their creative talents at a young age, when at school, through music and the arts has been discussed in this debate. I do not believe that the Secretary of State for Education’s focus on some core academic subjects in any way undermines that. People need good skills and qualifications in those core subjects to do almost anything that they would seek to do; that is an important part of a good education. There is no reason why creativity and artistic talent and flair cannot form part of the curriculum. Schools can do that. A longer school day will give schools many more options in pursuing that.

There are also uses for such talents in other sectors in the creative industry, particularly for young people who might want to work in the video game sector. We want a nation of young people who not only play video games, which are increasingly made in this country and exported around the world, but know how to build them. That is why bringing computer science into the science curriculum, as an equal science alongside chemistry, physics and biology, is an important step. We need more young people learning computer coding at school, so they know the building blocks of computer programming and the creativity needed to build websites, computer games and animation programmes. That should be an important part of the curriculum.

[Paul Farrelly]

I recently went through GCSE choices with my son and saw first hand how the school is being measured and how it felt that it would be measured in future. Once the subjects of that measurement are prescribed, there is a great limit on choice that drives subjects such as computing out of being an effective choice.

[Damian Collins]

I note the hon. Gentleman’s point, but that is why I said that it is important that computer science is given equal standing and equal weight, alongside other areas of the science curriculum, as part of the core science subjects that young people can study. However, we must also consider what people do a long time before they get to GCSE choices. That is why code clubs in primary schools are important.

I saw Google run one of its code club projects at the Folkestone primary academy school in my constituency, getting primary schoolchildren to learn basic programming techniques, which is something that those of us who are old enough to remember did on BBC Microcomputers and Spectrum computers back in the 1980s, although advances in software render that sort of programming redundant. Teaching coding is being brought back to young children of primary school age. Code clubs can be part of extra-curricular activities, as part of a longer school day, as well as being something that young people can do in evenings out of school.

[Sandra Osborne in the Chair]

In Hackney, with the support of Tech City and businesses in that area, a concerted effort is being made to take coding in particular into the schools that surround the Tech City area, so that young people do not grow up just seeing the new glass buildings and office blocks and understanding that people are working there but never acquiring the skills to take advantage of the jobs that are being created. It is very important that we focus on the educational element of developing talent to work not only on the artistic and creative side of the creative industries, but on the technical side, through coding and programme writing and making.

Another important development that the Government are supporting through the Department for Education is studio schools. In Folkestone, we are about to embark on a project to create a new studio school with a focus on the creative industries, where young people will not only learn subjects linked to the examinations that they will take and the qualifications that they will gain, but do so in conjunction with direct work experience as part of the ordinary school day. Studio schools linked to creative businesses in the towns and cities that they serve are an excellent way to provide that and are an important innovation, alongside having more of an emphasis on creativity and creative skills as part of the school curriculum.

The final point that I want to add to the debate about IP is this. I followed very closely the argument made by the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) in the speech before mine. With regard to private copying, we can look at Nick Hornby’s book “High Fidelity” and the film made of it. In some ways, that book and that film celebrate private copying. That is an important part of the story in the book. It is something that everyone has done or certainly people who grew up with records and cassettes have done. Probably everyone in this room has breached copyright law by copying a record on to a cassette or by loading a CD into a computer and copying the contents on to the hard drive. Each time, they are infringing copyright. Some people may consider that once they have purchased an item of music—once they have paid the fee for it—it is theirs to enjoy personally. A change in the law that reflects something that is already commonplace—that people already do—is not necessarily something that we should be frightened of.

I agree with the hon. Lady, though, that when we get to a position where people can share music, in particular, or film or another form of content through the cloud and potentially with a wider audience, they are getting into a remit where they are no longer privately copying but, either intentionally or unintentionally, distributing content. That is a very different matter and something that we must be very careful of. The hon. Lady is right to raise that important point.

[Kerry McCarthy]

May I make it clear that what I suggested would not prevent people from copying things? It would just give the musicians and other artists some compensation by putting an additional levy on the devices that people would use to do that. Twenty-five other EU countries have decided that that is the right way to go. I hope that the Minister will explain just why the UK deserves different treatment.

