Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Oliver Dowden Excerpts

Monday 8th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Oliver Dowden)]

This Budget represents a turning point in our fight against coronavirus. It is almost a year to the day since the Prime Minister, in a televised address to the nation, took one of the most dramatic steps of any peacetime Government in history and imposed a national lockdown. From that moment on, we were facing twin crises: not just a public health emergency, but an economic emergency too. The Government promised to do whatever it took to see the British people and British businesses through the crisis, and we did. A year on, thanks to one of the most comprehensive and generous Government support packages in the world, we are now in a position to begin rebuilding our economy. This Budget lays the first bricks in that process. It offers businesses protection to get through the next few months, but, with the road map as a guide, it also sets them on a course to stand on their own two feet once the country reopens, and, most importantly, it puts us in a position to build back better from the pandemic, leaving us a country that is stronger, safer and greener than the one upended by the coronavirus.

In a debate about supporting businesses during covid, it is worth taking stock of just how much was at stake when coronavirus brought our country to a standstill last March. On the day that national lockdown was imposed, all non-essential shops were forced to close their doors, alongside pubs, restaurants, museums, galleries, gyms, theatres and cinemas. In the space of a few short hours, millions of business owners across the country had their income wiped out. Their livelihoods were hanging in the balance, and nowhere was that more apparent than at DCMS. Arts, culture and tourism thrive on the walls of human interaction. Theatres, cinemas, live performance venues, museums and galleries simply cannot exist without an audience or visitors; with lights switched off, seats empty and stages bare, people genuinely worried that a century’s worth of culture and heritage was at risk.

In Germany, the arts have been described as Lebensmittel —that which sustains life. Our museums, our theatres and our artistic and creative life are not frivolous add-ons; they are essential to our economy and to our national sense of wellbeing, so we stepped up to the plate and protected them. We unveiled the biggest single intervention in the arts in the history of the United Kingdom: the culture recovery fund, an unprecedented £1.75 billion safety net that protected theatres, cinemas, museums, galleries and live performance venues across the country. It has supported every thread of our rich cultural tapestry, from national Crown jewels such as the Royal Albert Hall to regional gems such as the Wolverhampton Grand and Norwich theatre, and through that fund we have given £170 million to music, £21 million to independent cinemas, £60 million to museums, and £180 million to theatres. Surely we can finally put to bed the old lie that the Conservative party does not care about the arts. After protecting arts and culture through a long covid winter, we are now preparing them for the spring and summer of reopening, with another £390 million in this Budget to help museums, galleries and theatres open their doors when restrictions finally ease.

Likewise, the Budget extends our hugely successful film and TV restart scheme, which during the pandemic has supported more than 200 productions up and down the United Kingdom. It has kept cameras rolling on movies such as “Mothering Sunday” and shows including “Grantchester” and “Peaky Blinders”. Most importantly, it has protected more than 24,000 jobs and £800 million-worth of production spend here in the United Kingdom. As a result, studios including Pinewood are currently running at full capacity. In fact, the British film industry just celebrated one of its most productive quarters on record. I hope that Members on both sides of the House will applaud the Chancellor’s decision to extend the scheme.

Members on both sides of the House should also applaud our decision to make another £300 million available to sports clubs as fans begin returning to stadiums, and a new fund that gives local communities the power to take ownership of their local sports clubs. These clubs are not just businesses; many, particularly smaller clubs, are the hubs of their communities, bringing life to villages, towns and cities across the country. The Budget will help to ensure that they are still standing when the pandemic is over, ready and waiting to have their seats filled once more with spectators.

However, support to DCMS sectors is only one small part of the unprecedented offer of support by the Government during the crisis. Together, the safety net we have placed under the British people totals £407 billion —more than the GDP of Sweden—and the Budget builds on that support, adding extra security for businesses to make it through to the end of the road map and back into normality. We have also extended the furlough scheme, which has already supported 11.2 million jobs across the United Kingdom; to be clear, more than 11 million people and families have been given the stability and security of money coming in the door and being able to put food on the table for their children. These are not just statistics; they are real people who have been able to get through the last 12 months thanks to the furlough scheme. We have also extended support for the self-employed to include an additional 600,000 freelancers, making this one of the most generous programmes for self-employed people in the world.

While we continue to support the British people through the final stage of this crisis, we have also announced measures that will put businesses across the country on the footing to stand on their own once more. They will no longer have to subsist day to day off the state; instead, we will put them in a position to thrive on their own. We have therefore extended the VAT cut and the business rates holiday, we are offering new recovery loans, and we are offering new restart grants to help businesses of all shapes and sizes get going again.

If last year’s package was a package of support—the vaccine against economic ruin—this Budget is the booster shot. These measures allow us to put covid in the rear-view mirror and start looking forward to a brighter future.

[Steve Double (St Austell and Newquay) (Con)]

As chair of the all-party parliamentary group on hospitality and tourism, may I place on the record my thanks to the Government for the incredible support that they have given the sector to help it reopen? There is no doubt that the Government have done their bit. Does my right hon. Friend agree that what we now need, as soon as it is safe, is for the British people to do their bit—to take holidays in the UK, to go back to our pubs and restaurants, to go back to our theatres and cinemas, and to get our economy rolling?

[Oliver Dowden]

I of course agree with my hon. Friend. Indeed, I very much look forward to visiting Cornwall again myself. I spent many happy childhood summers on Crantock beach and have taken my own children there. That sits alongside other support we have provided for Cornwall and, indeed, my hon. Friend’s constituency, including, for example, the Lost Gardens of Heligan, which has had more than £600,000-worth of support. Under the culture recovery fund, a total of more than £1 million has been provided to his constituency alone.

