Creative Industries

Gareth Snell Excerpts

Monday 27th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Stuart Andrew]

No.

For all the reasons I have mentioned, we as Conservatives backed our creative industries in government. Our record on supporting the creative industries speaks for itself: between 2010 and 2022, those industries grew at more than twice the rate of UK gross value added, expanding by more than 50%. More than 1 million new jobs were created in the sector during that period. During the pandemic, we introduced unprecedented support for the creative industries, including the £1.57 billion culture recovery fund, the £500 million film and TV production restart scheme, and the £800 million live events reinsurance scheme. That support protected over 5,000 organisations and supported 220,000 jobs, ensuring that our creative industries have been able to bounce back.

Our commitment to support the creative industries also extended to significant tax reliefs. We introduced over £1 billion of tax reliefs for the creative industries, including support for filmmakers through the UK independent film tax credit and business rates relief for theatres and cultural venues. This investment complemented our creative industries sector deal, which put £350 million of public and private investment into the sector. A key example is the £37 million and the new devolved powers to the North East mayoral combined authority to create a film and TV powerhouse up in the north-east, which will enable £450 million of private investment to build the new Crown Works studio. This is an important measure as we seek to spread the opportunities for the creative industries right across the United Kingdom.

We published a sector vision setting out our ambition to grow the creative industries by £50 billion and to create 1 million extra jobs in the creative sectors. This sector vision set out not warm words or platitudes, but a real plan backed by real investment. Our plan included a £28 million investment in the Create Growth programme to support high-growth creative businesses across the UK; an additional £50 million for the second wave of the creative industries clusters programme, building on the £56 million announced in 2018; and £3.2 million for the music export growth scheme to enable emerging artists to break into new international markets. It was a real plan backed by real investment to grow our creative industries by £50 billion.

Personally, I do not doubt any of the Ministers’ personal ambitions for the creative sectors. Where the Government are ambitious, we will always seek to be a constructive Opposition, because the potential to grow is huge and the UK has such a great reputation. Equally, we will do our job by highlighting the impact when choices made by the Government pose a significant risk to the sector, because that is the right thing to do.

In opposition, Labour Members promised to

“fire up the engines of our creative economy”,

and said that they would make the creative industries

“central to a decade of national renewal”.

That was a great ambition, which makes it even more confusing that Labour failed to support every single tax relief the Conservatives introduced for these industries after 2010. I am afraid to say that the reality so far is that significant harm is being done by the Government. In the Chancellor’s Budget of broken promises, Labour drove the tax burden up to its highest level, surpassing the amount after the second world war. Far from firing up the economy, they have extinguished growth by introducing a national insurance jobs tax that will cost employers in DCMS sectors £2.8 billion.

[Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am enjoying the right hon. Gentleman’s speech, but while he is talking about the last Government’s record, could he tell me how their plan to defund dozens of creative BTecs and their denigration of creative subjects as Mickey Mouse degrees gives people seeking to study those subjects any confidence that they can go into the pipeline of talent he has talked about?

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[Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

Madam Deputy Speaker, if I were to ask you to name a city in the UK that is a hotbed of creativity—

[Chris Bryant]

Stoke-on-Trent? [Laughter.]

[Gareth Snell]

The Minister has stolen my thunder! As always, he has pre-empted what I was going to say. I was going to say that Stoke-on-Trent is a city that is steeped in history, but fizzing for the future of creativity. We are home to nine Arts Council England national portfolio organisations; we have a burgeoning CreaTech cluster in the Spode building; and we have some of the best performances of theatre-in-the-round at the New Vic theatre, which although not in Stoke-on-Trent is so close to the border it might as well be.

I highlight these points not for the flippant response I should have pre-empted from the Minister, but because all too often when we think about places where creativity happens and where arts and culture thrive, we do not think about places such as Stoke-on-Trent or other historical industrial cities. All too often, those places are written up as wastelands, with derelict buildings shown in articles in The Guardian, rather than the focus being on the things that make them special and strong: our heritage and our future.

Stoke-on-Trent is the only city in the UK that has world craft city status for our industrial history in the potteries. Some of the great creatives of our past are intrinsically linked to Stoke-on-Trent: Wedgwood, Spode, William Moorcroft, Clarice Cliff and Susie Cooper. They are people who had creativity not only in their artistry, but in their industry. They pioneered new methods of working so that we could have the finest bone china, and came up with new techniques for design; the illustrations on the plates, cups and tiles that we all enjoy were at the cutting edge of new methods, technologies, pigments and materials. The creativity that they drew upon as part of their industrial heritage remains, and we have the same skills and burning ambition to demonstrate who we are and what we do in Stoke-on-Trent today.

Some 4,000 jobs in Stoke-on-Trent are linked directly to the creative sector; if the supply chain is included, it would easily be two or three times that number. Some 638 artists and artist organisations are recognised by the Stoke-on-Trent and North Staffordshire Cultural Education Partnership. In 2019, there were 5.5 million tourist visits to Stoke-on-Trent—a narrative that we do not often hear from those who seek to denigrate the city I am proud to call home and represent in this place. Sadly, some of that snobbish approach to my city comes from our nearest neighbours, who seek to use the challenges that our city faces for their own short-term political gain. I doubt that will stop any time soon. However, we are home to “The Great Pottery Throw Down”, which is on Channel 4 on Sunday evenings; Keith Brymer Jones and the team have made pottery glamorous Sunday night TV viewing. It demonstrates that the history of who we are is still very much part of the society and city that we want to be.

