Covid-19: Cultural and Entertainment Sectors

Mark Tami Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Matt Vickers (Stockton South) (Con)]

I think I speak for all of us when I say that the past year, despite some individual stories of good news, has been absolutely rotten; 2020 is not a year that any of us would wish to repeat. This is especially true for businesses in our economy, but the financial burden is not being shared across all sectors of the economy evenly, and those sectors that rely on people seeing each other face to face or being close to others—such as hospitality and, pertinently for this debate, culture and entertainment—have been particularly badly hit by measures introduced to break the chain of transmission.

As a result of the measures to protect the NHS, museums have closed their doors, live music venues have fallen quiet and sports arenas have stayed unnaturally empty. The cultural and entertainment sector is a massive asset to the UK both economically—it is an industry worth more than £10 billion—and as a major soft power attribute. More than that, these businesses and venues bring people joy and make life worth living. Recognising that, the Government have been great in introducing support packages, such as the culture recovery fund, which have benefited and been a lifeline to businesses and venues across the country and in my Stockton South constituency.

The Government have now set out their road map for easing restrictions for the entire economy. This will provide clarity to these businesses, allow them to plan for the months ahead and, hopefully, put them on a more sustainable footing. While I would be delighted if these opening dates were moved forwards, I know that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and his ministerial colleagues have been guided by the science and will open up as soon as it is safe to do so.

As we move forward and look towards reopening these businesses, there are two fundamental things we must remember. First, we need to remember more than just those businesses that are in London. A lot of the conversations focus on big venues in London and in the south, which is somewhat understandable given how much of the industry is concentrated in the capital, but not all of them are in London, and we need to remember the businesses in Stockton and the north-east as well.

[Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Member agree with me that we have to get this right, because if we allow these venues to open and then we have to close them again, they cannot survive that another time?

Covid-19: Support for UK Industries

Mark Tami Excerpts

Thursday 25th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)]

I will follow your guidance, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I will not take interventions.

Coronavirus has hit all sectors of the UK economy, some harder than others, and aerospace and air travel will be one of the hardest hit. I have been here long enough to remember the effects on the industry of 9/11 and the banking crisis. These were severe, but nothing compared with the challenge that we face today. For Airbus in Broughton in my seat, this has meant a reduction in production rates of about a third. Some 40% of the UK workforce in the commercial aircraft division is currently on furlough. About 500 employees at Broughton have been working on the ventilator programme. I am sure everyone here and everyone in the country will be extremely grateful and proud that that has happened. It demonstrates what a dedicated workforce we have, but their reward for this work, as the programme comes to an end, is that many of them will not qualify for furlough. I think that that is an absolute disgrace. I would ask the Minister to really look at this situation. It cannot be right that the people who have done this work do not qualify. They are a special case and they should be treated as such. Airbus has stepped in and will cover the furlough, but that is hardly the point. I ask the Minister to press his Treasury colleagues on this matter urgently.

Industry experts do not expect passenger demand to return to pre-crisis levels before 2023. That will in turn mean that actual production rates will not catch up until 2025. With 70% of the value of an aircraft in the supplier chain, the effects there could be devastating, leading to a near total collapse of the sector if intervention does not occur. If we are serious about maintaining a viable aerospace sector in the UK, we need to be serious and have a strategic plan that embraces not only companies such as Airbus and the airlines, but the supplier chain. All parts need to work together to that end. I am concerned that some airlines—well, one in particular—see this crisis as an opportunity to remove rivals and ride roughshod over the terms and conditions of their workforce. That type of attitude and approach needs to change. We need a united front to face this crisis.

In the US, Germany and France, we have had announcements of targeted programmes of support. The latest announcement from the French Government included a raft of measures. Its aim is to protect some 100,000 jobs. It includes a reduced working week or working hours, with the difference picked up by the state. That will last up to two years. There will be a one-year moratorium on aircraft loans under the export credit agencies, amounting to around €1.5 billion. In addition, Airbus will have 18 months to pay loans, rather than the six months currently. That is worth around €2 billion. Defence procurement projects are also to be brought forward with new investment to help the sector, and the defence sector SME fund will be increased by 50% to €100 million a year. Air France-KLM has already been given a €7 billion loan guarantee to secure its future.