Seven decades ago, when we were rebuilding from the rubble of the second world war, we looked to heavy industry—to coal and steel production—to power our recovery, but today our economy will be rebuilt on the back of cleaner, greener industries, and tech has the power to turbocharge all those other technologies. Science and tech now underpins our entire economy. Millions of businesses rely on the UK’s broadband networks to trade, to connect with customers and to advertise their goods, and in the year of pandemic, Zoom and Teams have temporarily replaced office spaces all over the world.

In building back better, tech will be at the heart of our recovery. We have set 10 clear tech priorities for this Government in the coming years—we will be setting those out later this week—but we also included a number of measures in this Budget to make the most of the digital revolution.

During this pandemic, millions of businesses were forced to move their operations online—to pivot to deliveries and to click and collect. This time it was a necessity, but we want to turn that into a long-term opportunity for British businesses. That is why we are launching a new UK-wide Help to Grow scheme to help 100,000 small and medium-sized businesses to get online or expand their digital businesses.

At the same time, we are cementing our position as the tech powerhouse of Europe. We have unveiled a new visa to attract the most exciting and talented tech brains in the world, alongside a new, improved visa process for scale-ups, entrepreneurs and disrupters. We have also launched a £375 million future tech fund. That is a breakthrough scheme for groundbreaking tech businesses. We have a plan to unlock billions from pension funds and funnel that money into new innovative ventures.

We also have ideas for a new listing regime that will make it easier for companies to raise money and list their businesses here in the United Kingdom, not on other markets. Some of the most successful and innovative businesses in the world have therefore chosen to make the UK their long-term home, as Deliveroo did just last week when it announced that it would be listing in London. This Budget paves the way for the next generation of tech entrepreneurs and disrupters to join them here in the United Kingdom.

Of course, the other great future-facing industry and powerhouse of DCMS and, indeed, the wider economy is the creative industries. We are genuinely a creative industries superpower. Our fashion and design businesses, those in film and TV, video games, architecture, advertising, publishing and beyond lead the world in every sector. They are a source of pride at home and envy abroad, and they now drive our economy. Film and TV alone are today worth more than the UK’s car industry. The sectors are not discrete—they are businesses that feed off one another and into this country’s wider, vibrant creative ecosystem.

When a UK business, for example, in the video games industry, designs a new game, they do not just support the video games industry. They boost tech, our artists and designers, the musicians who compose the game’s soundtrack and the animators who bring the characters to life. The furlough scheme, business grants and support for the self-employed have been a lifeline to all those businesses, which will continue to benefit from the schemes, as well as from the Budget’s new apprenticeship offer.

Those businesses have also benefited from our unprecedented, multi-billion-pound investment in the cultural and creative industries. That investment was made with our hearts, but also our heads. Cultural and creative businesses are vital to our economy, as they are vital to our national identity and, indeed, our very way of life. They will play a key role as we look to the country’s long-term recovery and renewal.

That recovery and renewal will also centre on the rehabilitation of the tourism industry, which, with planes grounded and airports closed, has been particularly hard hit by covid. Tourism is a major enabler in this country, supporting around 230,000 businesses in every part of our United Kingdom. Through the pandemic, including in the Budget, we have provided extensive support to those businesses, including through the cut in VAT. Our new levelling-up fund will invest in tourism infrastructure across the entire Union.

In spring, with my hon. Friend the Minister for Sport, Tourism and Heritage, we will go even further, publishing a comprehensive tourism recovery plan that sets out an ambitious vision for the sector to bounce back from the pandemic and drive that new era of growth. At that point, Britain will start reopening for business. Shops will be pulling up their shutters, people will be returning to pubs and restaurants or working out in gyms and leisure centres. Day trips and mini-breaks will be back on and eventually, overseas tourists will begin pouring back into our great country.

We want a decade of great British summers, culminating, we hope, with the football World cup back here in the United Kingdom in 2030. Much sooner—indeed, next year—that feeling of national recovery and renewal will find its outlet in three unifying show-stopper events: the Commonwealth games, Festival UK* 2022 and the platinum jubilee, when the nation will come together to give thanks to Her Majesty the Queen for seven decades of unwavering public service.

After such a difficult time for all of us, those events represent a much-longed-for return to normality: the return of packed stadiums, packed theatres and streets full of people celebrating. They are not just an opportunity for us to come together and remember what unites us. They are milestone moments, alongside the rugby league world cup, Coventry city of culture, the centenary of the BBC and the 75th anniversary of the Edinburgh festival. They will help drive our economic and social recovery from the pandemic. They will reboot our tourism industry, demonstrating that our doors are wide open. They will bolster our creative industries, with tens of millions of pounds being invested in our arts and creators from every nation of the UK, and they will showcase our remarkable and wonderful country to the rest of the world.

Of course, we are not there yet. Coronavirus has shaken our economic foundations like no other peacetime crisis in our history. I know that businesses up and down the country continue to face many challenges as a result of the pandemic. The road map back to full economic health is rightly cautious, but it is one-way. As normality gradually returns, we have so much to look forward to as a country and so many opportunities to revive our businesses and our economy.

This Budget allows us to make the most of those opportunities. We protected businesses when they could not trade as usual or at all. Now we are putting them in a position where they can finally unroll their awnings again and declare Britain back open for business. I commend the Budget to the House.