[Dr Gardner]

I recently visited the impressive and very funky 1882 ceramics firm based in the World of Wedgwood in my Stoke-on-Trent South constituency, home of “The Great Pottery Throw Down”. The firm impressed upon me its challenges in attracting young apprentices, risking the loss of important creative heritage skills. Does my hon. Friend agree that we must remember the value of pottery and sculpture in our education curriculum review to protect this vibrant industry?

[Gareth Snell]

I agree with my hon. Friend. Our city has children in school who are unaware of our cultural heritage, which is their cultural heritage, and who do not play with clay in the way they should. We have schools that decommissioned their kilns, despite the fact that the children’s parents and grandparents would have trained in those schools, gone into the industry and made good lives for themselves from honest, hard work in what was essentially one of the country’s earliest creative industries.

My hon. Friend is also right about the pipeline of talent. The big creative companies in Stoke-on-Trent tell me that the University of Staffordshire is generating some of the highest quality, most talented graduates in the country. When it comes to computer games, technical productions and animations, the courses at the University of Staffordshire are rated as some of the best, if not the best, in the country. Only this week, three of the big digital creative bodies in Stoke-on-Trent—i-Creation, Lesniak Swann and VCCP—announced their new summer internship. That programme lines young graduates up with professionals working in the creative industry, and shows them what their job and career could be—a job and a career that has value, pride and potential economic benefits for my city, because of the nature of the work that we can bring in.

The Minister will know about the litany of success stories in our city from a Westminster Hall debate that he kindly responded to a few weeks ago. I will not bore the House by repeating that list this evening. Let me simply say that when the Government consider the future of the creative industries and where the talent pool should be—I know that the Minister agrees, so I hope that he reiterates it when he winds up—we should bear in mind that if we can make it work in places such as Stoke-on-Trent, we can make it work anywhere. Young people in my city who enjoy creative education and want to go on to do wonderful things, whether in music, drama, dance, tech or ceramics and pottery, deserve the same opportunities as a child from London or any metropolitan city in the north of England. I hope that, as the new Government foster a new partnership with places such as Stoke-on-Trent, the creative industries can be central to it, so that the names we speak of in 20 or 30 years’ time, when we undoubtedly have this debate again, will be the names of those young people.

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[Saqib Bhatti (Meriden and Solihull East) (Con)]

It is a privilege to wind up the debate on behalf of His Majesty’s Official Opposition. There have been impressive contributions from across the House, and many Members have highlighted how their constituencies deliver for the UK’s creative industries. We heard from the hon. Member for Wimbledon (Mr Kohler), who participated in a punk rock band—the last one to perform at The Roxy, he said, although I think the jury is out on that. We also heard from the hon. Member for Bury North (Mr Frith), who I believe performed at Glastonbury. I do not think he talks about that enough; he should do so more in the future.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Sir John Whittingdale) highlighted the places that made him the man he is today. My hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight East (Joe Robertson) secured a meeting for not just himself but his Labour colleague, the hon. Member for Isle of Wight West (Mr Quigley)—a great example of cross-party working. My hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater (Sir Ashley Fox) made a very serious point about the impact of the Budget on the creative industries. The Chair of the DCMS Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Dame Caroline Dinenage), gave a tour of the power of the creative industries across the country. She is doing an excellent job of holding the Government to account.

As we have heard, the UK’s creative sectors are world-leading. They provide opportunities for young people up and down the country to gain employment and skills that can transform their lives. I welcome the fact that so many Members across the House recognise the potential of the creative industries to grow the economy. The UK’s creative industries are truly formidable. In both cultural and economic terms, they are absolute titans. In 2023 alone, it is estimated that the creative industries contributed around £124 billion to the UK economy—in other words, about 5% of our overall economic output. There has been a steady rise in the value of the creative industries to the UK, from accounting for 4.7% of economic output in 2010 to over 5.2% in 2023. It is important that we in this place recognise their growing importance in economic terms.

Our creative industries are also immense in terms of jobs. Around 2.4 million people work in the sector, which totals around 7.1% of all UK jobs. Although the creative industries are still quite heavily London-based, we see diversification of the sector and clusters of creative industry right across the UK, from the leading video game development hubs in Stoke-on-Trent to the beating heart of Northern Ireland, where the creative industries sector employs 29,000 people. Huge swathes of the UK benefit from our creative industries. I know that at first hand, as a west midlands MP. The remarkable director Steven Knight, who created “Peaky Blinders”, runs an incredible project in Birmingham where he recruits 20% of people from the most deprived neighbourhoods. Steven’s record shows that we must continue to champion our creative industries sector, because it has real potential to drive social mobility and generate economic growth. As “Peaky Blinders” is a huge international success, our creative industries ensure that Brand Britain rules on the international stage.