In addition, the French Government have promised more investment, with €1.5 billion to decarbonise and produce carbon neutral aircraft by 2035, rather than the current target of 2050. Those are bold plans that look at the medium and long terms. They recognise that there will be no quick fix, and we in the UK need to rise to that challenge, otherwise we will be left behind and could lose one of our greatest and most important industries.

What can we do to help to secure the future? We clearly need a job retention support scheme, not just for now and a few more months, but for the long term. We need to retain skills and we need the flexibility that reduced working hours can offer. We need to build support for Airbus by speaking to the airlines and retiring older, less efficient aircraft from their fleets. Around 70 aircraft flown by UK-registered airlines are more than 15 years old.

We need to address the complete mess, as has been mentioned, of quarantine, which has already added to the crisis. We need to invest in research and development, make advances in R&D tax credits and confirm that funding of the Aerospace Technology Institute will be doubled to £300 million a year. We need something for the supply chain, because that is in many ways the most vulnerable part of the sector. We need a long-term policy to ensure that there is an investment fund to keep suppliers alive during this crisis. We need to bring forward defence projects, but they need to be in this country, not just bought off the shelf from America.

If we do not step up to the plate, the future will not be good. For Broughton, it is always about securing the next wing. If we do not secure the next wing and Germany, France or Spain get it, the future will be bleak. I ask the Government to act and act now before it is too late.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

It is a pleasure to call Darren Henry to make his maiden speech.

British Library Board (Power to Borrow) Bill

Mark Tami Excerpts

Friday 13th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Neil O’Brien (Harborough) (Con)]

This is an excellent Bill, and I pay warm tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Bim Afolami), whose constituency I zoom through every morning on my way here, for bringing it to the House. He has spotted an important lacuna in the law and an opportunity, at no cost to the taxpayer, to get more value out of one of our most important public institutions. I congratulate him on bringing the Bill forward and I hope it makes progress.

Like my hon. Friend, I want to pay tribute to the important role of books and public libraries in our community life, and in my own life. Like him, I probably would not be here if it were not for libraries and books, whether it was Kirklees library, which we have already heard about, which used to drive its little van around Dalton when I was a child, or Huddersfield public library—the children’s bit in the basement where I enjoyed much of my childhood. At university, I was lucky to be able to use the Bodleian, an incredible library, and to stand outside the Radcliffe Camera—for bibliophiles, it is this wonderful vent where the smell of old books is wafted at you on an industrial scale. I am not sure I ever really benefited from the intellectual resources of the library, but at least I enjoyed the smell.

In my own constituency, there is the wonderful work done by places such as Kibworth community library and Fleckney library, which is not just a great library; it also has a wonderful café and is a hub for the community where all kinds of other things happen.

[Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)]

I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman has been to St Deiniol’s library in Hawarden in my constituency, which is the home of Gladstone. What is interesting about that library is that Gladstone had a habit of crossing out the things he disagreed with and writing in what he thought was appropriate, and it is fascinating to see those books.

[Neil O’Brien]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for drawing that to my attention. It seems a typically Gladstonian move. I would love to visit that library at some point; perhaps we should have a library exchange.

It should be a great source of pride for this country that the British Library is literally, by catalogue size, the largest library anywhere in the world. It currently holds between 170 million and 200 million items and, frankly, I love the uncertainty of that. I have often wondered, “How do you know if you have too many books?” I think if one is unable to number them except within a range of plus or minus 15 million, it is possible that one has too many books. That is slightly unfair on the British Library, because it knows how many books it has; the uncertainty comes from the fact that there are so many other things in there, and my hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden already mentioned the gravestone and the possibility that the “Edstone” may reside there.

As well as 30,950,000 books, there are 824,101 serial titles, 351,116 manuscripts, 8,266,000 philatelic items or stamps, 4,347,000 cartographic items or maps, and 1.6 million music scores. As has been mentioned, the British Library grows its collection by 3 million items every year and currently requires 625 km of shelf space, which is growing by 12 km a year. To put that into context, that is enough for roughly three speeches by my hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Robert Courts)—[Laughter.] In the virtual space, the library harvested over 70 terabytes of web content for the UK web archive in 2016. We are not sure at present how many of the 70 terabytes consist mainly of cat gifs, but we do know that the library is cataloguing everything with a .uk domain, so we are in a slightly meta position here in that, as we speak, our words are being catalogued by the very institution that we are discussing.