[Damian Collins]

I understand the hon. Lady’s point. Of course, France has done what she describes for some time. Personally, I think that it is a blunt tool and that the key is to ensure that we do not, particularly as technology develops, make it easier for more people to distribute things. We have talked about the role that search engines play in taking people to sites where they can easily download music for free, in breach of copyright rules. We should clamp down on that.

We have only to look at the predictive search result that comes up when someone types the letters MP into Google. I did that earlier in the debate and the result was for an MP3 converter site where people can download tracks from YouTube directly on to their MP3 player. It is therefore right that we look at the various tools that exist in the internet world and that make it easier for people to infringe copyright. I believe that that is where our energies should lie. We should be careful that a private copying exemption does not have the unintended consequence of allowing people to distribute music through cloud systems such as Dropbox, as the hon. Lady mentioned. We should look at that technical aspect very carefully.

The Select Committee is looking at the role of the BBC in its current inquiry. Technology is playing an important role in how we consume television in particular. The distinctions between television that may be viewed through a portable device, through a satellite or cable subscription or through what we used to call terrestrial television are going. We have a single creative stream, which is distributing through multiple devices. That throws up not only long-term challenges for the role that the BBC licence fee can play in the future, because it is no longer wedded to the purchase of a television set. It also throws up challenges about the way in which different television companies—different content creators—distribute their content and pay a fair licensing fee for the distribution of that content through the multiple channels through which it is being used.

There is a debate to be had between the cable and satellite broadcasters, such as Sky and Virgin, and the old terrestrial television channels, such as the BBC, Channel 4 and ITV, about how they agree on a fair price to pay for distributing someone else’s content through their channels. That is particularly necessary if distributing through avenues where advertising is excluded or can easily be excluded by the consumer. As people consume television in ways that are very different from those in the past, we will have to debate the future of television and how it is funded through different revenue streams, such as the licence fee, advertising or subscription. I do not intend to go into that issue at great length now, but it is one for the future.

--- Later in debate ---

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mrs Osborne.

I congratulate the Select Committee and in particular its Chair, the hon. Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale), on producing a thorough report on an extremely important subject. He waxed lyrical about the great quality of the British creative industries. Whether one looks at the economic or the artistic dimension, we have much to be proud of. That is one reason why Labour Members think it is extremely strange that the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills—not the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, of course—has not included the creative industries among its 11 priority sectors. The creative industries certainly should be a priority sector.

The hon. Gentleman began with a little reference to the Olympic legacy and the need to change the “no marketing rights” protocol to allow people who were involved in the productions for the Olympic and Paralympic games to exploit their success further. I agree with what he said, and I have met representatives from PLASA. In addition, some of my constituents were involved in the building and engineering aspects of the games, and they have also been prevented from exploiting their success to the full. That is a shame, and I hope that the Minister will look again at the matter.

In this debate, a lot of time has been devoted to the important question of copyright protection. I will not repeat in full the remarks I made on Second Reading of the Intellectual Property Bill on 20 January, but I want to highlight what I believe to be the priorities. I agree with the Select Committee that the law is not enforced adequately, and I agree with the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke—[Interruption.] I apologise; I meant my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Paul Farrelly). The Annunciator has not been working properly, so I have had to try to remember all my colleagues’ constituencies, and I clearly made a mistake on this occasion. The point is that the Government do not seem to understand that the copyright issue is urgent, and I am sorry to say that the Minister’s response to the Select Committee report did not demonstrate the necessary zing and zest. During this Parliament, the total cost to the creative industries in our country of people downloading films, television programmes and music will be some £1 billion, which is why it is so important to crack on energetically with tackling the problem.

The Select Committee highlighted the role of search engines and described Google’s efforts as “derisorily ineffective”. From the discussions I have had with both sides of the industry—the publishers and the search engines—I believe that that is a reasonable judgment. The Select Committee rightly states that the Intellectual Property Office should be beefed-up to make it a champion for intellectual property; at the moment, it really is not. My hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) spoke eloquently about the impact that a failure to get to grips with the matter will have on individual artists, particularly when it comes to pay, and she emphasised that many people in the sector have extremely low incomes.