We cannot measure the value and importance of our creative industries just in economic terms, because their reach is impossible to estimate truly. Government statistics show that between July and September 2023 there were 12.5 million visits to DCMS-sponsored museums and galleries. Given the Government’s desire to ensure that 50 million people come to the UK each year, allowing these cultural hubs to thrive will bring more people to the UK to visit some of our great cultural attractions. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Stuart Andrew) set out, the Conservatives have a proud record of supporting the creative industries. Between 2010 and 2022, the creative industries grew at more than double the rate of UK gross value added, expanding by over 50%. During that period, over one million new jobs were created in the sector. Rather than burdening the creative industries with tax hikes, we introduced over £1 billion of tax reliefs, including the UK independent film tax credit and business rates relief for theatres and cultural venues.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for Maldon set out, during the pandemic we introduced unprecedented support for the creative industries, including the £1.57 billion culture recovery fund, the £500 million film and TV production restart scheme and the £800 million live events reinsurance scheme. That support protected over 5,000 organisations and safeguarded 220,000 jobs, ensuring that our creative industries could bounce back and continue to offer opportunities for young people.

As we have heard, our ambition did not end there. In government, the Conservatives published a sector vision setting out our plan to grow the creative industries by £50 billion and create one million new jobs. These were jobs for young designers, artists, writers, creatives and others who wanted to bring joy, inspiration and opportunities to the lives of others. In this debate, the Government claimed to have similar aspirations for the creative industries and the young people eager to build careers in them, but we know that is simply not true.

Labour Members have spoken warmly about the creative industries, their impact on the economy and the many opportunities that they bring to young people, but the Government’s actions speak louder than their words. The Government know that one in eight young people are not in education, employment or training, and that many lack the essential skills and confidence to progress in work. How did Labour rise to that challenge? It scrapped the National Citizen Service.

The NCS, introduced by the previous Government, was designed to support young people during a crucial time in their life, connecting them to peers from many walks of life. It gave them opportunities to build their skills and confidence, and empowered them to make a difference in their communities. Having delivered over a million experiences to young people, who took part in over 18 million hours of volunteering, the NCS made a real difference. Does the Minister recognise that Labour’s decision to scrap the NCS will mean that fewer young people take up the opportunities presented by the creative sectors? UK Youth has warned that scrapping the National Citizen Service and the youth investment fund, along with other cuts, could lead to a net reduction in central Government funding for youth services in 2025-26, possibly by tens of millions of pounds. That will inevitably hurt the creative sector.

Many Labour Members spoke warmly about the creative sector, but their Government are doing irreparable harm to its industries. The truth is that the Chancellor’s Budget of broken promises raised taxes to the highest level ever and introduced a national insurance jobs tax. Labour slashed retail, hospitality and leisure relief. There is nothing to protect the creative industries from the Deputy Prime Minister’s radical Employment Rights Bill—a ill-thought-through piece of legislation that will bolster the power of the trade unions and take the country back to the 1970s.

[Gareth Snell]

The hon. Gentleman’s point about the trade unions is absolute nonsense, but that aside, he was first elected in 2019. He is on record as publicly supporting former Prime Minister Liz Truss and, according to Hansard, voted for the health and social care levy, which was a larger increase in national insurance across a much broader spectrum. At no point did he raise concerns about the creative industry then, so would he like to take this opportunity to apologise for that, or is this just naked political point scoring?

[Saqib Bhatti]

The hon. Member makes an interesting point. I can see the Whip furiously making notes: “Give the man a job.” He was reading that off the Whip’s handout, and that is all I will say.

Our creative industry sector, and especially the young people within it, will pay the price of the Chancellor’s growth-killing Budget and the Deputy Prime Minister’s radical Employment Rights Bill. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has warned that Labour’s national insurance jobs tax could lead to fewer opportunities. The sad truth is that under this Labour Government, many businesses in the creative sector will not survive. Don’t just take it from me; take it from Sir Nicholas Hytner, the former artistic director of the National Theatre, who warned that Labour’s jobs tax will force businesses to close, or from UK Theatre, which warned that 40% of venues could close in the next five years due to Labour’s autumn Budget. The inevitable truth is that this Labour Government are a threat to the entire creative industry sector.

But it is not just the Government’s rampant socialism that poses a huge threat to the creative industries. [Interruption.] I am glad Government Members are cheering the demise of the creative sector; people in them will be listening. Alongside the catastrophic impact of Labour’s increase in national insurance, there is the Government’s copyright and AI consultation, which is causing deep concern for the creative industries, but also for many Labour Members. The Minister’s preference for a data mining opt-out for the creative industries will place extra burdens on creators, who are rightly concerned that their work is under threat. My hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Dame Caroline Dinenage) and many others made a compelling argument about how damaging the Government’s proposal is.

Given the magnitude of the potential changes to copyright and AI, one would think that the Minister would have allocated significant time for creative industry sectors to raise their views. Instead, during the Christmas break, he rolled out a consultation that finishes just next month. He left the creative industries scrambling to raise their concerns with a Government who refuse to listen.

