Supporting UK Artists and Culture

Debate between Margaret Hodge and Caroline Dinenage

Tuesday 22nd November 2022 Westminster Hall

[Dame Caroline Dinenage (Gosport) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the matter of supporting UK artists and culture.

It is a huge pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. The UK is an international cultural powerhouse. Our arts and creative industries have the capacity to regenerate communities and to drive global exports, and to put a boot up the backside of our stagnant economy, but it feels like we have not always supported or nurtured our world-leading creative talent as we should as a country, or understood our arts and culture as the golden economic goose that it is.

Just look at what the sector currently contributes to the UK. Our creative industries employ 2.1 million people and contribute £116 billion to our economy each year. UK exports were worth more than £37.9 billion in 2019—12% of total UK service exports. The creative industries also help shape the UK’s image around the world. British musicians, artists, writers and actors command a global audience, while many of our cultural beacons draw millions of visitors into the UK. As soft power goes, there is simply nothing like it. That is why we must never underestimate the potential of our arts and culture, and the vital role of its people, the creators and performers, who underpin this success story.

Globally, some modern emerging economies really get this. South Korea’s creative industries have taken the world by storm, with K-pop and drama, from “Parasite” to “Squid Game”, at the forefront. What makes that even more remarkable is the fact that the language is barely spoken outside of Korea. Just as South Korea implemented industrial policy for the export of electronics, cars and chemicals, it applied a policy approach to develop its creative industries. In less than a generation, South Korea transformed from being effectively a third-world country to an industrial powerhouse and the world’s seventh largest cultural player, with its creative cultural sector making nearly $11 billion in exports and supporting 700,000 jobs last year.

Meanwhile, dedicated music or creative industry export hubs have been springing up in countries across Europe, funded by Governments and industry keen to ride the wave of this growing market. At a time when worldwide recorded music trade revenues are set to double by 2030, British music exports could increase to more than £1 billion by the end of the decade. That will require a supportive policy environment that maximises UK export potential against a backdrop of intensifying global competition.

Funds such as the music export growth scheme will be crucial, but we also need a hardcore strategy to underpin this. What do the Government have in mind? Could they look again at the idea of dedicated British music or creative industry export hubs to drive this forward, because at the moment the support is simply not good enough? A creative industries trade and investment board website has had only three posts in the past 12 months, and the Creative Industries Council has just one upcoming event over the next 12 months advertised on its website.

By its very definition, this is an innovative and agile sector. That was demonstrated during the pandemic in how some organisations swiftly pivoted to using digital to ensure that the band played on. One example is the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, which responded to the first national lockdown in 2020 with an exclusive series of live concerts streamed online. During the first six months of this series, it increased its audience by almost 30%, with 65,000 views by audiences around the world. We have digital innovation to thank for that.

Digital has completely transformed how people consume culture and driven appetites for cultural works. A recent survey showed that 81% of people think that accessing cultural works through a digital device is important to their daily lives. Despite this shift, there has not been a corresponding benefit to artists, many of whom operate as creative freelancers. That is why more than three quarters of survey respondents support the Government considering new ideas and initiatives to sustain the UK’s creative industries.

The public understand and value our culture and our creative talent. They also see the huge difference that culture can make in their local neighbourhoods. Funding the arts delivers investment in left-behind communities and aids economic regeneration. There are no two ways about it. There is evidence right across the country. For example, in Margate, thanks to the legacy of local artists such as Tracey Emin, the Turner Contemporary opened in 2011 and has contributed more than £70 million to the local economy in the last decade. This week, I will be really pleased to attend the reopening of Gosport Gallery, part of Hampshire Cultural Trust. That was a massive regeneration project funded by high street heritage action zones. We thank the Government so much for that investment, because it is breathing new life into our beleaguered high streets.

There is no doubt that the Government recognise how arts and culture can be a significant driver of levelling up, and I welcome the recognition that redistributing some of the national Arts Council spend away from London to the regions is a way to achieve that. However, I am going to urge a little bit of caution on the Minister: it needs to be done in a way that supports investments in projects and organisations that can genuinely start a snowball of growth, not as a tick-box exercise and certainly not as tokenism.

