Creative Sector

Earl of Dundee Excerpts

Thursday 4th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Dundee (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, for introducing this debate. I congratulate my noble friend Lord Spencer on his excellent maiden speech.

On the creative industries, I shall briefly connect a few points: their future prospects; the part played by digital technology; their ability to enhance learning and education; and their application at any and every level, whether local, national or international. In view of Covid, however, and as many of your Lordships have done, today we should start by assessing various damage-limitation expedients.

The DCMS Committee of another place has alleged that help arrived too late, precipitating mass redundancies and threatening permanent closure of our cultural infrastructure, while the Public Accounts Committee of another place has claimed that in spite of attempts at compensatory funding many participants are still in great difficulties.

Nevertheless, the Government should be commended for their July 2020 cultural recovery disbursement of £1.57 billion, awarded to more than 5,000 organisations, as since then they also can be for instigating a variety of other useful interventions, including those of last week’s Budget, enabling tax relief for theatre, orchestra, museum and gallery businesses, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, referred.

For 2022 and 2023, what forecasts does my noble friend the Minister make both for the recovery of creative industry jobs, which pre Covid in 2019 had reached 2.1 million, as well as for the sector’s contribution to the United Kingdom economy, which only three years ago rose to 5.9%, at £115.9 billion?

We may take heart that, between 2011 and 2019, the gross value added measure for the creative industries grew four times faster than the rate for the rest of the UK economy. The sector exported £36 billion in services worldwide and accounted for almost 12% of the UK’s services exports. We can also take comfort from the all-win, solid partnership, which is fortunately there to stay, between digital technology and the creative industries, permeating all sectors and now evident within each, from film, TV, music, fashion and design to arts, architecture, publishing, advertising, video games, crafts and so on.

Be that as it may, along with artificial intelligence, digital technology is quite easily misinterpreted, and even incorrectly misunderstood to undermine or replace human minds. Yet as we well know, the opposite is the case, for digital technology does not take over intellectually but instead, and provided in partnership with human thinking and creativity, which come first, is able to innovate or cause many more permutations and constructive results which otherwise, without it, would not have occurred at all.

Another misplaced fear and inaccuracy is that machines and robots, as they proliferate, will disadvantage people. However, research from the United States and Europe indicates that the more creative a job, the less likely it is to be replaced by a machine. That suggests that, to the extent that robots may perhaps do the jobs of men in manufacturing, agriculture and some services, the creative industries then become all the more necessary for generating employment and enabling stable communities. This leads to the aim, shared by all, to attain a much more consistent national spread of creative industries, thereby narrowing the gap between the south-east of England and the rest of the United Kingdom.

Before Covid, while resolving to redress this imbalance, the Government also indicated a 50% increase in reported creative industry exports by 2023, sustained annual growth of 3.9% reflecting £130 billion by 2025, and a million more people employed by 2030. How far would my noble friend now see fit to revise those figures? What plans are there for 2022 and 2023 for the further development of creative clusters within the UK’s cities and regions? In the next couple of years, what targets are there for new partnerships between universities and businesses to strengthen R&D and improve understanding of the sector?

Ironically, during the pandemic the quality of online learning has become even better while its cost has reduced. The British Council is a case in point. Before the pandemic, its traditional business model had relied on the receipt of income from face-to-face English teaching along with some financial support from the FCO. Now its business model has changed, substituting direct teaching with that online, certainly in order to make ends meet and pay back, as required, its current FCO loan of £60 million, yet at the same time without any loss of quality in its language teaching.

The Government’s pre-Covid industrial strategy paper calls for the better teaching of maths, sciences and technical knowledge. All such programmes would be best delivered online. There is as well a strong case to include the humanities within a comprehensive range of subjects. Video games systems, such as those designed in Dundee, already cover a number of subjects with excellent results, particularly when, through use of the Socratic dialogue, learners are also challenged to ask questions and drawn out to give their own opinions on aspects of what they are learning.

Where it already exists, there is no need to replace good teaching at schools and universities. Locally and nationally, the online learning delivery purpose instead is to supplement teaching, as relevant, although occasionally to provide courses in the first place if these should be lacking, such as those covering neglected subjects already referred to by the noble Lords, Lord Berkeley of Knighton and Lord Foster of Bath, and my noble friend Lord Vaizey of Didcot.

Internationally, however, the purpose is different. Within a full range, this is to offer to countless numbers of people abroad whichever subject or subjects they need and want to learn but have not been able so to do owing to an insufficient availability of teaching in their own countries.

My noble friend the Minister will recall that at the recent G7 in June of this year, the United Kingdom, in chairing that summit, has already agreed to assist education internationally. A key issue is that online learning courses should lead to proper qualifications. Just now, as a Council of Europe parliamentarian and through its committee structure, I am writing a report on that. In connection with their G7 commitment, what steps are the Government taking to ensure that any online learning delivered internationally—

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I am sorry, will my noble friend wind up?

[The Earl of Dundee (Con)]

I will just finish.

In summary, the creative industries have a very good prospect. To counteract the current negative economic effects of Covid, ongoing protection is necessary. The Government must also continue to do all they can to spread out from the south-east. A central challenge is to improve and increase education. Through increased online delivery, the UK must now improve education for learners both here and abroad.