Lord Vaizey of Didcot
Main Page: Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Conservative - Life peer)
The Minister for Culture and the Digital Economy (Mr Edward Vaizey)
I am very grateful to have the opportunity to appear before you, Madam Deputy Speaker, in this important debate. I congratulate the hon. Member for Sunderland Central (Julie Elliott) on securing it. This is a wonderful opportunity to debate our hugely successful creative industries. I would also like to use this opportunity to welcome the official culture spokesman for the Labour party, the hon. Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins). I had the chance to welcome him in a Westminster Hall debate yesterday. I made the point that when I made my maiden speech on the Opposition Benches in June 2005, he was on the Government Benches and he followed me in the debate, so he has always had a special place in my heart. Yesterday, I discovered that he is a part-time jazz musician—I am playing for time while I find my notes, by the way—and so brings considerable skill and knowledge to the debate.
The hon. Member for Sunderland Central made a brilliant opening speech, in which she talked about Software City in Sunderland, set up in 2009. It was a brilliant speech because she brought home to me something I found out on referendum day, 23 June, when I went to Newcastle to do my bit to secure the spectacular result we ended up with. I met businesses from Newcastle and Sunderland. One point they made to me was that they felt very strongly that, although they had a lot of support and investment from around the country, in the north-east region it was not well known enough how successful Sunderland and Newcastle are in terms of hi-tech industries. The point they were trying to get across, of course, was that they want to encourage kids at school, or those leaving school to go to college, further education or university, to consider these industries. I went away with a promise, as it were, that I would do all I could to help.
Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)
Given that the Minister is talking about young people in particular, he might reflect on some of the challenges around social mobility and making sure that access to creative industries is available to young people from the most disadvantaged backgrounds.
Mr Vaizey
I completely support the hon. Gentleman on that. I commend in particular the Next Gen group, started by Ian Livingstone, the well-known promoter of the games industry and the founder of many successful games companies. I have also been to some fantastic courses, supported by companies such as Microsoft in further education colleges, which reach out to people from different backgrounds and give them the hands-on skills they need to go straight into employment. The great challenge the creative industries face is giving young people the skills they need. Too often, the courses in further education and universities are too far removed from the world of work in the creative industries. It is changing so fast because of the change in technology, but let me return to some of the excellent speeches in the debate.
Fiona Mactaggart
Will the Minister, who kindly came to the agency events hosted by Battersea arts centre here in the House, reflect on the concept of using creative organisations such as Battersea arts centre to enable and provide mentoring for young people to implement creative ideas?
Mr Vaizey
We are certainly going to look at that. We published a culture White Paper a couple of months ago, which I shall come on to in some detail. Let me first say that one reason why I found myself in difficulty earlier relates to what I have discovered in two debates with the hon. Member for Luton North—that he gives commendably short speeches. I see the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) nodding with some understanding. I strongly commend the hon. Member for Luton North for this particular ability. Short speeches are more than welcome in this place.
Let me say how much I enjoyed hearing the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Chris White), who has done so much to promote the video games industry. I thank him for talking about the arts and widening the scope of this debate. The right hon. Member for Slough spoke about the importance of arts education, to which I shall return in a few minutes. Sadly, I was not in my place to hear the entire speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Selby and Ainsty (Nigel Adams), but I heard him in yesterday’s debate, when he talked so eloquently about copyright. Today, he widened his remarks to include general support for the music industry and particularly for live music. The hon. Member for Dundee West (Chris Law), who is the other co-chair of the all-party group on video games, spoke about Dundee as one of the great homes of video games development. He made yet another valiant bid on behalf of the SNP to take yet more powers from the Westminster Government.
I was not here for the full speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West (Sir David Amess). I was about to say that he was an “unlikely champion” of the arts, but that would be unfair. At Prime Minister’s Questions yesterday, he commended Southend yet again. I have worked out why. When I was drinking in a pub with Tracey Emin a few weeks ago—[Interruption.] Did I say Tracey Emin? The pub landlady came out and told me what a huge fan she was of Margaret Thatcher. On the day that we learn that we were about to get a second female Prime Minister, I recall her saying that she was a huge fan of Margaret Thatcher. She showed me a picture that featured the landlady, Margaret Thatcher and my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West. He has promised me that he will find out where that photograph was taken. We wait to hear, but I think that was the beginning of my hon. Friend’s cultural career.
I commend the hon. Member for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady), particularly for mentioning e-sports, which I passionately support. I am worried that the French are taking e-sports extremely seriously, and we need to promote them here. I was delighted to hear the hon. Gentleman mention them, particularly on a day when Manchester City have signed Kieran “Kez” Brown as its first e-sports professional football player. I also appreciated the hon. Gentleman’s point about local council support. I suspect that the sub-text was an attack on a Labour council from an SNP Member. Nevertheless, the support of local authorities is vital.
