Asked by: Lilian Greenwood (Labour - Nottingham South)
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 the adequacy of funding provided by Arts Council England for cultural activities in the North East.
Answered by Julia Lopez - Shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
His Majesty’s Government is deeply committed to supporting access to high-quality arts and culture across the country, including through public funding to organisations across the North East via Arts Council England.
Through Arts Council England’s 2023–26 National Portfolio, public funding is being provided to 56 organisations (an increase from 47 in the 2018–22 portfolio) in the North East, encompassing theatre, dance, museums, visual arts, literature and libraries. The total investment in the North East through the national portfolio is currently £24.4 million per year – an increase of more than £2.5 million per year compared to the last portfolio.
Between 2020/21 and 2023/24, Arts Council England will have invested over £181 million in arts and cultural organisations in the North East. This includes £8.5 million of public funding through the Government’s Cultural Development Fund, Libraries Improvement Fund, and Museum Estate and Development Fund, administered by Arts Council England. Arts and cultural organisations across the North East also benefited from over £36 million through the Culture Recovery Fund during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Asked by: Lilian Greenwood (Labour - Nottingham South)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, pursuant to the Answer of 27 November 2023 to Question 2570 on British Library: Cybercrime, which services have already been restored; and what is the planned timetable for the remaining services to be restored.
Answered by Julia Lopez - Shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
The final costs of recovery from the recent cyber-attack on the British Library are not yet confirmed. As it has from the outset, the British Library remains in close and regular contact with the Department on the ongoing work to investigate and assess the impact of the attack and to recover services.
Despite the cyber attack, the British Library’s buildings have remained open and well-used throughout, and it has maintained some key services including reading room access for personal study and some limited collection item ordering, exhibitions, learning events, business support, and onsite retail. In the immediate aftermath essential services such as WiFi and event ticket sales were quickly re-established.
On 15 January, the British Library restored a searchable online version of its main catalogue, comprising records of printed books, journals, maps, music scores and rare books. This will enable a manual process of checking availability and ordering to the Reading Rooms. In addition, it will offer access to an increased range of special collection material such as manuscripts and archives. Taken together, these improvements mean that from this date the majority of physical books and special collections held at its St Pancras site will once again be available for use.
Further updates will be provided as the Library continues to recover from the attack.
Asked by: Lilian Greenwood (Labour - Nottingham South)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, pursuant to the Answer of 27 November 2023 to Question 2570 on British Library: Cybercrime, what estimate has her Department made of the cost of restoring services following the cyber attack at the British Library.
Answered by Julia Lopez - Shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
The final costs of recovery from the recent cyber-attack on the British Library are not yet confirmed. As it has from the outset, the British Library remains in close and regular contact with the Department on the ongoing work to investigate and assess the impact of the attack and to recover services.
Despite the cyber attack, the British Library’s buildings have remained open and well-used throughout, and it has maintained some key services including reading room access for personal study and some limited collection item ordering, exhibitions, learning events, business support, and onsite retail. In the immediate aftermath essential services such as WiFi and event ticket sales were quickly re-established.
On 15 January, the British Library restored a searchable online version of its main catalogue, comprising records of printed books, journals, maps, music scores and rare books. This will enable a manual process of checking availability and ordering to the Reading Rooms. In addition, it will offer access to an increased range of special collection material such as manuscripts and archives. Taken together, these improvements mean that from this date the majority of physical books and special collections held at its St Pancras site will once again be available for use.
Further updates will be provided as the Library continues to recover from the attack.
Asked by: Lilian Greenwood (Labour - Nottingham South)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what her Department's expected timeline is of when the service providing payments to (a) authors and (b) other rights holders will be restored following the cyber-attack against the British Library at the end of October 2023.
Answered by Julia Lopez - Shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
The British Library receives public funding via DCMS to run the Public Lending Right scheme. Payments are made annually to eligible authors who register their work. The British Library is making good progress towards issuing Public Lending Right payments before the end of March at the latest, in line with the PLR Scheme legislation.
Asked by: Lilian Greenwood (Labour - Nottingham South)
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 the potential impact of the cyber-attack against the British Library at the end of October 2023 on (a) authors and (b) other rights holders receiving payments via the public lending right.
Answered by Julia Lopez - Shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
The British Library receives public funding via DCMS to run the Public Lending Right scheme. Payments are made annually to eligible authors who register their work. The British Library is making good progress towards issuing Public Lending Right payments before the end of March at the latest, in line with the PLR Scheme legislation.
Asked by: Lilian Greenwood (Labour - Nottingham South)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, when the Government plans to publish its response to its consultation entitled Coronial investigations of stillbirths, which closed on 18 June 2019.
Answered by Maria Caulfield
We remain fully committed to responding to the coronial investigations of stillbirths consultation and setting out the Government’s position. Earlier this month, we published the factual summary of responses to the consultation.