The British library also contains a huge amount of recorded music and sound, much of which is available on British Library Sounds. I will return to this point about digital content, but someone can go on to the site, as I did in preparation for this speech, and listen to Dinka songs from South Sudan, endangered Micronesian recordings, which are sort of like mid-1980s rave music, or someone from the Edwardian era singing “Seventeen come Sunday” on to a wax cylinder. It is difficult to think of a more consequential library in history than the British Library.

Economy and Society: Contribution of Music

Mark Tami Excerpts

Tuesday 21st January 2020 Westminster Hall

[Conor McGinn]

I agree entirely, and I think we will find agreement on that across the Chamber.

[Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is important that we protect the music venues we still have? There are still far too many of them closing. Let me mention the Tivoli in Buckley, which is famous, particularly for a sad old punk like me who has seen bands such as Stiff Little Fingers and Public Image Ltd there. It is good that we can still go and see such bands, but venues of that type are sometimes threatened by planning law, particularly where housing is built directly behind them or beside them and there are complaints about opening hours and so on. Ultimately, that can kill those venues.

[Conor McGinn]

I agree entirely. I will come to the points made by both my right hon. Friend and the hon. Member for Solihull (Julian Knight) in more detail later in my speech.

There has been an incredible 10% increase in the number of overseas visitors coming to the UK for shows and festivals, with nearly 900,000 people visiting these shores just for live music events in 2018. Live music is at a record high and continues to draw millions of fans from both Britain and abroad to our arenas and smaller venues alike. “Music By Numbers” identified that music exports are another amazing success story, generating revenues of £2.7 billion, with the best of British creative talent being showcased across the globe.

There is something unique about Britain and its ability to create a globally successful music industry that is envied across the world. Ed Sheeran is the biggest selling touring artist in the world, with the “÷” tour now officially the highest grossing tour of all time. Billboard magazine recently revealed that the O2 Arena in London was the most successful music venue in the world over the past decade, with the Manchester Arena also in the top five. The Theatre Royal in St Helens is slightly further down the list but none the less a critical component of our local live music scene.

In nine of the last 15 years, the biggest selling album in the world has been from a UK artist. Lewis Capaldi recently reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the US. In 2019 we also saw fantastic debut albums from AJ Tracey, Dave, Mabel, Sam Fender and Tom Walker. We continue to be a world leader in all genres, from jazz and folk to grime. We are home to studios that record sensational box office film scores and soundtracks, as well as to many of the most accomplished orchestras in the world.

Leaving the EU: Data Protection

Mark Tami Excerpts

Thursday 12th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow my regional neighbour, the hon. Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford). May I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western) on his excellent maiden speech? He started by suggesting that he was going to talk about happiness, which is something that we could all do with much more of, and then quite rightly began to reflect on the everyday experiences of his constituents which, sadly, involve less happiness. He did manage to conclude on a positive and optimistic note for the future. I congratulate him on his contribution and on choosing to make it in a debate in which, as we have heard, the stakes are so high. When the public voted last year, I doubt that any of those who voted leave were actually voting to make data transfers more difficult, to make business more complicated, to stop the planes flying, to find video games unplayable and to find regularly used websites suddenly becoming unavailable. If 29 March 2019 is exit day, as some parts of the Government say on some days of the week, April fool’s day 2019 will be a day when the papers really will not have to make it up.

Some have described the movement of data across Europe as the fifth freedom. In fact, my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) made exactly that point. I suspect that most of us, and most of our fellow citizens, are only dimly aware of what actually happens to our data, but it does really matter. The design, extent and provisions of the British data protection framework will have profound implications for the nature of UK-EU trade relations. Today’s debate is particularly timely given the proceedings on the Data Protection Bill that are already under way in the other place. It is vital that we get this framework right.