The Minister also works in the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, so can he tell me why, as my hon. Friend for Gosport mentioned, the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology has refused to meet representatives from the creative sector? I have heard myself just how worried, angry and frustrated the creative industry sector is about this proposal. Does the Minister have any idea about its impact? Has he considered having a full and transparent impact assessment to properly understand how the sector will be harmed by these changes? My right hon. Friend the Member for Maldon put forward some really important points and challenges, and I look forward to hearing the answers to those.

In our last exchange at the Dispatch Box, I asked the Secretary of State questions about her national youth strategy, but my questions remain unanswered. I hope that the Minister, in his closing statement, can address the serious concerns we have raised about Labour’s Budget of broken promises and its radical Employment Rights Bill, as well as the serious issues we have highlighted around the Government’s AI and copyright consultation.

I repeat, slightly changed, the question I asked Secretary of State at the Dispatch Box less than two weeks ago: can the Minister guarantee that the Chancellor, in a desperate attempt to save her job, will not balance the books by putting the burden on the back of our creative industry sector? When I asked the Secretary of State that question, she said that it was tired. Well, I can tell the Minister that Conservative Members will not tire of standing up for our young people; we will not tire of standing up for our creative sectors; and we will not tire of holding the Government to account.

Creative Industries: Stoke-on-Trent

Gareth Snell Excerpts

Tuesday 8th October 2024 Westminster Hall

[Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered support for the creative industries in Stoke-on-Trent.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dame Caroline. I thank Members for joining me in what I hope will be a much better-tempered debate than the one you have just officiated over.

Stoke-on-Trent was and is the crucible of creativity. We were at the forefront of the last industrial revolution, and we are now quietly and diligently leading our very own creative renaissance in the city and the surrounding area. The last measurement suggested that growth in our creative industries stood at about 6.3%, which is in no small part down to the determination of a number of organisations. With your indulgence, Dame Caroline, and that of Members present, I will take a short canter through the A to Z of the cultural organisations and institutions in Stoke-on-Trent that are doing so much excellent work.

Let me start with Appetite, a public arts organisation that has been demonstrating to communities across north Staffordshire not only that public art is available to everybody but the joy that can be had from interaction with and involvement in art, in a way that would not normally have been available to some communities even 10 years ago.

B arts is a wonderful participatory arts organisation that currently has its Bread in Common shop at the bottom of Hartshill Road in my constituency, where it has fused creativity with a burning passion for food justice.

We are also home to some incredibly well-placed and innovative business organisations. Carse & Waterman, a Stoke-based animation company, is doing world-leading work from a converted bank on Stoke high street.

Members will have noticed the change to some of the design work on the crockery and tableware in the Members’ Dining Room, which has all come from Duchess China 1888 in Stoke-on-Trent, where it still manufactures using high-grade bone china techniques, and does so with flair.

On the ceramics front, Emma Bailey is still active in Stoke-on-Trent. She is one of the most beautiful designers, using her talent for creativity and art to keep alive the spirit and patterns of Clarice Cliff, who was of course one of the city’s best-known residents.

Alongside the well-known names we have a growing group of freelancers—I will talk to the Minister about this later—who indulge in the opportunity to turn their creative ability into a viable income. We have a network of individuals who see creativity as a path for their own determination, success and fulfilment, and we need a bit of help to ensure that that can come to fruition.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate. It is a pleasure to see him back in the House, and I thank him for his contribution. He has outlined what is happening in Stoke, and we have the same things across Northern Ireland and in my constituency. In Northern Ireland, creative industries contribute some £1 billion to the economy, and the Department for Communities estimates that they account for some 5% of the entire workforce and 29,000 jobs.

In my town of Newtownards, action has been taken on controlled graffiti, as it costs the council and the Northern Ireland Housing Executive money to cover up illegal graffiti. A company has come up with a real opportunity for the creative sector in possibly employing students from local colleges to partake in action on illegal graffiti. Does the hon. Gentleman feel that is something the creative industries can do to help practically, in all communities?

[Gareth Snell]

The hon. Gentleman, who is my friend, is absolutely right. With the right structure, creativity and public art can go a long way to helping to reduce some of the structural problems we see in our communities, whether that be antisocial behaviour or derelict buildings. If he would ever like to join us for a tour around Stoke-on-Trent, I can show him some of the wonderful public art and particularly some of the murals on our buildings, which not only succinctly tell the story of the city but do so much to brighten up the place in a vibrant way.

I had reached G in my A to Z, so I shall talk about “The Great Pottery Throw Down”, which is not only a wonderful demonstration of the heritage skills we have in Stoke-on-Trent but proof that blockbuster television can be made in Stoke-on-Trent. We are privileged that it is filmed at Gladstone Pottery Museum, which was also the set for “The Colour Room”, a wonderful Sky adaptation of the life of Clarice Cliff. That demonstrates that with the right imagination anything is possible in Stoke.