All the comments made about the different exceptions and exemptions, and the complexity of the issues, highlight the importance of dealing with the issues through separate statutory instruments, so that we can look at each matter individually. I hope that the Minister will discuss that with his colleagues in BIS, who will probably take the lead on producing those statutory instruments. I hope that the Government will adopt a joined-up approach. Surely it must be possible to have a regime that protects musicians but does not hinder, for example, scientific researchers in epidemiology departments. Their needs are not the same as the needs of people in the music sector.

I want to draw the attention of hon. Members to the remarks of Roly Keating, the chief executive of the British Library, who has said that the goal is to foster an environment that benefits researchers and creators. That is absolutely right. Separating out the statutory instruments and enabling us to look at them individually will give us a much better chance of producing that environment.

The Committee also looked at funding and finance. It was right to identify that issue, but I am not so confident that its solutions were commensurate with the scale of the problem. Investors are not well informed and do not have sufficient understanding of the value of intangible assets in the sector. The difficulty in securing finance in the sector was brought home to me by some film makers who came to my constituency surgery in Bishop Auckland. The people of Bishop Auckland are creative, imaginative and intelligent, but I have to say that the arrival of film makers at my surgery was a surprise. The film that they had made really could not be further from the “Grand Theft Auto” model—they had made a rather lyrical and poetic film about the lives of hill farmers. They are finding it extremely difficult to move from the first stage, which is having 60 hours’ worth of film, to the next stage of producing something that can be shown and watched. That highlighted for me the difficulties that people in the sector have, particularly outside the M25.

We need a more deliberate and proactive approach from the Government in building partnerships across sectors and skills. I was pleased to receive a briefing from Creative England, and to see the work that it has done in setting up accelerator programmes and commissioning, film innovation and enterprise funds. That is a model for what we need to do, but on a bigger scale.

I also had an interesting meeting with an organisation called the Cultural Capital Exchange. It is a company—run, incidentally, entirely by women—that promotes exchange between universities and the creative and cultural sectors. It has been particularly productive in finding ideas from research for extremely interesting films and television programmes. A more active Government intervention of that kind would support the creative economy even further. It is what the economist Mariana Mazzucato has called “the entrepreneurial state”. We need specialists in finance advice, creative business and management to come together far more.

[Damian Collins]

Does the hon. Lady agree that, outside London, the regional growth funds are playing an active role in supporting creative businesses, and, in particular, that the various enterprise investment schemes have brought a huge amount of private investment into businesses right across the creative sector?

[Helen Goodman]

I was going to say that the demise of the regional development agency and the much reduced resources of the local enterprise partnerships have left rather a gap outside the M25. I know that in Folkestone in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency, people have benefited from a philanthropist whose name escapes me—

[Helen Goodman]

As ever, the Minister is there, ready to help at any moment. Of course, that philanthropy has bolstered considerably what has been going on in the constituency of the hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins), but we need a more structured approach from Government. I will come on to talk about geography.

[Damian Collins]

I am glad that we have managed to get Roger de Haan into the debate somehow, even though, for once, I did not refer to him in my speech. If the hon. Lady wants to come to Folkestone, as she is more than welcome to, she will see that his work has created some of the infrastructure. Companies such as Cognitive Media—an animation company that is doing incredibly well—and other private people are renting office space that he created. They are raising their own money, winning business, growing and doing incredibly well. That story has been replicated right around the country.

[Helen Goodman]

I agree that the creative sector is one of the few sectors that is growing rapidly. I will make my points in a different order to deal with the hon. Gentleman’s intervention. Under the Labour Administration, culture was part of the regeneration programme in Liverpool, Gateshead, which was mentioned, Manchester and Salford; for example, there was the movement of the BBC. Those were big initiatives. The hon. Gentleman will be hard-pressed to find examples of such significance in the current climate. The Government do not have anything comparable to those initiatives that goes beyond the M25.