Edinburgh Festivals: Cultural and Economic Contribution

Jonathan Davies Excerpts

Tuesday 8th October 2024 Westminster Hall

[Jonathan Davies (Mid Derbyshire) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East and Musselburgh (Chris Murray) on securing this debate, which is important not just for the city of Edinburgh but for the whole country and beyond.

The Edinburgh festivals make a tremendous contribution to the UK economy. They bring people from around the world to perform and experience music, dance, drama, comedy, literature and culture more generally, and I have been lucky to enjoy them on many occasions. We are lucky to have many arts, music, theatre and cultural festivals across the country offering similar opportunities. The International Gilbert and Sullivan festival, which takes place each August in Buxton, near my constituency of Mid Derbyshire, is one such example.

In 2022, it was estimated that the creative industries contributed about £126 billion in gross added value to the UK economy and employed 2.4 million people, but they are so much more than an item on a balance sheet. They are a vital catalyst that enables people to express and explore ideas, and they bring communities together.

The arts are common to every culture since the earliest times; music, the visual arts, dance and drama provide an opportunity to walk in somebody else’s shoes. They build a more inquiring society, and help us to understand who we are and what it is to have somebody else’s experience. They are also a vital educational tool, but far too often they are not a staple in schools and are not something that people have the opportunity to adequately engage with throughout their lives.

One of the most important roles of festivals such as those that take place in Edinburgh each summer—especially the Fringe—is to be an incubator for young performers, who can test new ideas, grow their confidence and build their profile in front of a truly international audience. But the future of cultural festivals across the country, and all they offer, is being undermined, because increasingly young people do not have the opportunities they should have to benefit from a creative education.

There has been an overall decline of almost 50% in the number of arts GCSE entries since 2010, and some schools no longer offer some arts subjects at GCSE level at all: 42% of schools no longer enter any pupils for GCSE music, 41% no longer enter any pupils for drama GCSE and 84% enter no pupils for dance GCSE.

Increasingly, the creative subjects are becoming the preserve of those with the ability to pay. However, talent has no postcode and every young person should have the right to a creative education. That decline matters—for our economy and the UK’s standing around the world, but also for who we are as people and how we understand the world and interact with each other.

I am delighted that the Labour manifesto commits the new Government to supporting children to study a creative subject until they are 16, and that it will integrate a creative industries sector plan as part of its industrial strategy, creating good jobs and accelerating growth in film, music, gaming and other creative sectors. The new Government are also committed to launching a new national music education network—a one-stop shop with information on courses and classes for parents, teachers and children.

The new Government face huge challenges, and they have inherited an appalling legacy from their predecessor. I urge them to keep the creative industries and arts education at the forefront of their thinking as they undertake their work of national renewal.

[Clive Efford (in the Chair)]

Just to warn the two last Members: I will have to drop their time to three minutes after the hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine).

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Creative Industries, Arts and Tourism (Chris Bryant)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Efford. I should point hon. Members to the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, because I was paid by the Edinburgh book festival a year ago. I note that nobody else has had that to point out.

I will start by paying tribute, as many others have, to Shona McCarthy. She has done a phenomenal job over nine years. She has taken the festival through some of its most difficult moments, and it is striking that 2.6 million people bought tickets this year, which is the fourth highest number in its 77 years. That is absolutely brilliant, and we wish her well.

The Minister—I am sorry, I meant the shadow Minister. We keep on doing this because we are not used to it. I do not think the shadow Minister said that the joke he told was by Mark Simmons—he should attribute jokes. Simmons also had the no. 5 joke, which was:

“I love the Olympics. My friend and I invented a new type of relay baton: well, he came up with the idea, I ran with it.”

[Laughter.] Yes, it was terrible, wasn’t it?

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East and Musselburgh (Chris Murray). It is great to have a lot of new friends, especially from Scotland, and we are delighted to see Edinburgh so well represented. I will try an innovative thing, which is to answer the questions that have been asked as much as I can.

My hon. Friend asked about multi-annual financial planning. In so far as we possibly can, we want to be able to give economic stability to arts organisations, just as we do to local authorities in many other parts of the economy. That is one of the things we are driving towards in the spending review. However, I am afraid I must point him to the fact that there will be a Budget at the end of the month, and I can hear my right hon. Friend the Chancellor in the back of my ear already saying, “That’s far enough, Bryant!”

My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East and Musselburgh asked about cross-UK engagement. I want to make this absolutely clear: I do not want to engage in any kind of cultural battles with Scotland, Northern Ireland or Wales. We should be seeing this as a joint venture. The creative industries are a part of what defines this nation across the world, and we will only do well if we work together to achieve the best outcomes for performers, people who might become performers and the industry as a whole.

My hon. Friend makes a good point about visas. I will take that away and think about how we could work most creatively with the Home Office to make sure we get this right. It is not just about people coming into the UK; I also argue that it is about UK acts being able to tour in Europe. I was absolutely delighted earlier this year to go and see Depeche Mode in Cologne. I have never seen Germans so excited; they just can’t get enough. [Laughter.] Thank you.

My hon. Friend made an important point about crisis support. I am worried about the situation that arose, in particular, for the book festival and Baillie Gifford. He makes a fair point about whether that is the right way to go about making important points about climate change. One of the things we need to do as a Department is look at the whole package of the whole funding of all the arts and creative industries, which used to come from five or six different segments, including local government, which was prominent in that when we were in power before 2010. Most of that funding has completely gone, and philanthropy is struggling outside London and the south-east. We need to look at this in the round.

It is great to see the Chair of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, the hon. Member for Gosport (Dame Caroline Dinenage), in her place, as she always is—she was in your place earlier for a previous debate, Mr Efford. She makes very good points about short lets. The legislation already in place for England and Wales, for which we are now considering how we will implement and take forward secondary legislation, would not apply in Scotland. However, we want to learn some of the lessons of what has happened in Scotland so that we can apply sensible legislation in England and Wales. I thought her point about co-operation was very well made—my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East and Musselburgh made that point as well. It is not just about us: there is a Government in Scotland, and it is also about local government across the whole of the UK. In England, I would argue that it is also about regional mayors, who play a very important part in the creative industries.

My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West (Dr Arthur) referred to quieter parts of the year. It is a very well-made point. I would also argue that there is an issue about quieter parts of the country. It is all very well getting all the tourists to come to London, Oxford, Cambridge, Stratford, Bath and Edinburgh, but if they do not also go to other places—Stirling, I know, has a very fine castle, because I danced the Highland fling in it when I was 12, I think. Making sure that the benefits accrue to the whole of Scotland and to the wider economy is a really important part of what we need in our tourism strategy.

My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West also made a good point about a tourism career. That is something we need to take far more seriously as a country. Why is it that somebody who works in a bar in Paris, or in a restaurant in France, Spain, or wherever, thinks that is a career for life, whereas we think it is somehow a demeaning job, which it is not? We need to completely transform that if we are to transform our tourism opportunities so that we get more than 32 million people coming to the UK.

The omnipresent hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) made important points about Northern Ireland performers—some of the best comedians we have known over the years—coming to Edinburgh and getting an opportunity, and about other festivals. Trying to get the economic possibility for festivals to flourish goes back to the point I was trying to make about the whole package of finances available.

My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire (Jonathan Davies)—a former music teacher, no less— made very good points about other festivals. I am not sure about the Gilbert and Sullivan festival—I am worried now that I might get into trouble. I just remember that line from “Trial by Jury”: “She might very well pass for 42, in the dark, with the light behind her”—

[Jonathan Davies]

“In the dusk”.