That imagination is what has allowed us to take some of our heritage buildings back into use. The Spode site in the middle of Stoke town is becoming a createch hub—a place where creative industries and organisations are coming together to work together, not only to share their ideas and aspirations but to put their creative skills to use. That is producing this microcosm of energy and ideas that is having real dividends for those organisations, particularly as they now have a shared apprenticeship scheme that allows individuals from Staffordshire University to see different areas of the creative industries that could be available to them once they graduate.

One of the organisations involved is i.creation. It is run by the wonderful Andy Jackson, who does so much work in terms of community news and helping organisations to tell a better story about who they are.

Just down the road from Andy’s i.creation we have Junction 15, which is technically in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Adam Jogee), but we are one big, happy north Staffordshire family. One of Junction 15’s directors won an Emmy for the work they did at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. [Interruption.] The Minister corrects me—not for the first time—but we will hear his speech later.

We are fortunate in north Staffordshire that underpinning the creative industry are two wonderful universities. Next year, Keele University is bringing in a music production, game design and digital media course, because it realises that growing a pipeline of local talent is important for growing the local creative industry.

One of the companies looking for that pipeline is Lesniak Swann, an award-winning business-to-business marketing organisation. The company has asked me to point out that the creative industry is one of our best export markets because the work we do in the UK is highly desirable to organisations around the world. Lesniak Swann does wonderful B2B marketing work, which is incredibly creative, from its home in Stoke-on-Trent but for companies based in Norway and America. We need to think about where our creative industries can contribute to UK exports.

All this is part of Made in Stoke, a network of entrepreneurs, philanthropists and individuals who have a connection to our city and who want to come together to make it better. One of the strands they are looking at is how individuals who have gone away from Stoke-on-Trent and done wonderful things in arts, culture and creativity can come back to the city to help to inspire the next generation of new and aspiring creatives.

If people do come to Stoke, one of the best places they can visit is the New Vic Theatre, a purpose-built theatre in the round. Again, it is just over the border in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme, but, again, we are one big, happy north Staffordshire family. The work the theatre does is not just about award-winning stage productions that often come down to London’s west end. It also does outreach work through Borderlines, which uses creativity and culture to tackle community cohesion issues and community prejudices through art, drama and music. Both as a theatre and through outreach work, the New Vic has been able to demonstrate that, if they want to be involved, there is a role in culture and creativity even for some of the toughest communities that may not immediately have thought about it.

[Adam Jogee (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend both on securing this debate and for acknowledging the wonder that is north Staffordshire, and not least for acknowledging the brilliant work that takes place at the New Vic Theatre, which is in Newcastle-under-Lyme but not too far away from the Stoke-on-Trent Central border. Through my hon. Friend, I extend to the Minister an invitation to come and see for himself the wonderful New Vic and the great work it does in the community.

[Gareth Snell]

My hon. Friend has stolen my thunder, as I was going to offer the Minister an invitation at the end of my speech. The New Vic is wonderful, and with a creative boundary review it may one day be in Stoke-on-Trent Central—but that is for another debate.

The wonderful and creative heritage of Stoke-on-Trent has produced an Oscar winner. Rachel Shenton, who is currently gracing our screens in “All Creatures Great and Small”, has demonstrated that being from Stoke-on-Trent is not a barrier to creative success or something that should hold people back. I am grateful for the work she does in coming back to the city to talk to young people about the potential for creative careers, be that in acting or theatre.

The process of learning through creativity is something we could all benefit from across the country. That is why I am glad that in my constituency I have a group called the Popcorn Learning Agency, which uses digital design and animation to create high-spec training and learning videos that go around schools throughout the country. The group is also working with some big-name organisations to create in-house opportunities. That is something thousands of people will see day in, day out, and it is all made in Stoke-on-Trent from a lovely small unit with people who are incredibly dedicated to their craft.

The Minister will be wondering what more questions there are—this is the only way I could fit a Q into this alphabet soup. He will know that I will put lots of questions to him at the end.

First, though, I will tell the Minister about Restoke, a civic arts organisation that has been using art and culture to engage some of our most disengaged communities. Its recent production of “The Lotus Eaters” was done in collaboration with the National Theatre, and saw people from Stoke-on-Trent come down to London and perform theatrics and creative industry work in the National Theatre. That is something people do not often associate with Stoke-on-Trent when they think about what we are and what we do.

There is so much going on that one organisation—Stoke Creates, run by the wonderful Susan Clarke—is taking a lead in trying to pull it all together. It is a cultural compact that is basically sitting in the middle of the sector and thinking, “What can we do to bring organisations together?” One of the challenges we have in north Staffordshire is the splendid isolationism in which people operate. Stoke Creates is teasing out the different aspects of what we can achieve and how we can achieve it. It is making the case that if someone wants to do culture and creative industries well, there are few places better than Stoke-on-Trent.

That was demonstrated recently by the exhibition Stoke on Clay, run by a gentleman called Simon, which brought together new ceramic artists for a wonderful display of creativity, making people rethink the material my city is synonymous with. It was a wonderful exhibition at the old Spode museum, bringing together the old and the new and demonstrating that what was our past and heritage is also our future.

