Asked by: Justin Tomlinson (Conservative - North Swindon)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, how much Video Games Tax Relief was paid out to companies with production values above £15 million in each year between 2020 and 2023.
Answered by Nigel Huddleston
HMRC publishes statistics on the cost of video games tax relief here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/creative-industries-statistics-august-2023
A breakdown of claims by production budgets is not available. However, within the National Statistics (Video Games – Table 4.2) there is a breakdown by the size of the claim.
Asked by: Justin Tomlinson (Conservative - North Swindon)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, how much Video Games Tax Relief was paid out to companies with production values below £15 million in each year between 2020 and 2023.
Answered by Nigel Huddleston
HMRC publishes statistics on the cost of video games tax relief here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/creative-industries-statistics-august-2023
A breakdown of claims by production budgets is not available. However, within the National Statistics (Video Games – Table 4.2) there is a breakdown by the size of the claim.
Asked by: Justin Tomlinson (Conservative - North Swindon)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what assessment she has made of potential impact of the UK Games Fund on (a) employment, (b) investment, (c) studio formation and (d) IP development.
Answered by Julia Lopez
DCMS is currently evaluating the impact of the updated UK Games Fund, which is providing £13.4million over 2022-2025 to accelerate the growth of the UK games sector. In 2023, an independent evaluator, Alma Economics, was procured to produce a process, impact and economic evaluation of the fund between 2022-2025. This evaluation is due to be completed in Spring 2025 and will assess the impact of the fund across a range of metrics, including employment, investment, business formation and growth, and IP development.
It will also review the longer-term impact of earlier funding administered from 2015 onwards. A previous evaluation of the UKGF in 2019 found that the UK Games Fund had an estimated return on investment of £5 for every £1 spent.
Asked by: Justin Tomlinson (Conservative - North Swindon)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, how many games studios have been supported by the UK Games Fund since its inception.
Answered by Julia Lopez
The UK Games Fund supports the development of new intellectual property (IP) and graduate talent.
The UK Games Fund has provided 308 grants supporting the development of new games IP from UK studios. This includes grants for 27 studios that participated in Tranzfuser, and four studios that participated in the residential programme DunDev. It does not include grants from the new £5 million Content Fund which was launched in September 2023.
Asked by: Justin Tomlinson (Conservative - North Swindon)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what assessment he has made of the impact of Video Games Tax Relief on inward investment into the UK video games industry.
Answered by Nigel Huddleston
HMRC commissioned an independent evaluation of Video Games Tax Relief (VGTR) which included an assessment of the impact on inward investment. The findings can be found here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/video-game-tax-relief-evaluation.
Asked by: Justin Tomlinson (Conservative - North Swindon)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, how many games studios have benefited from Video Games Tax Relief since its introduction.
Answered by Nigel Huddleston
HMRC publishes information on the number of companies that claim Video Games Tax Relief on an annual basis. The latest figures include data up to the 2021-2022 tax year.
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/creative-industries-statistics-august-2023.
Asked by: Justin Tomlinson (Conservative - North Swindon)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what assessment he has made of the potential impact of the Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme on investment in early-stage British-owned businesses.
Answered by Nigel Huddleston
At Autumn Statement 2023, the Government published the report of an independent evaluation of the Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme (SEIS), conducted in 2022. The evaluation explored the impact of the SEIS in meeting its policy objectives and found evidence that it was appropriately designed to mobilise additional investment in start-ups and early-stage companies from private investors, providing those businesses with valuable funding for business development and innovation that would otherwise be difficult to find from other sources. The full report can be found here: Evaluation of Venture Capital Schemes - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
Asked by: Justin Tomlinson (Conservative - North Swindon)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many students took undergraduate degrees in Games and Animation in the academic year 2022-23.
Answered by Robert Halfon
The Higher Education Statistics Agency, which is now part of JISC, is responsible for collecting and publishing data about UK higher education. The latest statistics refer to the 2021/22 academic year.
The number of full person equivalents [1] studying at undergraduate level in the subject area ‘Games and Animation’ [2] in 2021/22 was 13,430, including 4,820 first year enrolments. To note, figures have been rounded to the nearest five. An additional 4,075 full person equivalents, including 1,420 first year enrolments, were recorded in the ‘animation’ category’ [3], which falls under ‘Cinematics and photography’ subjects, and includes other forms of animation, not gaming animation specifically.
More information is available via the following link: https://www.hesa.ac.uk/data-and-analysis/students/table-52.
Updates on the timing of statistics for the 2022/23 academic year are available here: https://www.hesa.ac.uk/data-and-analysis/upcoming.
[1] Counts are on the basis of full-person-equivalents (FPE). Where a student is studying more than one subject, they are apportioned between the subjects that make up their course.
[2] Enrolments in Computer games and animation (code 11-01-06 of the Common Aggregation Hierarchy (CAH) tier 3). More information on CAH codes can be found at the following link: https://www.hesa.ac.uk/support/documentation/hecos/cah.
[3] Enrolments in Animation (code 100057 of the Higher Education Classification of Subjects (HECoS)). More information on HECoS codes can be found at the following link: https://www.hesa.ac.uk/support/documentation/hecos.
Asked by: Justin Tomlinson (Conservative - North Swindon)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment he has made of the importance of the Shortage Occupation List to the UK video games industry.
Answered by Tom Pursglove
The Government agrees with the view of the independent and expert Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) that the Shortage Occupation List (SOL) is only of "negligible benefit" to the UK video games industry – namely reduced visa fees. The industry can use the Skilled Worker route, regardless of whether its jobs are on the SOL.
The main benefit of the SOL is in providing a discount to the general salary threshold for the Skilled Worker route, currently set at £26,200 per year. The going rate for ‘Programmers and software development professionals (Standard Occupational Code: 2136)’ is above the current general threshold of £26,200 at £34,000 per year. Occupations with going rates above the general threshold would not benefit from this discount, as Skilled Workers would need to be paid the higher of the general threshold or the going rate for that occupation.
Asked by: Justin Tomlinson (Conservative - North Swindon)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment her Department has made of the potential implications for its policies of the findings of the Healthwatch publication, Accessible Information Standard: Findings from our evidence review, published in February 2022, on levels of (a) training and (b) awareness of the standard.
Answered by Maria Caulfield
NHS England is responsible for the Accessible Information Standard (AIS), and has completed a review of the AIS considering a wide range of evidence to help ensure that the communication needs of people with a disability, impairment or sensory loss are met in health and care provision.
The review considered the effectiveness of the current AIS, how the standard is implemented and enforced in practice, and identified recommendations for improvement. One of the aims of the review was to strengthen assurance of implementation of the AIS, and a self-assessment framework has been developed to support providers of National Health Service and social care services to measure their performance against the AIS and develop improvement action plans to address gaps in implementation.
Following publication of the revised standard in due course, NHS England will continue work to support its implementation with awareness raising, communication and engagement and updated e-learning modules on the AIS to ensure NHS staff are better aware of the standard and their roles and responsibilities in implementing it. NHS England is developing the updated e-learning training modules on the AIS. NHS England has and will continue to work with the voluntary sector and those with lived experience to ensure that the modules are fully accessible, reflective of people’s experience in using services and cover a range of examples across health and adult social care. These actions should support better and more consistent implementation of the standard.