Let me thank the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Deidre Brock) for mentioning our very successful publishing industry. We do not talk enough about it, partly because it does not receive the sort of support that the Government give to, say, film and video games. As she rightly pointed out, this is our most successful creative industry. Indeed, Scotland supplies some of our greatest authors. The hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry) expanded the debate even wider, talking about the fashion industry, as well as importantly about work visas, general access to skills and immigration issues post-Brexit.
A number of themes emerged in the debate. One was the unmitigated success of the longest-serving creative industries Minister in recent history! In the last six years, we have seen the exponential growth of the creative industries. Let me try to make a serious point here. These are our most successful industries, growing at three times the rate of the economy. Having done this job in opposition and in government, I have seen an increasing number of colleagues in this place who realise the importance of the creative industries and take them so seriously, and this has been reflected in the contributions of hon. Members today.
The creative industries are affected by very specific issues—including intellectual property protection, about which the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire has spoken eloquently for many years, and access to skills, which has also been raised in the Chamber—but they are highly successful. They are partly turbo-charged by tax credits for film, games and animation, which also extend to the arts, supporting theatre and galleries.
The right hon. Member for Slough rightly drew attention to the importance of arts education. We will differ on the question of whether the arts are being excluded from schools, and I expect that there will be constant debate about it. I personally reject the idea. People may think that an increased focus on science and technology, which perhaps has not been as strong as it could have been over the last few years, somehow means that the arts will suffer, but no one is preventing a headteacher from focusing on the arts and culture. Indeed, I would encourage it. Certainly, working with the present Secretary of State for Education and her predecessor, I have been able to secure important funding for music education and the creation of music education hubs, as well as a number of important programmes to promote heritage and culture.
We are also working on diversity, with the aim of reaching out to more and more people to extend cultural experiences. Our Culture White Paper—the first to be published for more than 50 years—focuses on the cultural citizens programme. We hope to launch a pilot in the autumn, embedding a cohort of young people from schools around the country with arts organisations and giving them a wide experience of the arts.
Wes Streeting
I am grateful to the Minister for giving way again. I especially welcome the work that the Government have done on music hubs. Redbridge Music Service is one of the participants, and it does an outstanding job. May I urge the Minister and his Department to keep a close eye on the consequences of local government funding cuts for many arts and cultural programmes, which are coming under enormous pressure because of the strain on councils’ finances?
Mr Vaizey
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his kind words. He has allowed me to make a further point about the culture White Paper, in which we announced our proposed Great Place scheme. We have seen the huge success of Liverpool’s designation as European capital of culture, and the huge success of the city of culture scheme, initiated by the last Labour Government, which first benefited Derry/Londonderry and will benefit Hull next year. The Great Place scheme is designed to allow local authorities a small amount of funding to create a cultural strategy. The North East Culture Partnership was one of the inspirations for the idea. In the NECP, 12 councils and five universities have come together to create a coherent vision for culture in the north-east. It is important to note that it is a long-term vision, covering not just the next 12 months but the next 15 years.
I agree with the hon. Member for Glasgow North that we should encourage councils to understand the importance of culture in shaping places, creating jobs and bringing communities together, but also in improving health and wellbeing and contributing to education.
Kelvin Hopkins
I agree with the Minister that we should encourage councils to support culture, but when their funding is being squeezed, they have to cut because there is no alternative. Does the Minister not agree that we must provide the funds as well as the encouragement?
Mr Vaizey
I do not want to range too far from my brief and start commenting on local authority funding, but, in my view, that is possible. I object to the fact that culture is always at the back of the queue, and that when it comes to making savings, it is the first thing that some councils look at. However, many imaginative councils—Labour and Conservative, and possibly even SNP—have shown that it is possible to continue to fund culture, and to embed it in many different areas rather than simply putting it in a silo labelled “culture”.
I think that I have covered quite a lot of ground in a slightly bitty way. I have not really put together the narrative that I hoped to put together, partly because I was slightly discombobulated by the pithiness of the remarks of the hon. Member for Luton North, but let me say this. I think that we in the United Kingdom are incredibly lucky to have such extraordinary cultural and creative industries, driven by some remarkable people. They have been supported strongly by Government, particularly through tax reliefs, and also in focusing on skills and a wider strategy.
We must make sure that in a Brexit world we work with the arts and creative industries, which are the calling cards of this fantastic country. We must ensure that they are part of the debate. We must ensure that, as the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) said, they have a voice in a practical way. I can tell her that I came here from a meeting this morning of the inter-ministerial group, where we discussed DCMS-relevant sectors, looking at key business areas across Government. Tourism, the creative industries, the media, and arts and culture were all part of that debate. We have already seconded one very senior civil servant to the Brexit unit. We will make sure, in a practical way, that culture and the creative industries are taken account of, but also, in a more wide-ranging way, that the voices of our artists and creators are heard as we forge a new way forward for the United Kingdom.