Across north Staffordshire we are blessed with some wonderful theatre companies. I want to give a nod to the work of Claybody Theatre, run by Deborah McAndrew and Conrad Nelson. Claybody Theatre has started to think about the story of who we are in Stoke-on-Trent and what makes us who we are, and then to write plays so we can tell our story better. One of our challenges has always been how we tell our story in a way that is engaging. The theatre has put together “Bright Lights Over Bentilee”, a play currently being shown at the Dipping House in Stoke-on-Trent. It talks about the bizarre array of UFO sightings that happened over one of the largest council estates in my constituency. It is a story that in any other circumstances would be unbelievable, but it has been translated into a wonderful piece of theatre, for which I am grateful.

I need to mention the University of Staffordshire, because it is leading the country on e-gaming and high-quality creative design work. It now has a campus down in London, as well as the work that it is doing up in Staffordshire. It recognises that this is a growth industry and is working incredibly hard with partners, agencies and business—crucially, all this is with business —to ensure that the e-gaming industry in north Staffordshire is vibrant, buoyant and suitable for growth. A lot of the people trained by the university go on to work for VCCP, which is another organisation that ought to be name-checked. VCCP relocated from London up to Stoke-on-Trent because it knew that the quality of the graduate work it could get in Stoke-on-Trent was equal to, if not better than, anything it could get out of the London universities, but staff would also get the quality of life that comes with living in north Staffordshire.

All of this comes together because we are a craft city. I am happy that we were recently awarded world craft city status to recognise that our ceramic work and our creative approach to industry is in our DNA. It is who we are and it is what we do. Importantly for our younger generation, it is also about how we translate the opportunities that exist now into real opportunity. That is why, having run through all the letters of the alphabet bar two, I will move on to a couple of questions for the Minister.

First, will he visit and meet some of the organisations, so that he can see first hand the excellent work that we are doing not only in pursuit of our own economic development, but in pursuit of the Government’s own agenda to ensure that creative industries and culture are available to all? Will he consider recognising north Staffordshire as a cultural cluster—something that the last Government were not able to do, but which would give us the standing we need to demonstrate that we are here for the long run?

Will the Minister speak to his colleagues at the Department for Business and Trade to ensure that any industrial strategy that comes forward to encourage growth in the UK looks seriously at creative industries? The creative industries in Stoke-on-Trent are where our growth can come from. That is where we can make a difference to all the organisations that are currently looking to take the next step to becoming vibrant, big, national groups.

Will the Minister also speak to his friends in the Department for Education to ensure that we keep art and creative subjects on the curriculum at B-tech, higher education, further education and A-level? The pipeline of talent that we need to service the expectations that the Minister has will come from young people who are already in education. I will leave him with those three points. I hope he has enjoyed the little tour around my constituency, and I thank him for listening so diligently.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Bryant]

Well, I am also the Minister for tourism, so I feel as if I will be going on a tourism visit. We will see what works as the best kind of visit. I am always a little worried about trying to do too many things in one visit and then nobody gets a proper insight into anything, but we will certainly look at that. My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central makes a good point about creative clusters. It is a key way of developing a real levelling-up strategy.

My hon. Friend’s third question was whether the creative industries will be a key part of an industrial strategy. The Government are working on this at pace, and I can assure him that we are making a strong case for the creative industries being an absolutely essential part of that strategy. I do not think Britain can have a successful future economically speaking—let alone sociologically, and in many other ways—unless that is the case, so I can assure him that it will be.

My hon. Friend asked a fourth question—I am answering all these questions directly; it won’t catch on—about whether we would have conversations with the Department for Education on the curriculum. I will not bother reading out what has been written for me—the answer is yes. We are already having those conversations. We have seen a shocking decline—in the region of 40% to 50%—in the number of students studying music, drama and art over the past 14 years, and we want to reverse that. It is not going to happen overnight, but we have to put all these subjects right back at the heart of the curriculum. That is an essential part of what we have to do.

[Gareth Snell]

I thank the Minister for responding directly to my points—I do not think that ever happened during the entire time I was last in Parliament, so the novelty is not lost on me. On the curriculum, can the Minister ensure that when that conversation happens, there is emphasis on the communities that should have access to that? I know the Minister will do that, but I want it on the record. While having art on the curriculum works fine, often, in working-class communities like mine, it is not seen as being for those people or for those communities. I know the Minister is a great advocate for communities like those we represent. Can he ensure that the DFE understands that it is no good just having art on the curriculum, and that it has to be actively encouraged in communities that ordinarily would not take it up?

[Chris Bryant]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. It will be a complete failure for this country if the only place a student can study an art A-level is at Eton, because it has a good art teacher and art classroom and all the rest of it, or if the only place a student can throw a pot in a school is in a very middle-class area with lots of middle-class parents. I know this from my own experience: in the Rhondda and Ogmore, a vital part of what we do well for the nation is producing people who have excelled in the creative industries, but those people have often had to do so despite not having those opportunities locally. Artists such as Ernest Zobole and Charles Burton were involved in teaching locally, which is important to ensure there is a pipeline for young people who are thinking about art, drama and so on.

