Creative Industries: Creating Jobs and Productivity Growth

Lord Cryer Excerpts

Thursday 6th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Benjamin (LD)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as per the register. I thank the noble Baroness for her excellent opening speech and for securing this debate, as it gives me the opportunity to draw attention to the children’s creative industry.

First, I congratulate “Horrible Histories”, which recently received a BAFTA special award for being one of the most successful children’s programmes, influencing millions of children over the years to love and to study history.

This debate also gives me the opportunity to recognise the contribution to growth made by children’s content creators in the UK over the decades. Many are attending the world children’s market Kidscreen in San Diego this month. More than 50 UK companies will be under the banner of UK@Kidscreen, organised by the Children’s Media Conference, which helps the children’s creative industries to survive and thrive.

However, we should not be fooled by this good news, because the survival of quality children’s content is not assured. The children’s creative industry is in turmoil. Writers, musicians, actors and technical staff are not working. All our past well-loved children’s content sectors are struggling; very few have commissions and the majority of the industry is on its knees. This is because children have migrated in huge numbers to platforms such as YouTube, Instagram and TikTok. Also, advertising revenue has fallen on the public service broadcasting channels and is being diverted to YouTube, which does not share the advertising revenue in the same way that the conventional broadcast system used to. This means that producers struggle to generate funding for projects that previously would have been supported by the PSBs.

YouTube does offer revenue, but it is nothing like the upfront guarantees of the old broadcasting system, so the children’s industry is in a race to the bottom. Low-cost content providers, who soon no doubt will be using AI to generate their content, now dominate on YouTube. Children are watching a mishmash of content built on influencers, cheap animation and, at its worst, deeply inappropriate and harmful material that affects their mental health and well-being. The Children’s Commissioner for England’s report on the recent riots revealed that violent, harmful messages, conveyed by some of the most popular social media channels, influenced the children’s behaviour.

Something needs to be done to bring us back to a situation in which our brilliant children’s creative industry can be financed to make great content. New relationships need to be built with the video-sharing platforms, encouraging them to acknowledge that they have a place in society and must make more prominent quality content that is positive, culturally relevant, age-appropriate for young people, impartial and fair. New platforms are the chief influencers of our children and they need to take responsibility for that.

The Government also have a crucial role to play before it is too late, so I ask the Minister: what consideration has been given to enhancing the children’s television tax relief from 24% to at least 34%? This would help attract investment in children’s production, particularly in the case of international platforms which no longer provide children’s content. What consideration have the Government given to encouraging platforms such as Netflix and Disney+ to donate part of their 30% European quota to children’s content—say, 10% of relevant UK content? Is this something that Ofcom could look into?

This is unlikely to solve the crisis on its own. If a level playing field for British media output is desired, some form of government intervention which goes beyond the existing PSB landscape is needed to bring into scope the platforms which children have migrated to. As I keep saying, childhood lasts a lifetime, so let us not ignore the alarm bells and the warnings, for the sake of our children’s future. I look forward to the Minister’s response and to all the maiden speeches today.

[Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Cryer)]

My Lords, I apologise for interrupting but, because there has been some ambiguity about the speaking order today and a few changes made to it, I want to make it clear, so there is no doubt, that the speaking limit for Back-Bench speeches is now five minutes.