Creative Sector

Lord Aberdare Excerpts

Thursday 4th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Aberdare (CB)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, has done well to obtain this debate and to introduce it so powerfully at a very timely moment to address the challenge of reviving the creative sector following the impact of Brexit and Covid. I welcome the noble Lord, Lord Spencer of Alresford, to the House. I was particularly struck by his commitment to CSR and his connections in Kenya, with its mountains whose name I am proud to share.

The Chancellor was recently cited as saying:

“For us, in the UK, the creative industries, arts culture is something we are genuinely world-class at.”


The creative sector makes a significant economic impact, is faster growing than most other sectors and calls for skills that are increasingly recognised as essential for business. That is without saying anything about its huge importance to our quality of life as individuals and our soft power. Its success has been based on a strong national ecosystem of talent, skills, experience, facilities, institutions and resources, built up over many years.

I will focus on music and the performing arts. They have been badly hit by Covid-19, as we have heard. I will not repeat the statistics mentioned by the noble Lords, Lord Clement-Jones and Lord Foster, and others. Many schools have cut back on their arts and music teaching, reinforcing an alarming drop in pupils taking music GCSEs and A-levels, especially in state schools.

Government has played an important role in helping the sector to stay just about above water. Its task now is to maintain and enhance the ecosystem on which the sector depends, while continuing to repair the damage done since 2019. Above all, it needs to ensure that the education pipeline of creative skills and talent is expanded, not disrupted or blocked, and that the sector receives the support and investment it needs to complete its recovery and return to growth. I have a fusillade—perhaps it is more like a scattershot—of questions for the Minister about some of the actions that I believe are needed, which I hope he will address either in his response or subsequently.

The Government have promised to

“publish a refreshed national plan for music education next year”,—[Official Report, 25/10/21; col. 516.]

which is welcome—particularly as the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, indicated during Oral Questions last week that it would “focus on disadvantaged children”. What more can the Minister tell us about how the Government have consulted about the plan and how they will seek to bridge the alarming and growing gap between the state and independent sectors in music and arts teaching? For example, will they ensure that funding for music education hubs is on a more secure and predictable basis, rather than putting them in a situation where they have to look at whether they can re-employ their staff on an annual cycle? How do the Government plan to ensure that the laudable aims of the plan are met, unlike those of its predecessor?

There seems to be a disconnect between performing arts education in schools and the work of awarding organisations, such as those accredited by the Council for Dance, Drama and Musical Theatre, offering graded examinations in the performing arts through their own networks of specialist teachers. More than 1.1 million such examinations were taken in the UK in 2019, as against 110,000 entries for GCSEs in dance, drama and music, and 17,500 for A-levels. Might the Minister look at how these two approaches could better reinforce each other and increase and maintain the sector’s access to teaching resources, perhaps by expanding the role of music education hubs to cover this?

How will he ensure that careers advice and guidance fully reflect the opportunities available in the creative sector? When will the Government finally get to grips with the damage done by the EBacc to music and arts teaching in schools? These are questions that other noble Lords have asked. What can he say about the promised arts premium for secondary schools, assuming that this is not another manifesto commitment that the Government plan to abandon?

More broadly, how will the Government ensure that the creative sector as a whole receives the focus, support and investment that its significance and potential deserve? What plans are there to scale up the creative cluster approach? Will the Minister look at updating research and development definitions to enable more R&D funding for the creative sector, as countries such as France, Germany, Italy and South Korea have done? We have fintech and edtech; we also need createch. Will he seek to increase the number of creative apprenticeships available and to provide targeted support for the small firms and freelancers so prevalent in the sector?

I could ask many more such questions—I have not even mentioned touring—but they all point to the need for a comprehensive, integrated policy and spending approach to the creative sector as a whole, joined up across all the government departments involved, to address the Government’s agenda so powerfully set out by the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, and to ensure a healthy and vibrant ecosystem within which creative individuals and businesses can have the freedom and opportunity to do what they do best: innovate, invent and create.