Lord Foster of Bath
Main Page: Lord Foster of Bath (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)(6 years, 11 months ago)
Lords ChamberMy Lords, UK-led bids for funding projects from Creative Europe have been increasingly successful. Many of them are cross-country projects such as OperaVision, which involves 30 theatres in 19 different countries. As the Minister has already said, the Government have agreed to underwrite the funding of those projects post Brexit, but will they also guarantee the freedom of movement of non-British people involved in such projects, regardless of salary or qualifications, to ensure that the real benefits to the cultural and creative industries of such projects will continue?
The UK will certainly continue to have world-class arts and the DDCMS is working closely with the Home Office and the independent Migration Advisory Committee to ensure that the needs of the arts and cultural sectors are understood. In recognition of the critical importance to the sector of access to world-class talent, the Government recently doubled the number of tier 1 exceptional talent visas available for a number of key sectors, including the creative and cultural sector.