Much as I would love to see English National Opera relocate to Gosport, under the current proposals the out-of-London version will receive significantly less funding than its current form, so it will have to stop funding projects like ENO Breathe, its game-changing response to long covid. That has been operating in 85 NHS trusts across the country, including my own. The current proposal risks the work that the ENO has been doing with schools across the country, and it could stop it being able to offer free or discounted tickets to a younger audience. That work means that one in seven of its attendees is now under the age of 35. In fact, it risks the organisation becoming the opposite of what we want and the opposite of what it is—it risks it becoming an elite organisation for those who can afford to pay £300 for a ticket, albeit one outside London.

[Dame Margaret Hodge (Barking) (Lab)]

I am very pleased to rise under your chairship, Mr Hollobone. I congratulate the hon. Member for Gosport (Dame Caroline Dinenage) on having secured this debate. I should declare an interest, in that I chair Theatre Royal Stratford East, in London. I wanted to come in on the issue of English National Opera and the cut that will mean the closure of an absolutely unique facility in London. Does the hon. Lady agree that one cannot level up by destroying excellence? We have to embrace excellence and ensure that it is enjoyed throughout the country.

Will the hon. Lady also join me in congratulating the ENO on partnering with Theatre Royal Stratford East to put on a production of “Noye’s Fludde” by Britten? We engaged a lot of young children from east London, who need as much levelling up as those elsewhere in the country, and we managed to secure out of that an Olivier award.

[Dame Caroline Dinenage]

The right hon. Lady makes an excellent point. The ENO has been groundbreaking in the way it has appealed to younger audiences and reached out in partnerships. It has done TikTok videos seen by hundreds of thousands of people. It has even done beatboxing in a car park. It has done virtually more than anybody to bring opera, which is often regarded as a bit of an elitist art form, to the masses and to a newer, younger audience. It will be a disaster if such organisations —not just the ENO—lose that unique identifying factor in the move. I have nothing against driving investment outside London, but we have to do that in a careful way and not as some form of crazy tokenism. I therefore ask the Minister to look again at giving the ENO more time and more resources to deliver the appropriate change and to continue its excellent work.

We also have to face the fact that we cannot rely exclusively on public funds to support the creative industries; we need new ideas. Funding and income streams across the UK remain a massively pressing issue—the Minister will know this—with most creators and performers earning less than the minimum wage. A strong copyright framework is a key element. Freelance creators and performers rely on royalties from the use of their copyright-protected works in order to earn a living, but they are currently not receiving fair remuneration when their works are copied, stored and shared digitally. I therefore ask the Minister to look at the Smart fund proposal to address that. It is suggested that in the UK it could raise up to £300 million a year for creators, performers and communities. Similar schemes already operate in 45 other countries, generating almost £1 billion a year globally. They do so by diverting a small percentage of the sales of electronic devices, which copy, store and share creative content, into a fund that is paid out to creators and local community projects, with a focus on digital creativity and skills.

The benefit of such a scheme is huge for creators. In France alone, it raised over £250 million in 2021, supporting artists and funding almost 12,000 cultural activities a year. Most importantly, there is simply no evidence that when tariffs change, device prices change, too. The potential for something similar for communities in this country is huge, and I ask the Minister to look at it. It is also supported by the Design and Artists Copyright Society, the British Equity Collecting Society, Directors UK, and the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society, which represent over 330,000 creative workers between them. Will the Minister meet representatives of the creative organisations that support the Smart fund to discuss this issue?

Our artists and creatives have a unique power. They can lift spirits and boost wellbeing, and they can regenerate communities and promote levelling up. They can drive economic prosperity and turbocharge global trade. No other sector can do all those things. No other sector has such a strong track record of delivering for the UK economy or so much future potential, so I urge the Minister to leave no stone unturned in efforts to harness that potential.