Covid-19: Cultural and Creative Industries

Lord Flight Excerpts

Monday 26th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I do not wholly recognise the numbers that the noble Lord cites. We are very clear that we stand by our freelancers across the creative industries, both directly through the Self-employment Income Support Scheme, as well as through major packages such as the £500 million Film and TV Production Restart Scheme. We estimate that this will directly support between 40,000 and 50,000 new jobs in the sector, many of which will be taken by freelancers and the self-employed.

[Lord Flight (Con) [V]]

My Lords, what is the estimated value of the total annual output lost by the cultural and creative industries as a result of Covid-19? What proportion of GDP per annum does this represent?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

As my noble friend knows, the cultural and creative industries have been a critical and rapidly growing part of our economy, representing about £111 billion of gross value added in 2018—or 6% of GDP. We estimate that, up to August 2020, output in arts, entertainment and recreation was about 28.1% lower than in February 2020.