Creative Industries (Communications and Digital Committee Report)

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Friday 7th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, there has been so much wisdom shared. I am a member of the committee, and I am glad to be surrounded by other members of the committee—it is like a Sunday School outing; we have can have a cream tea on the Terrace afterwards—particularly because we have been able to give force to the thinking incorporated in the report. At the end of a week when, with the debates on a certain Bill dominating the space, I have had nothing but murderous thoughts about people on the opposite Benches, the debate allows me to emphasise that I have such positive things to say about the chair of the committee. It is wonderful to have a nice antidote to some of my dark thoughts this week. Her skill is terrific. My noble friend Lady Rebuck has already talked about the consensual way that she had us all working, and that is certainly true. Beyond that, to take the recommendations of the report in January through to the Government’s response in April and then the Government’s statements in June, incorporating so much of the thinking of the report, suggests there was a bit more than simply consensual working and that there was focused thinking and follow-through, which seems to me to be very considerable. One quality of the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell—I will get it off my chest now—is that she knows the highways and byways of how politics works and she gets into the kind of web of things. We have our lovely thoughts, we shape them as we can, and then she takes them away and worries away in the right places so that we get some kind of progress.

By the way, it is lovely to respond to the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, who is clearly possessed of all the skills necessary to recognise a fine Methodist preacher when he sees one, and I must pay him my tribute.

My intellectual life was marked seriously by the novels of CP Snow and the idea of The Two Cultures. In those days, it was arts and science. I had a particular proclivity for pure maths, but I could not do it because it was a choice between arts or science, so I ended up with English, French and Latin. None of them gave me any mathematical scope at all. The idea of technology, possibly, and the humanities being two cultures is the one that our report seems to knock on the head. Cross-government working has been mentioned again and again; from a government end, the approach to creative industries must be generic, not departmentalised or compartmentalised. That is the first thing. The other thing is to recognise, as the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, said, that creativity, technology and imagination all work together.

Others have great expertise and life experiences which I do not have; I have others, but not those. I will now share a couple of my experiences. In 10 days’ time, at the Old Street roundabout near Moorgate, a new school will be opened—or rather, a refurbished Victorian school in a very unprepossessing site will be opened. It is the Central Foundation Boys’ School. Around £51 million will produce a brand new school with a fantastic head teacher. The skills that have been referred to repeatedly and the need not to put the thinking of one discipline and another into silos are being incorporated. This is the kind of school that will be equipped with the necessary wherewithal to shape young minds in cross-referencing the ability to think outside the box with science and technology. This will be wonderfully provided for.

It is a state school, it is downtown and it is in Islington. There is nothing special about the catchment area, but the pupils will learn the skills we have been discussing today. I am happy to offer that information for the general interest. How can we do something like that? Because we had £51 million to spend. How many state schools across the land do not have and will not have the wherewithal? Some of their buildings are falling down and they do not have modern, state-of-the-art facilities.

We also have a Central Foundation Girls’ School. Twenty years of my life have gone into governance and the shaping of policy in both these schools. Out in Tower Hamlets, 85% of the girls are Bangladeshi and come to school in their hijabs. At that school, we are bringing back former pupils to remind those caught up in a culture that tends to be inward-looking about what will help them to break into new avenues of understanding, of self-development and of contribution to the common good.

I am very proud of those schools. It is 18 months since I stepped down from my responsibilities there, so I do not declare an interest as there is no conflict. It does, however, seem to incorporate a certain spirit at a young age. When I go for the opening in 10 days’ time, it will all begin with a concert. At one stage, they asked the trustees if we could help them to buy 20 pianos. I have never bought more than one in my life. They need 20 pianos so they can have rehearsal rooms and all the rest of it. That is my first experience.

The other is perhaps more homely. My wife would go over to Tower Hamlets to fetch my grandson, little Thomas—he is not little; he is a teenager now—from his primary school to take him home two days a week. On one occasion, holding his grandmother’s arm, he said, “Grandma, I am a chatterbox. I love talking. It is my grandpa, you know”. He went on to say, “But I’m going to be quiet for a few minutes. Please understand. Don’t worry. My head is bursting with imagination”. At home, his father, who is a mathematician, and his mother, who is a teacher, ensure that he has cross-references to every conceivable thing in the world. He has sat down and explained cosmology to me.

All I want people to understand is that the educational challenge for a nation such as ours is to open people’s minds from the earliest possible age—we heard about seven year-olds building greenhouses—to the possibilities of working with hand and brain, and thinking and feeling, so that the composite whole that comes out of all of that is a creative contribution to the well-being of the land and the improvement of the people who live in it.