I would also argue, incidentally, that a creative education is a force multiplier for all other aspects of education. What is it that many employers want? They want somebody who will be able to confidently answer the phone. That self-confidence is as likely to come from having done a drama course and learned how to speak publicly, to project and use the voice and to be part of a team, or from having sung in a choir or played in an orchestra, as it is from being really good at maths. That is the kind of attitude that we need to adopt.

I do not want to stray too far into the subject areas of the Department for Education, but it is worth pointing out that what is in the national curriculum needs to be advanced in every school, not just some schools. The structure of education in England is obviously different from that in Wales, but I am conscious that we need to take these issues forward.

The main point of this debate, of course, is that the creative industries are an enormous part of our cultural and economic future. They represent £125 billion of value to the UK. My hon. Friend referred to video games, which are a fast-growing sector. Last week, I visited Ubisoft in Newcastle, which represents significant investment; large numbers of people will be working there. Exactly the same is true in Stoke. The video games industry is worth something like £7 billion in the UK now, which I confidently expect to grow in the years ahead—not least because it builds on things that we have been exceptionally good at in the UK, such as producing books, telling stories, creating characters and music and technological development. I played “Assassin’s Creed” last year, very briefly; I was not very good. However, what was fascinating was that its development used archaeologists and historians to make sure that everything that people see on the screen is perfect. That is a whole nexus of creativity that we want to develop.

Growth in this sector over the last 14 years has been higher than in the rest of the economy and we know that it will continue to be higher in the future, as long as we make the right investments and the right decisions. The creative industries sector is a large employer in the UK, employing some 2 million people.

There is nobody here from the previous Government to defend themselves, but I felt that over the last few years that the creative industries sector was denigrated a bit, as if going into the creative industries was not a proper job; ballerinas were told to retrain and things like that. That is not our attitude. We believe that the creative industries are an absolutely essential part of our future economic growth.

My hon. Friend made the point about levelling up, in a sense, although he did not use the term—maybe we need to ditch it. Nevertheless, it is an important point that there are 55 creative industries clusters and 700 micro- clusters around the UK, and this is an opportunity to ensure that that happens everywhere, because talent is everywhere but opportunity is not. That is what we really need to change and that is what our strategy will be devoted to. It is not a “nice to have”; it is absolutely essential to our economic future.

My hon. Friend referred to Stoke as the crucible of creativity, which I think is a reference to the burning of the pottery at the start of the process, although I now have the title of Arthur Miller’s play going through my head; that play slightly ruined my school days. However, he made a very important point about the World Crafts Council granting world craft city status to Stoke. When Clarice Cliff died in 1972 lots of people probably thought that she would be forgotten, but she has now been brought back, not least because of things such as “Antiques Roadshow”. Again, this is a cycle of creativity, whereby different creative industries feed off and enhance one another.

My hon. Friend also referred to video games; I think that it is Junction 15 Productions that won the Emmy for its work on the Beijing Olympics. He is quite right—the industry is worth £7 billion. As I saw in Leamington Spa, it is essential that there is close working with the local university, to ensure that there are people coming through. The course at the University of Staffordshire is world-renowned. That is a really important part of ensuring that people are coming through into the industry, because it has vacancies; in particular, it has vacancies five and 10 years in. That is an important part of the work that we need to do.

I commend the city on developing a cultural strategy for 2022-28. It has been a cross-party process; the strategy was originally introduced by Conservatives and was carried forward by Labour. I wish that every single local authority in the land—as well as the Mayors, many of whom are advancing such plans—had a similar kind of strategy, because in the end all of this has to be delivered at local level, and it is creating that ferment of excitement that enables these things to happen. I commend Stoke for that. As I said earlier, the combination of culture and tech is important; for example, making sure that there is full fibre roll-out across the whole of the city is an important part of making many modern creative industries flourish.

There was a reference to the New Vic Theatre in Newcastle-Under-Lyme. I note that Angela Carter’s “The Company of Wolves” is on at the moment and I also note that the Christmas show is “The Three Musketeers”. Indeed, the publicity for “The Three Musketeers” might be referring to my hon. Friend when it says:

“A spirited country boy arrives in the big city with big dreams”.

There we are; I think that is him to a tee.

I will just make some final points. First, as I have said, creative education is absolutely essential for what we want to achieve, and we also want to reform the apprenticeship levy so that it works much better for creative industries, and so that there is portability and flexibility. Thus far, the levy has not really worked in that regard, but we are working on it.

Secondly, I have an ambition that there should be no impediment for somebody from a working-class, ordinary background from whatever community in the UK, to consider going into the creative industries as a career. All too often, the creative industries have almost become a kind of hereditary industry, because someone can only afford to start in them by taking an unpaid post for a year or two, which is paid for by the bank of mum and dad, or if someone has a parent or another family member who has worked in that creative industry. We need to change that situation completely, so that the full talent of the whole of the UK is embraced.

Finally, we need to ensure that the product of the creative industries is accessible to all, which is about people being able to go to the theatre, going to live art events, see art in their streets and having architecture in their city that is beautiful, and which lifts and inspires. That is the ambition that we have as a Government, and Stoke is beautifully exemplifying it in its crucible.

