Asked by: Shivani Raja (Conservative - Leicester East)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what assessment her Department has made on the potential impact of reductions in funding for sports on (a) access to physical activity for children and young people and (b) public health.
Answered by Stephanie Peacock - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
The Government’s new mission-led objectives puts health and children and young people at the heart of our priorities. The Government aims to provide opportunities for all children to access high-quality sport and physical activity, especially those who are less likely to be active. We must capitalise on the important role that being active can have in preventing, and helping to treat and manage, a wide range of health conditions.
The Government is acting to support more people to get active wherever they live through the delivery of £123 million UK-wide through the Multi-Sport Grassroots Facilities Programme in 2024/25. Further spending decisions will be made at the Spending Review later this month.
Asked by: Shivani Raja (Conservative - Leicester East)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what assessment her Department has made of the adequacy of levels of funding for (a) women's cricket and (b) grassroots cricket infrastructure.
Answered by Stephanie Peacock - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
The Government is committed to supporting every aspect of women’s sport and ensuring all women and girls, no matter their background, have access to high quality sport.
The Government provides the majority of support for grassroots sport through Sport England, which annually invests over £250 million in Exchequer and Lottery funding.
This includes long term investment to the England and Wales Cricket Board, the National Governing Body for cricket, which receives up to £11.6 million for five years to invest in community cricket initiatives that will benefit everyone, including disabled people, women and girls and older people. Sport England’s This Girl Can campaign has also inspired millions of women and girls to get active, including through cricket.
Asked by: Shivani Raja (Conservative - Leicester East)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, pursuant to the Answer of 7 October 2024 to Question 5439 on Arts: Tax Allowances, what grants are available to businesses in the creative industries; and what steps she is taking to help support businesses to access information about these grants.
Answered by Chris Bryant - Minister of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
The creative industries have access to a range of cross-economy business support mechanisms, as well as a number of industry-specific grants. Creative industry funding opportunities include the £30 million+ Creative Catalyst programme, designed to support business innovation and growth, the £100m BridgeAI programme, which accelerates AI adoption and productivity for sectors including the creative industries, and the Create Growth Programme (CGP) which offers grants to creative businesses in 12 English regions outside London alongside support to scale-up and become investment ready.
Other programmes that offer grant funding to creative businesses include the UK Games Fund, UK Global Screen Fund, and Music Export Growth Scheme. The UK Games Fund supports independent games studios across the UK with £13.4m for grant making and talent development programmes. £21 million has been committed for the UK Global Screen Fund to promote independent UK screen content in international markets (2022-2025). The Music Export Growth Scheme issues grants (worth £3.2m from 2022-2025) to support UK artists to break into new international markets.
The government engages closely with sectors, trade bodies and businesses, and makes all information on all grant schemes available online.
Asked by: Shivani Raja (Conservative - Leicester East)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, whether her Department has had recent discussions with industry stakeholders on increasing investment in the creative industries; and what steps her Department is taking to support new investors.
Answered by Chris Bryant - Minister of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
Yes, ministers and officials have had many such discussions and we are committed to increasing investment in the creative industries from a variety of sources.
One of the ways that the Government incentivises investment in the sector is through the creative industry tax reliefs, which provide generous support for production costs of theatres, orchestras, museums and galleries and film, TV and video games companies. The reliefs delivered £2.2 billion of support to these industries in the financial year 2022-23.
DCMS also works with other government departments and bodies including the Department for Business and Trade and UK Research and Innovation to encourage new investors to consider investing in the creative industries. This includes work through the activity of DCMS’s Create Growth Programme and the Seed Enterprise Investment and Enterprise Investors Schemes, which are available for those looking to invest in start-up and scale-up creative industries businesses, offering tax reliefs to individual investors.