Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Helen Goodman and Damian Collins

Tuesday 4th March 2014 Commons Chamber

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

7. What assessment he has made of the latest political developments in Ukraine.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

15. What reports he has received on recent developments in Ukraine.

Supporting the Creative Economy

Debate between Helen Goodman and Damian Collins

Thursday 13th February 2014 Westminster Hall

[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.

The Economy

Debate between Helen Goodman and Damian Collins

Tuesday 6th December 2011 Commons Chamber

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

Throughout the debate this afternoon we have been asked to consider that the debt situation that we are in is not as bad as it seems and that we can spend money that we do not have to try and get out of it. That argument lacks any credibility with the money markets.

[Helen Goodman]

That is not what I said.

[Damian Collins]

The hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) is speaking from a sedentary position. I shall come to her remarks, which are pertinent to my constituency, particularly her comments on the habitats regulations and how they impact on the local economy.

Opposition Members have put to one side the seriousness of the debt situation. The other issue that has not been spoken about at all—certainly not by the right hon. Member for Edinburgh South West (Mr Darling) or by the shadow Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls)—is the underlying competitiveness of the economy. When we look at the debt situation and the world economic crisis, which are grave and severe, we should also consider that our economy may not be as fit and competitive and as able to grow the sort of jobs that we will need in the future as we thought it was.

Statistics showing how this country has fallen behind in the competitiveness league tables published by the World Economic Forum are often brushed aside. From being seventh in 1997 when the Conservative party left office, we fell to 13th last year and are 10th now. That means that in 1997 we had the most competitive economy in the European Union. We find ourselves today behind Sweden, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands and Denmark on competitiveness.

On the broader question of infrastructure, which is so important to the competitiveness of our economy, we find that Britain lies in 28th position, according to the latest figures, not rubbing shoulders with France, which is third, or Germany, which is 10th, but instead between Saudi Arabia and the Czech Republic.

--- Later in debate ---

[Damian Collins]

I am not sure what the hon. Gentleman’s critique is of the party that was in power for 13 years and delivered these statistics. The point I made at the beginning of my speech is that after 18 years of Conservative Government Britain’s competitiveness in Europe was much higher than it is now. I do not know what sort of indictment he finds after 13 years of Labour Government, but it sounds pretty damning to me. The hon. Member for Bishop Auckland talked about the habitats regulations, which I will move on to because it is an important point. She was slightly dismissive, but I do not think that she meant to be.

[Helen Goodman]

No, you are dismissive.

[Damian Collins]

She was very dismissive of the significance of the review the Chancellor announced last week on whether the habitats regulations are being used to hamper growth and business development and whether they are being unfairly and unreasonably applied. A particularly pertinent case in my constituency is whether Dungeness nuclear power station in Kent should be allowed on the list of new nuclear power sites, and I have written to the Chancellor to ask him to give it special consideration in the review. There is a huge amount of local support and there are two nuclear power stations there already.

Land was set aside for the creation of a third power station in the 1960s, most of which was disturbed during the building of the first two. The land is within a special protected area next to a Ramsar site that gives special protection not to butterflies, but to vegetation that grows on the shingle banks and to birds. The bird sanctuary was created largely after the building of the existing power stations. The area of development for the new nuclear power station is less than 1% of the protected area, so it would be difficult to claim that building it would damage the integrity of the whole site or destroy the habitats totally. They remain within a large, protected and conserved area and will be protected.

Nevertheless, based on Natural England’s interpretation of the habitats regulations, it was recommended to the Government that a third power station should not be built on the site, and that is the only reason why it cannot be built. It would create thousands of jobs during the construction phase and 500 permanent jobs for its operation. It would be an incredibly important investment, and that is an example of how the interpretation of some of these regulations is impeding growth and investment in our economy. The power station would be built not on a greenfield site in a protected area, but next door to two existing power stations and on land that was set aside for the purpose. I obviously feel strongly about this example because the new power station would help my constituency directly, but it would also be a new energy source in an area of high demand in the south-east of England, close to south-east London.

Another local example is Lydd airport. Extending or building new regional airports is a controversial issue. In my constituency the local council decided some time ago to approve a planning application to expand the airport. There had been a previous public inquiry on that in the 1990s, which had lapsed, so the process has to be gone through again. A private developer who is willing to invest money with the support of the local council, which approved the planning decision, is being put through a costly and lengthy process, wasting hundreds of thousands of pounds, with the prospect of possible judicial review at the end. That is also because of the way the habitats regulations have been interpreted, and during the course of the most recent planning inspector’s inquiry many of the objections were set aside. It is frustrating that these rules and regulations are hampering investment and growth.