Economy: Creative Industries

Lord Berkeley of Knighton Excerpts

Thursday 18th June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley of Knighton (CB)]

My Lords, I cannot disagree with a single word that I have heard so far. In fact, when the noble Lord, Lord Bragg, mentioned repetition in:

“A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!”,

I felt that the only retort I could make would be a vocalisation of the opening of Beethoven’s fifth symphony—ba ba ba bom, ba ba ba bom! Those notes were a great beacon to the civilised world in the Second World War. Everything that we create has repetition and variation. It is a synthesis of what has passed. That is why it is so important. In looking forwards, we look backwards and we educate.

I congratulate the Government on honouring their manifesto pledge to empower local people and councils to have more say in the siting of onshore wind farms. This does indeed affect the economy and culture of areas such as mid-Wales, where national monuments such as Offa’s Dyke and Repton’s Stanage Park, which is grade-1 listed, have been under threat of visual blight.

It is in many ways a privilege to stand here in your Lordships’ House as one of several representatives of the creative industry of this country, because the artistic achievements, the sheer talent and the rewards that this part of our society generates are nothing short of magnificent. As we have heard, those rewards are so diverse: they bring £76.9 billion into our economy by the Government’s own figures. They entertain and amuse us and they shine a light on to what it is to be a human being.

Schopenhauer said that because of its non-representational nature and being independent of natural phenomena, music is able to reveal truths about the essence of things, of life indeed, and we know that it can often communicate where words fail. That civilising quality is not restricted to paying audiences or to congregations worshipping in some of the most glorious churches and cathedrals anywhere in the world, or listening to great choirs singing the masterly polyphony of our past—Byrd, Tallis, Gibbons—and now the living work of my colleagues such as James MacMillan, newly knighted, to whom I offer many congratulations. Yet he would be the first to tell you—and he did when he came and performed here at Parliament—that this rich and, for the moment, thriving community must be restocked, as he was clearly doing with the schoolchildren he brought to play to us. Far too many children get little or no music or exposure to the other arts, as the pianist and animateur James Rhodes also told us recently. Yet we know that through music and the arts children thrive and have an emotional outlet and, as with sport, learn to listen and co-ordinate as part of a group.

Let me take an extreme example of the conundrum that we find ourselves in. The news that Sir Simon Rattle is to return to these shores has been welcomed by many, but his desire to see a new concert hall has met with rather more divided enthusiasm. Yet we do not have an orchestral venue in London that can compete with the Wigmore Hall’s acoustics for chamber music, or those of Kings Place. Some say that having a new hall that would be the equal of the Musikverein in Vienna or the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam cannot be contemplated while music education is so underfunded and could really do with the several hundred million pounds being talked about for the new hall. However, Sir Simon Rattle, when he went to the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, was the catalyst for the building of the wonderful Symphony Hall, Birmingham, and I have no doubt that his commitment, charm, celebrity and talent will galvanise some of the wealthy businessmen in the City of London—in other words, tap funds that would probably not anyway be going to music education.

Were that to be successful, we would gain a brilliant new hall without compromising the essential work in schools that we all value so highly. So here is a very practical suggestion for the Minister—one that will cost nothing. Act as an enabler and a motivator to still further the pre-eminence of this country’s standing in the cultural world by giving the capital a hall worthy of those not only abroad but in Birmingham or Manchester.

This issue is interrelated to education, as Sir Simon Rattle would be the first to tell you, because there is not much point in building a fabulous hall if we are no longer getting the young players coming through to refresh our orchestras and ensembles for the future. That includes the hugely successful musicals by the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd-Webber, and the whole of the pop industry as well—this is not an elitist plea. Great musicians work in different areas. Indeed, I have done that during my life and have found it most enriching.

This is an area that is ripe for research and development, yet as we have heard—unlike for the film industry, for example—no funds are available. That is another area that the Government might look at. Additionally, there are no funds at present for librettists to work up a scenario before the exquisitely expensive undertaking of mounting a new opera or musical begins—and so too late in the day something that might have been ironed out at a developmental stage remains to spoil the end product. We all say, “If only, if only”. I know, of course, that money is scarce. I am deliberately trying to assist the Government with ideas that are possibly doable. I accept that the music hubs are a very good development but I really would like to see the Minister from the DCMS holding hands with the Education Minister—we are, after all, talking about the arts community. To further improve music in schools is, I think, the most crucial matter.

That takes me, in a roundabout way, to the BBC and its future. So many artistic achievements are initiated and brought to a wider audience—to those who of course pay for them and the BBC—by the corporation, which is doing a job that we perhaps take for granted. In declaring an interest here as both a composer and a broadcaster, I must say that many guests, especially those from less-privileged backgrounds, who have appeared on my programme “Private Passions” describe the ray of light that was the BBC Third Programme, now Radio 3. The playwright Alan Plater, for example, said that he owed his entire music education completely to the BBC. If I may say so, “In Our Time” on Radio 4 is a quite remarkable tool of enlightenment and education.

Finally, on intellectual property, if the Government wish to safeguard this thriving economy, as they say they do, then they must be alive to the difficulties that all creators face in how to protect their rights, given the avalanche of new technology. Of course, we all embrace the wonders of the internet and the ability to share and spread ideas but, if it is allowed to castrate our recording and publishing industries, we and the Exchequer will suffer grievously. I am not entirely satisfied that the Government have fully got to grips with our—the creators’, and hence the economy’s—needs in this respect. There is so much to celebrate but also much to nurture and reinvest in. As we have heard, many small companies are in desperate straits, but the facts are there: investment in this section of our society reaps incredible rewards.