Oral Answers to Questions

Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts

Thursday 26th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Grant]

That sounds great. I can’t wait—I love Lancashire hotpot. Yes, please send me an invitation. Many congratulations on those food tourism efforts.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

5. What steps he plans to take to ensure that children learn about or experience the creative arts.

[The Minister for Culture and the Digital Economy (Mr Edward Vaizey)]

It is wonderful to have a question from the hon. Lady. For one terrible moment I thought she might not be here, but I am so pleased to see that she has arrived in time to hear me answer that we believe strongly that children should have every opportunity to learn about and experience the arts. At the beginning of this year, we announced another £109 million for music and cultural education. That takes the amount we have invested in music and cultural education to £400 million in this Parliament.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

Perhaps the Minister would like to have a conversation with his friend the Mayor of London about the state of traffic in south London this morning.

Why has the number of children who experience the creative arts, except for film, declined every year that the hon. Gentleman has been responsible for this field? Why has the number of children studying art, drama and dance—creative subjects—at GCSE fallen so radically while he has been in charge?

[Mr Vaizey]

At the very last Department for Culture, Media and Sport questions of this Parliament, every one of which I have attended, I think the hon. Lady makes a slightly snippy point, particularly as the Taking Part survey shows that participation by children has increased for those aged between five and 10 and stayed at the very high level of 99.4% for those aged 11 to 15. There has been an 8% increase in those taking arts GCSE subjects since 2010 and participation in music, dance, art and design continues.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Grant]

I have met the gentlemen from my hon. Friend’s constituency, and they gave me a fabulous black and yellow rugby shirt, which I put on. They are called the Bumbles, and they are fabulous. I will be happy to have a meeting or discussion with my hon. Friend about funding that event.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

T4. Earlier, the Minister for Culture and the Digital Economy dodged his way around the figures that I cited from the Warwick report about the drastic decline in children’s experience and learning in creative subjects. Perhaps he will respond more positively to another of its recommendations, which is that every publicly funded organisation that deals with cataloguing and archives on the net should be encouraged to use the same mechanisms for the cataloguing of GLAM—galleries, libraries, museums and archives—so that the archives can be more easily accessed and searched by everyone.

[Mr Vaizey]

I was obviously premature in my last answer, Mr Speaker.

I have a lot of sympathy with that recommendation. Putting museum and archive content online and making it easily accessible to both teachers for their lesson plans and students for their learning is an important issue. I will have a number of meetings in the coming weeks to discuss some ideas about it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Harper]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her question and I will be visiting her constituency tomorrow to speak to local businesses—

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

What a surprise.

[Mr Harper]

The hon. Lady says, “What a surprise”, but my hon. Friend is holding an event to talk about getting more disabled people back into work with a number of excellent local employers. The hon. Lady should congratulate her on that, rather than being churlish about it.

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I cannot do better than report what the OECD said, which was that we had a long-term economic plan and effective economic policies, and that the performance of the labour market in the United Kingdom was “remarkable”.