Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Matt Western and Julia Lopez

Thursday 18th April 2024 Commons Chamber

[Julia Lopez]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising his concerns about the creative community in Leighton Buzzard—it sounds like a buzzing creative community. As I say, we support creative industries primarily through Arts Council England, which has initiatives that look at workspaces. I encourage organisations in his constituency and community to make applications for grants, because there are specific funds available.

[Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)]

Arts venues are vital to our local culture and our communities, but they are also hotbeds for new talent to display or perform their latest works, which is critical to the UK’s creative sector. Pubs are increasingly used for showing artworks as much as they are for performing music—think of pubs such as the Crown Inn back in the day, or the Hope and Anchor in Islington. That is why it is so important that we save pubs such as the Punch Bowl in Warwick, which a developer wants to convert into a house. Last year was the worst year for the closure of music venues. What is the Minister doing to stop that rate of closure?

[Julia Lopez]

We share the hon. Gentleman’s concerns about grassroots music venues, which is why we have a specific fund set aside to help save some of the most treasured community venues. We also have the Localism Act 2011, which allows communities to designate a particular community asset of value, giving communities time to raise funds to save those kinds of assets. It is something that we are talking about a lot with music venue groups, and we are also looking at giving them help to buy the freeholds of properties so that those kinds of assets can stay within communities and remain a talent pipeline, as he suggests, for many years to come.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Matt Western and Julia Lopez

Thursday 27th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Julia Lopez]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his contribution. We are not going to protect specific parts of the BBC by primary legislation, but we have a number of important measures on radio services that we feel strongly about including in that legislation, and that includes measures on smart speakers. We want to reduce the regulatory burden on and costs for radio stations, but we also want to strengthen the protections for local news and content. Hopefully that legislation will help with some of these issues.

[Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)]

At a time when accountability and scrutiny in public life are more important than ever, the role of the BBC and other media outlets is so important. My local newspaper, for example, will not run any political stories, and has not really done so for many weeks now. Will the Minister consider the role of local media and why local newspapers will not run political stories?

[Julia Lopez]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to highlight the importance of local news reporting to the health of our democracy, and I met news publishers recently to discuss how we might support a more thriving local newspaper ecosystem. There is a range of challenges in making those publications commercially successful, but as he says, if they do not have that local content, they are fundamentally undermining their own importance in the communities they serve.

Channel 4 Privatisation

Debate between Matt Western and Julia Lopez

Wednesday 27th April 2022 Commons Chamber

[Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)]

I may have my facts wrong, but as I understand it, Channel 4 is phenomenally successful. Its subscription service levels are something like a third higher than Netflix’s in the UK, and All 4 is the largest subscription service in this country. Channel 4 does not cost the taxpayer anything, yet it generates £1 billion per year for the UK economy. Other than the scrutiny of Government, what is not to like?

[Julia Lopez]

The Government are thinking carefully about the fundamental sustainability and future of the Channel 4 model. The hon. Gentleman may be aware of two key points about Channel 4: it does not retain ownership of its intellectual property, and any borrowing it does sits on the public balance sheet. Given its dependence on linear advertising, we have concerns, looking at viewer trends, that that model will be difficult to sustain if Channel 4 is to continue to make the investment in content that I think we all want. We are therefore looking afresh at what Channel 4 needs, not only to sustain itself, but to grow. I hope that what we bring forward will help the hon. Gentleman to understand how this reform sits within a wider set of reforms to sustain our public service broadcasters.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Matt Western and Julia Lopez

Thursday 12th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)]

What assessment he has made of the effectiveness of Government outsourcing during the covid-19 outbreak.

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Julia Lopez)]

Working effectively with the private sector is a vital part of our response to tackling the covid-19 crisis, allowing us to procure quickly and innovatively and to obtain specialist solutions to the myriad challenges that are facing us. Rapidly obtaining PPE is the most obvious example, but we have also turned to the private sector to help us operate things such as the virtual courts service and video services for families wishing to see loved ones in intensive care units.

We are clear throughout that contracting authorities must use good commercial judgment and continue to achieve value for money for taxpayers, and we are engaged in both internal and external audit to satisfy ourselves that that has been the case. Through “The Outsourcing Playbook” we are also improving the decision making and quality of contracts that the Government place with industry, and we are building our internal civil service capability, as we believe it is important that we invest in our in-house capacity and expertise so that we rely less on external consultants and contractors.

--- Later in debate ---

[Julia Lopez]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for the points he raises. As I mentioned, we wish to reassure the public through the use of external and internal audits on some of the issues that he raises, but when it comes to some of the contracts that have been let, we were advised by Labour that we should be looking into a number of different companies, from people producing costumes to a number of other interesting leads that actually led nowhere. We were trying to procure at speed and I have a good degree of confidence in the PPE contracts that were let during this time.

[Matt Western]

I understand what the Minister is saying about trying to procure at speed, but it does seem that some of the agencies that the Government have chosen to do this are completely not fit for purpose and inappropriate. I cite Deloitte, which was appointed to set up a testing centre in south Leamington in my constituency. It took six weeks for a couple of portakabins and a couple of gazebos. How difficult is it? Why was Public Health England not more involved? It could have done this better.

[Julia Lopez]

There is some naivety from Labour Members about how easy it is to do some of these very complex operations at the speed at which they need to be done. We have to thank the private sector for the support that it has given us. We do not have huge volumes of public sector workers sitting there ready to be deployed, and if we did, they would have to be sucked out of other important frontline services. I think we should thank the private sector for the support that it has given us in this very difficult time.