I chair the all-party group on data analytics, and I have seen at first hand the way in which data has moved to the centre of every sector. Wherever we go, people are talking about data. I hope that the Minister will accept an invitation to meet the all-party group fairly soon to talk about how we can build awareness not just of how transformational this is likely to be, but of how complicated it will be to ensure that we get it right.

As we have heard, data is an increasingly valuable commodity, with the UK conducting three quarters of its cross-border data exchange with the European Union. The EU data economy was worth €272 billion in 2015 and has continued to grow rapidly since.

We have played a key role within the European Union in developing the GDPR, which will come into effect in the UK from May 2018. The European Commission proposed this new legislative framework back in January 2012 as an update and a levelling mechanism to protect citizens across Europe. It has taken five years of discussion and hard work for the regulation to be agreed. This significant measure for the UK does a number of things. It significantly widens the definition of personal data, transforms the notion of consent, carries severe fines for companies in case of non-compliance and fundamentally alters the way in which companies can store and process personal data.

Back in February, the Minister told the House of Lords EU Home Affairs Sub-Committee that the GDPR was a “good piece of legislation”, and I welcome the Government’s sensible decision to adopt the GDPR into UK law. But, as many have pointed out, there are problems ahead, not least with some elements of the relationship with the Investigatory Powers Act 2016. Both techUK and Ukie—the Association for UK Interactive Entertainment—which covers things such as video games, highlighted that concern when the Government published their paper in August, and both noted that the paper did not address an issue that the Government knew to be problematic.

Why would it matter if data flows were interrupted? Well, we are good at data in the UK. Our digitally intensive industries account for 16% of gross value added, 24% of total UK exports and 3 million jobs. The digital sector is growing 32% faster than the national average. We are at a significant competitive advantage in the digital economy. At 10% of GDP, the digital economy makes a larger contribution to our economy than that in any other G20 country, so it really matters to us. Beyond that, it is a vital enabler in the overall UK economy and society. We are increasingly digitised, with all sectors increasingly reliant on data flows. They underpin retail, health, finance, manufacturing and the automotive industries, to name just a few. The Government have confirmed that:

“Over 70% of all trade in services are enabled by data flows, meaning that data protection is critical to international trade.”

That confirms that they do understand and appreciate the importance of data protection.

Additionally, data flows benefit consumers, allowing innovation in products and services, streamlining performance in industry and improving global communication. They reduce business costs, leading to more investment in research and development, and improve productivity. In some ways, the problem is that our membership of the European Union gives us special advantages. In a profound irony, we actually have more control over our own privacy regime when we are within the European Union than we will have when we are outside it. Let me explain how that comes about.

Outside the EU, we become a third country in terms of our relationship with the European Union. The Government say that the best way forward is an adequacy agreement, or something akin to one, which would need to be secured with the European Commission. There are alternatives, but they are difficult, unstable and particularly ill-suited to UK businesses, especially small and medium-sized enterprises. The large corporations may be able to manage, but the small businesses will not. UK firms, particularly the start-ups in my part of the country, would have to jump through hoops and hurdles that their European counterparts would not have to. While our companies would be spending time and money agreeing standard contractual clauses with customers, their EU counterparts and competitors would simply be getting on with business.

[Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)]

Many smaller companies in particular are not aware of what is coming down the road and what sort of extra work they will have to do.

[Daniel Zeichner]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Much work needs to be done to raise awareness of what the GDPR will mean. That is a challenge, but it is a good thing in general. The worry is that if it will not be available for our smaller companies in the future, that already challenging task will be made even more difficult. In fact, it will be so difficult in many cases that small companies in areas like mine will simply up sticks and go somewhere else where the process is easier.

I fully recognise the points made by Government Members. They understand a lot of this and say that an adequacy decision would be the best possible solution to ensure the

“unhindered exchange of data within an appropriate data protection environment”.

The partnership paper clearly states that future data protection co-operation

“could build on the existing adequacy model”.

If we are to achieve that objective, ensuring the continued alignment of the UK’s data protection framework with the EU’s will be key. That should, therefore, be the primary consideration in any discussion of the provisions of the Data Protection Bill. Any deviation from the provisions of the GDPR could put at risk achieving a successful outcome as we seek an adequacy decision.

