Covid-19: Cultural and Creative Industries

Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale Excerpts

Monday 26th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The noble and gallant Lord makes an important point. Our approach through the Cultural Recovery Fund has been to try to support the cultural ecosystem. Enabling those institutions to remain viable in turn supports jobs, including those of the musicians who work within them.

[Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale (Lab)]

One of the best ways to help those working in the creative industries—whether self-employed or otherwise—would be to allow them access to paying customers. We are still far behind many other European nations in providing safe access, based on safe design, for people to attend sporting and cultural events. Surely there is now an opportunity for the Government—in advance of the winter, when so many families will be feeling so much pressure from being locked down and under other restrictions—to create a proper plan to reopen our cultural and sporting venues nationally and locally, with limited, safe access. This would ensure that families could go out and enjoy themselves without going into other spaces or staying at home and becoming clinically depressed.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The noble Lord is right that culture and the arts play an important part in our mental health and sense of well-being. That is why we have worked so hard with the sector, providing guidance on reopening; we are now permitting indoor performances with socially distanced audiences. We continue to look at a variety of ways, including wider use of testing and better ventilation so that we can achieve exactly what the noble Lord hopes for.