Question put and agreed to.

Technology in Public Services

Gareth Snell Excerpts

Monday 2nd September 2024 Commons Chamber

[Peter Kyle]

I am afraid that I will not give way a third time, because others have to get in, and otherwise you will give me a glare, Madam Deputy Speaker—if the hon. Gentleman has not yet had one of those, when he does he will understand why I am moving forward at pace.

To build a smarter state, we need to build a state with digital infrastructure that is faster than ever, from the data centres powering cutting-edge AI to the broadband connections creating opportunities for all our communities. We must also manage public sector data as a national strategic resource. For far too long, public sector data has been undervalued and underused. We must replace chaos with co-ordination, and confusion with coherence. That is what the national data library will do. With a coherent data access policy and a library and exchange service, it will transform the way we manage our public sector data. It will have a relentless focus on maximising the value of that data for public good, on growing the economy and creating new jobs, and on delivering the data-driven AI-powered public services that they deserve.

The digital revolution promises to overhaul the way citizens engage with the state, but as with every technological revolution before it, we know that it brings risks. With those risks come uncertainty, instability and, for some, fear. We do not believe that people should have to choose between those two competing visions of our future: between safety and prosperity, and between security and opportunity. By shaping technology in the service of people, we will grow the economy, create jobs and lay the foundations for an inclusive society in which every citizen can see a place for themselves.

[Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

My right hon. Friend is making a fine speech, but could he say a little bit about the cross-Government conversations that should be happening about upskilling and the opportunities for workers? What is cutting-edge technology today can be obsolete in six to 12 months’ time. Is there a plan for a rolling programme of training and upskilling, so that workers who work with technology can keep pace with it as it develops over time?

[Peter Kyle]

I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend—it is fantastic to see him back in his seat, and we can see no better reason why when he makes such incisive contributions. I am in very close touch with the Education Secretary over the skills agenda, and my Department is in very close touch with the Department for Education, because we can only seize these opportunities and ensure that they are available to everybody from every background if we get skills right. At the moment we are not, but there are some pioneering projects that I have visited. We ought to ensure that they are accessible to everybody who needs them. I can assure him that is essential to the conversations we will be having.

Even as we seize every opportunity to build a better future, we will responsibly manage the threats that new technologies pose to our security. The first duty of any Government is to keep our nation safe. Thanks to years of neglect, Britain has been left catastrophically exposed to cyber-attacks, with disastrous consequences for public services and working people alike. Over 10,000 out-patient appointments were postponed following this year’s attack on the NHS in London—that is 10,000 people forced to wait to access the care they needed. If we do not act, we know there will be more attacks to come, and more hours lost in our hospitals and our schools. The Prime Minister has been clear that in an ever more volatile world we will do what is necessary to defend our country from those who seek to do us harm. That is why we are introducing the cyber security and resilience Bill, which will shore up our cyber-defences and protect our public services in the decades to come.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew Griffith]

I hope that the hon. Gentleman will have a chance to speak about exactly that subject later. However, it is critical and, I think, a point of commonality across the House that we can deliver change only through professional and competent civil servants, and it is important that the morale of the Secretary of State’s Department, like that of every other Whitehall Department, is maintained.

[Gareth Snell]

rose—

[Andrew Griffith]

I have finished making my points on this subject, and I am happy to move on in the interests of the debate.

[Gareth Snell]

The hon. Gentleman has talked about the morale of the civil service. Would he care to tell us how he thinks that was affected by a former Prime Minister’s referring to the civil service as “the blob”, and by Cabinet Ministers walking around their offices leaving passive-aggressive little notes asking, “Where are you?” It is very easy to make the snide comments that the hon. Gentleman is making, but it is not very relevant, is it?

[Andrew Griffith]

I accept that we have strayed some way from the important topic that the Secretary of State came here to talk about tonight. Much as I would enjoy continuing this discussion with the hon. Member, I am happy to move on and address more of the Secretary of State’s points.

It was the last Government who launched a wide-ranging public service productivity review to address these issues, and to understand for the first time how technology can transform our economy. It was the last Government—this was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Hinckley and Bosworth (Dr Evans)—who decided to harness the potential of artificial intelligence in healthcare with the NHS AI lab and a £3.4 billion investment fund to cut admin and fast-track diagnoses. I was not 100% clear about this, and I do not want to wilfully misinterpret what was said by the Secretary of State, but I hope that the fund continues and we continue to see that opportunity.

The public have benefited directly from the sort of vast improvements that the Secretary of State talked about, thanks to the last Government’s embrace of technology. It now takes less than three weeks to receive a new passport—often much less—thanks to the adoption of cloud-based working practices. As of March this year, 99% of passport applications were processed within the target timeframe, a performance which, sadly, I do not think many other parts of Government achieve.

Some will have concerns about what the implementation of new technologies in the public sector will mean for those who work in it. If we are honest, we must recognise—and the Secretary of State well knows—that the business case for many new technologies has an impact on workers. The Secretary of State must filter out naysayers, even if they happen to be his party’s union paymasters. Whatever those paymasters say, disruptive technology is good for the public and vital to economic growth.