We also need to look to the future, because if we do get that adequacy agreement, given the close alignment of UK and EU data protection frameworks, the Government must prioritise ICO involvement in the formulation of future EU data protection provisions. As we have heard, the EU will inevitably update the GDPR as time and technology progress. However, we risk these changes being dictated to us, and a duty needs to be placed on the ICO and the commissioner to maintain regulations that keep the UK adequate with the latest version of EU law. Even if we can achieve that, there is a great irony here, in that we will, effectively, be dictated to—it is not quite the taking back control that some were seeking.

Perhaps more important is that just saying that we would like an adequacy agreement is not the same as actually getting one. We might wish for one, but will we be able to have it? Will others agree? There are various problems, which I hope the Minister will address. The first is time. Obtaining an adequacy decision is feasible only for third countries. It follows that, to get one, the UK will need to have left the EU at the time of the ruling, which leads to the very real danger of a data protection cliff edge. In evidence to one of our Committees, Stewart Room, head of data protection at PricewaterhouseCoopers, said that obtaining such a decision could take “many, many years”. So this week’s talk of no deal is highly risky when it comes to data. The risk of a cliff edge is very real and very dangerous.

Then there is the Investigatory Powers Act. There is a danger that some of our neighbours may no longer be inclined to share data with a country that takes a different view on privacy issues from them. As members of the EU, our different traditions are respected; as a third country, things could be very different. The provisions in the Investigatory Powers Act, and the current investigatory practices in our intelligence services, which allow the police to access personal data such as communications or internet data without a requirement for independent judicial approval or for the issue being investigated to be of a certain seriousness, will be a legitimate concern for some countries in the EU when negotiating an adequacy agreement. Perhaps the Minister can tell us what work has been done on this and what assurances have already been received.

The ruling of the Court of Justice of the European Union in the Watson case with regard to the UK’s surveillance and bulk data retention regime is also important. The Court’s decision stated that the UK’s surveillance and data retention laws—then the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act 2014—exceeded the EU’s view of what is strictly necessary and appropriate. That model of retaining communications data is broadly mirrored in the new Investigatory Powers Act—the replacement for DRIPA. It is hardly inconceivable, therefore, that the EU could decide that the UK does not reach its standards for adequacy. On this rather complicated set of issues, I should say that I am grateful to Renate Sampson of Big Brother Watch for explaining some of these points to me.

My next concern was about the European charter of fundamental rights, but it has already been touched on in the excellent discussion triggered by the contribution from my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms), whom I will be supporting in his efforts to secure amendment 151 when we discuss the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill.

There is a further point about that Bill. We know that it is controversial and that there are concerns that ministerial alterations can be made without parliamentary votes. If the GDPR were to be altered during the repeal process, and citizens’ personal data rights were in any way diminished, we could be prevented from being anywhere near the level of protection deemed adequate by the EU. The Information Commissioner has made it clear that for the UK to achieve the gold standard of data protection regulation and enforcement, the right way forward is to fully adopt the GDPR, and that position must be maintained.

UK businesses and organisations have already started preparing for the GDPR, which is good. That should stand us in good stead when it comes to an adequacy discussion. It is vital that we enshrine the GDPR in our law permanently in a clean Data Protection Bill, so that data can still flow, businesses can still run and communications do not just stop. However, it is of the utmost importance that we commit to these rules for the long term and provide certainty for individuals and businesses. The economic consequences of not being able to move personal data would be very serious, with companies having to double-store data. That would take a long time to implement, and it would have serious economic and environmental costs, and run the risk of our not being able to operate properly across borders. It would, at a stroke, put at risk the UK’s place as a global hub for tech and other data-intensive industries. There is a huge amount at stake.

There is, of course, a simple alternative that looks more and more obvious with every passing day to some of us, as Brexit morphs into wrecks-it. But until we reach the point at which sense prevails, I hope that the Minister will share with us information on the work being done, especially on fine-tuning the relationship between the GDPR and the IPA, to ensure that the data keeps flowing and we can remain part of the modern world.