The Department is working closely with the Ministry of Justice to give full consideration to next steps in this area and how Government will respond. We will update the House in due course.
We are clear that we must get this right, given the emotional impact that losing a baby has on families and others involved.
Asked by: Lilian Greenwood (Labour - Nottingham South)
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 the adequacy of funding provided by Arts Council England for cultural activities in the North West.
Answered by John Whittingdale
His Majesty’s Government is deeply committed to supporting access to high-quality arts and culture across the country, including through public funding to organisations in the North West of England via Arts Council England.
Through Arts Council England’s 2023–26 National Portfolio, public funding is being provided to 120 organisations (up from 97 in the 2018–22 portfolio) in the North West across theatre, dance, museums, visual arts, literature and libraries.The total investment in the North West through the national portfolio is currently £49.7 million per year – an increase of more than £7.5 million per year compared to the last portfolio.
Between 2020/21 and 2023/24, Arts Council England will have invested over £428 million in arts and cultural organisations in the North West of England. This includes £13,651,486 of public funding through the Government’s Cultural Development Fund, Libraries Improvement Fund and Museum Estate and Development Fund, administered by Arts Council England. Arts and cultural organisations in the North West of England also benefited from over £120 million through the Culture Recovery Fund during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Asked by: Lilian Greenwood (Labour - Nottingham South)
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 the adequacy of funding provided by Arts Council England for cultural activities in the South East.
Answered by John Whittingdale
His Majesty’s Government is deeply committed to supporting access to high-quality arts and culture across the country, including through public funding to organisations in the South East of England via Arts Council England.
Through Arts Council England’s 2023–26 National Portfolio, public funding is being provided to 139 organisations (an increase from 105 in the 2018–22 portfolio) in the South East of England across theatre, dance, museums, visual arts, literature and libraries. The total investment in the South East through the national portfolio is £45.6 million per year – an increase of over £5 million per year from the last portfolio.
Between 2020/21 and 2023/24, Arts Council England will have invested over £360 million of public money in arts and cultural organisations in the South East of England. This includes £12,439,377 through the Government’s Cultural Development Fund, Libraries Improvement Fund, and Museum Estate and Development Fund, administered by Arts Council England. Arts and cultural organisations in the South East also benefited from over £106 million through the Culture Recovery Fund during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Asked by: Lilian Greenwood (Labour - Nottingham South)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, whether she has had discussions with the Secretary of State for Education on the potential merits of supporting schools with transport costs to theatre productions.
Answered by John Whittingdale
The Secretary of State has regular conversations with the Secretary of State for Education on a number of issues, including on improving access to the arts for school pupils.
In March 2022, the Department for Education updated its pupil premium guidance and recovery premium guidance to make it clear that schools may use these funding streams to fund extracurricular activities, including school trips. Many theatres also offer subsidised travel in a bespoke or targeted manner through their work with community groups and targeted to specific groups. For example, the Lyric Hammersmith regularly offers to fund the cost of transport to enable local schools to visit, and its ‘free panto tickets’ for schools programme has been successfully running for many years.
The Department for Culture, Media and Sport is also working with the Department for Education to publish a Cultural Education Plan, as committed to in the Schools White Paper. This aims to improve access to cultural education for all children and young people in England. The development of the plan is supported by an expert advisory panel, chaired by Baroness Bull, which includes advising on routes to tackle disparities in opportunity and outcomes in cultural education.
Asked by: Lilian Greenwood (Labour - Nottingham South)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, whether she has had discussions with representatives of the art sector on the potential impact of AI on that sector.
Answered by John Whittingdale
HM Government recognises the opportunities presented by artificial intelligence to a range of sectors, including the arts. As set out in the Government’s recent AI White Paper, our goal is to ensure that the UK becomes an AI superpower. It is important, however, that while we harness the benefits of AI, we also manage the risks. This includes risks to the creative and cultural sectors and to copyright-holders.
The Secretary of State and Ministers have held a number of meetings with people and organisations from across the creative and cultural sectors on this issue and on AI more broadly. This includes a meeting in which the Minister for Arts & Heritage, Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay participated, hosted by What Next? in November, during which representatives from small and large arts organisations, freelance creative professionals, academics and other participants from across the country discussed the potential impact of AI on the arts and creative sectors.
DCMS has engaged with the arts and creative sectors to identify areas where AI is being applied through innovation and to understand the sectors’ views – for instance, through a recent meeting held jointly with the Intellectual Property Office and a group of leading sector chief executives.
Last month, the UK also hosted the world's first major summit on AI safety. This summit focused on the risks created or significantly exacerbated by the most powerful frontier AI systems, and looked to ensure that this technology is developed and adopted safely and responsibly. The summit brought together the governments of leading AI nations, technology companies, researchers, and civil society groups. DCMS Ministers and officials also attended the industry-led AI Fringe, which ran alongside the AI Safety Summit, and engaged with representatives from across the creative industries on issues such as research and development for AI in the arts and intellectual property.