Creative Industries: Creating Jobs and Productivity Growth

Lord Stevenson of Balmacara Excerpts

Thursday 6th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a privilege to be in a debate that has three maiden speeches. We have already had two brilliant ones, and I am sure the third will be the same. Both the earlier speakers have managed to do something which is quite hard to do in your Lordships’ House: to open up their background and explain their motivations and thinking, and to rely on their experience to show how fit they are to join us. I was very impressed by the speech we have just heard and the previous one from the noble Lord, Lord Brennan. I hope that we will have many more and that the noble Baroness, Lady Griffin, will share with us the experiences that she has had, which are obviously very relevant and appropriate for us in this House. I look forward to it.

I declare my interest as a former director of the British Film Institute and I also want to join others in thanking my noble friend for securing this debate. The noble Baroness, Lady Thornton—who we will have to call “Baroness Bradford” in future—has certainly set a very high standard for what we are talking about. I want to follow her in a lot of what she said, but I will focus particularly on issues that have arisen because of work I have been doing recently.

I have spent nearly seven years in this Parliament helping the last Government get the Online Safety Bill through and making sure that the CMA had the appropriate complementary powers through the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act. Unfortunately, I take the view that we now need to do a lot more.

The market power of monopoly and oligopoly new tech platforms, combined with a change in their approach from being passive mechanisms for promoting the better circulation of ideas and knowledge to becoming active political players, as seems to be happening in America, means that we have to think again. I argue today that, over the last 14 years, our cultural policies have lacked purpose and have been intellectually moribund. We urgently need them to be rethought if we are to see off the threats we see today from the tech giants, aided by GAI, and those who champion them, as they are clearly acting against our best interests, both individually and as a country.

They call themselves “the disruptors”. To defeat this new threat, we need to lead with an aggressive plan to grow and modernise our cultural industries. This means that the Government need to set out clear cultural objectives and invest in them, not just when there is a market failure but for an explicit, additional purpose: standing firm and signalling their support for British values. The following are just three initial suggestions, which I hope the Government will take on and develop.

Our broadcasting system is the envy of the world. Let us use it to promote and celebrate British values. Why not invest heavily in the BBC and public service broadcasting more generally? The forthcoming BBC charter review and licence settlement should wholeheartedly get behind the talent, skill and expertise of the BBC, which informs, educates and entertains us, to ensure that, at least in Britain, there is a system that provides truth, quality and reliable information about the world in which we live.

The BBC World Service already does a brilliant job flying the flag for truth and democracy. The recent cuts and changes of funding sources have affected that. We should reinvest in this precious resource and help it transition to the new technologies.

Our cultural institutions already mentioned—our archives, libraries, museums and galleries, both national and local—are storehouses of what human endeavour can achieve. Our copyright laws and respect for the rule of law are crucial to keeping us on the right path. We must preserve and enhance them, so that all the evidence of what we had and the risks we face if we turn our backs on it is there to see and study.

I have used the term “British values”, and I know it is highly contested. But these disruptors seek to undermine the things that we all hold dear: a democratic polity, respect for the rule of law, freedom of speech, human rights, kindness, positive intergroup relations, community life and universal education. So much that we hold dear is at stake.

The new technologies have improved many aspects of our lives in many ways, but there is a downside. We will need to work very hard to ensure that the controls now being exercised by a few individuals in charge of these new tech giants are not left unchallenged. We already have the tools to do it; we now need to recognise the role our cultural organisations could play and support them.