Creative Industries (Communications and Digital Committee Report)

Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts

Friday 7th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, three weeks ago I congratulated the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, on securing his QSD on freelancers in the arts and creative industries, but I said then that we needed a fuller debate as soon as possible. I had no expectation that such an opportunity would arrive quite so soon, but I am delighted that today we are able to have a comprehensive debate around the excellent report produced by the Communications and Digital Committee, compellingly introduced by its chair, the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell.

As I did last month, I will highlight the crisis facing grass-roots music venues, to which I was pleased to hear the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, refer a moment ago—but first I want to offer some comments on the committee’s report. The title says it all, really, because our creative future genuinely is threatened unless the Government, either this one or the one who follow them, take note of the powerful messages contained in the report. Given the economic value generated by the creative industries, placing that sector at the heart of any Government’s growth plans ought to be a no-brainer—so I was pleased to hear the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, say that the Chancellor had now added the creative sector to his growth priorities. That is to be welcomed, because hitherto Conservative Governments have not only undervalued the arts and the creative industries but have actively downplayed the role which arts and creative subjects have to play in education, both in schools and at universities.

In terms of the latter, Ministers have in recent years dismissed arts degrees as self-indulgent and virtually worthless, falsely claiming that overwhelmingly the role of higher education should be to produce the engineers, technologists, mathematicians and scientists that the economy of the future will require. Of course, the STEM subjects are important, and we need them to thrive, but that can happen while still leaving sufficient bandwidth for arts and humanities courses. To deny that is to accept the Government’s anti-intellectual view of higher education—something that I find rather ironic when I consider how many current and recent Ministers went from private schools to study PPE at Oxbridge.

That ideology has led to the closure of arts and humanities courses in universities across the country. Last month we saw perhaps the most egregious example, as admirably outlined by my noble friend Lady Rebuck and the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley. The University of East Anglia announced that more than 30 arts and humanities teaching posts were to be cut, perhaps fatally, from one of the most famous creative writing courses in the world. I make no apology to the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, who I see is no longer in his place, for using the term “philistinism”, because many more aspiring writers will be denied the chance to follow Ian McEwan, Kazuo Ishiguro and others, were that course to close.

Equally, the Government’s marginalising of arts and creative subjects in schools is well known. On schools, we have just been treated by my noble friend Lord Griffiths—and I should say I regard all his contributions as a treat—to news of the new school in Moorgate, which I am sure he has downplayed his own role in bringing about. The ultimate success of that school will depend on a combination of factors, but I argue that the key factor in its success will be its teachers. I say in passing that this morning I spent some time in Victoria Tower Gardens, adjacent to Parliament, meeting striking teachers. I think they are being treated disgracefully, and I think it is such a shame that people who have dedicated their careers to bringing forward the next generation have been forced to take strike action to achieve fair pay.

I am a member of the Education for 11-16 Year Olds Committee, and we have heard many witnesses decry the manner in which the introduction of the EBacc in 2014 has squeezed arts and creative subjects from the core curriculum, leading, as many noble Lords have said, to far fewer people now sitting GCSEs in design and technology, music and other creative subjects. After reading this report, I was left with a distinct sense of déjà vu, given the evidence submitted to the Education for 11-16 Year Olds Committee. I will not repeat the damaging statistics on the fall-off in creative subjects, mentioned by several noble Lords.

I also recognise the report’s support for STEM to become STEAM, with the addition of arts subjects. Design and technology continues to flounder as a subject that school pupils are encouraged to take with them from key stage 3 to key stage 4 when they start preparing for their GCSEs. I echo the report’s call for careers education in schools to be developed to include guidance on routes into the creative sector. The committee also shines light on the impact of skills shortages, which are acute in the creative industries, as my noble friend Lady Rebuck highlighted.

All of this should fit like a glove with the development of the Government’s lifelong loan entitlement, which aims to provide people with the ability to upskill and reskill throughout their working lives. To undervalue the role of the arts and the creative industries within that makes no sense at all. Pathways that support more flexible ways to study are needed now more than ever. In 2020-21, the Open University had more than 50,000 students in its faculty of arts and social sciences, enabling people to develop their skills in the creative industries as they earn or juggle study with caring responsibilities. It is instructive to note that the Open College of the Arts will become part of the Open University next month.

I turn now to the crisis facing grass-roots music venues, on whose behalf the Music Venue Trust campaigns vigorously. The Minister used the debate secured by the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, last month, to which I referred earlier, to announce an additional £5 million for Arts Council England’s supporting grass-roots live music fund. That was very much welcomed by the sector, not least because so far this year, one music venue has closed every week across the UK.

That is not because people are losing interest in music; there were 22 million audience visits to a gig in 2022. More than 30,000 people work in this sector, and grass-roots music venues are the research and development department of the UK’s £5 billion-a-year music industry. Eight new arenas are proposed to open in the UK in the next five years, and all will be reliant on the talent pipeline that starts at the small venues that I frequent, such as Ain’t Nothin’ But The Blues in Soho, The Silver Bullet in Finsbury Park and Mercato Metropolitano in Elephant and Castle. But the owners and operators of big arenas have no record of making a financial investment in that pipeline.

I am afraid that I will not be joining the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, to see Springsteen in Hyde Park tomorrow; I prefer more intimate venues. There is no good reason why the promoters of that event, and the other major players in the music industry, should not reinvest in the talent and venues that are supporting it and supplying the next generation of performers. One means of achieving that would be for every ticket sold for each music event at an arena, stadium or major festival to contain a contribution to the grass-roots circuits that supported and developed the talent on which the success of that event depends.

The noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, mentioned the committee’s recommendations on research and development. Currently, R&D tax relief is limited to science and technology applications, but the impact of creative arts and the contemporary music industry supports a multi- billion-pound industry, and the returns are not felt at the grass-roots level. It does not recognise the work done by the creative industries to improve the UK’s economy, through the live music ecosystem, the recording industry and the tourism and hospitality sectors. Most grass-roots music venues operate at a loss when supporting the development of upcoming talent, and their role as a research and development department of the music industry should be recognised by broadening the work that qualifies as R&D to include creative industries and grass-roots music venues.

There is also a strong case for parity with other cultural industries through tax relief. For example, the concessions available to theatres fail to recognise that the inherent risk involved in creating a performance excludes musicians, who often require the greatest investment to produce their tours. If theatre tax relief was amended to performance tax relief, it could be extended to include grass-roots music venues.

I congratulate the committee on producing a report with many positive recommendations for ensuring that this country has a creative future. I very much hope that the Minister will live up to his billing from all sides of your Lordships’ House and that he has a speech that will show that the Government are now prepared to recognise the huge contribution that the creative sector makes, not just to the economy but to the quality of life of so many people.