Asked by: Taiwo Owatemi (Labour - Coventry North West)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, if he will make it his policy to compensate music (a) festivals and (b) concerts if they have to be cancelled as a result of further covid-19 restrictions.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
As the Secretary of State made clear at the DCMS Select Committee in May, the government is aware of the wider concerns around securing indemnity for live events. Protecting public health is of vital importance to the government and we are working closely with the affected sectors and HMT on this issue to assess options to provide further support within the public health context.
Throughout the pandemic, the government’s Plan For Jobs has supported jobs and businesses with over £400 billion of economic support. As part of this package, last year the government announced the unprecedented Culture Recovery Fund - the biggest arts funding package in history. To date, over £1.2 billion has been allocated from the £2 billion Fund, reaching over 5,000 individual organisations and sites.
On 25 June we announced details of the third round of the Culture Recovery Fund and portals for the Emergency Resource Support element of this round are now open. This third and final round of funding will provide further support as the cultural, heritage and creative sectors move towards reopening at full capacity, underlining the government’s commitment to help them build back better as life returns to normal.
As you will be aware, from 19 July, following the success of the vaccine roll-out, outstanding legal restrictions on social contact and life events have been removed and all closed settings can reopen. The government will instead enable people to use personal judgement to manage the risk to themselves and others.
Asked by: Taiwo Owatemi (Labour - Coventry North West)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what discussions he is having with Cabinet colleagues on tackling the spread of disinformation on social media about the covid-19 outbreak.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
Ministers have regular meetings and discussions with their ministerial colleagues on a range of issues, including tackling the spread of Covid-19 disinformation on social media. Details of Ministerial meetings are published quarterly on the GOV.UK website.
Asked by: Taiwo Owatemi (Labour - Coventry North West)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what proportion of the arts, entertainment and recreation workforce (a) was been eligible for and (b) received support from the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme in each month since the introduction of that scheme.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
The Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme has been one of the key ways we have provided support, with the Arts, Entertainment and Recreation (AER) sector receiving £1.974bn of support from the initiative so far (claims made to 31 October). The CJRS has now been further extended to 30 April 2021. From 1 November, the UK Government will pay 80% of employees’ usual wages for the hours not worked, up to a cap of £2,500 per month.
The latest figures published by HMRC show that as at 31 October 2020, there were 660,900 eligible employments and 40,000 eligible employers for CJRS in the arts, entertainment and recreation sector.
As at 31 October, the proportion of the workforce eligible for furlough that were actually furloughed in AER sector was 24%. 45% of eligible employers in the AER sector were using the furlough scheme at the end of October.
As at 30 September, the take up rate of eligible employments was 28% in the AER sector, with 49% of eligible employers in the sector using the scheme.
As at 31 August, 40% of eligible employments were furloughed and 54% of eligible employers were using the scheme in the AER sector.
As at 31 July, 52% of eligible employments in the AER sector were furloughed, with a take up rate of 61% of eligible employers in the sector.
Asked by: Taiwo Owatemi (Labour - Coventry North West)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what proportion of employers in the arts, entertainment and recreation sector accessed the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme in each month since the introduction of that scheme.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
The Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme has been one of the key ways we have provided support, with the Arts, Entertainment and Recreation (AER) sector receiving £1.974bn of support from the initiative so far (claims made to 31 October). The CJRS has now been further extended to 30 April 2021. From 1 November, the UK Government will pay 80% of employees’ usual wages for the hours not worked, up to a cap of £2,500 per month.
The latest figures published by HMRC show that as at 31 October 2020, there were 660,900 eligible employments and 40,000 eligible employers for CJRS in the arts, entertainment and recreation sector.
As at 31 October, the proportion of the workforce eligible for furlough that were actually furloughed in AER sector was 24%. 45% of eligible employers in the AER sector were using the furlough scheme at the end of October.
As at 30 September, the take up rate of eligible employments was 28% in the AER sector, with 49% of eligible employers in the sector using the scheme.
As at 31 August, 40% of eligible employments were furloughed and 54% of eligible employers were using the scheme in the AER sector.
As at 31 July, 52% of eligible employments in the AER sector were furloughed, with a take up rate of 61% of eligible employers in the sector.
Asked by: Taiwo Owatemi (Labour - Coventry North West)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what steps he is taking to support the arts and culture industry in Coventry as they begin to commemorate Coventry as the city of culture 2021.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
The Government recognises the huge contribution the arts and culture sector makes, not only to the economy and international reputation of the UK, but also to the wellbeing and enrichment of its people. It is for this reason that we have invested an unprecedented £1.57 billion, the biggest ever one-off cash injection, into UK culture to tackle the crisis facing our most loved arts organisations and heritage sites across the country including Coventry, which will be our next City of Culture. The Culture Recovery Fund has awarded over £6 million in funding to arts and heritage organisations in Coventry to help support them through the current Covid-19 outbreak.
The Government has supported Coventry City of Culture Trust (the organisation responsible for planning and delivering the programme) with an investment of £15m for capital and resource projects. In addition, Arts Council England, has allocated £3.4m to support Coventry’s success as City of Culture.
The arts and cultural sector is instrumental to Coventry’s success and the Trust has employed local arts freelancers, invested in cultural infrastructure and, during the first lockdown, initiated a £100k resilience fund for the local arts community. In addition, through its programming, the Trust has provided a much needed injection of funding into the sector and supported artists in the region, nationally and internationally.
Coventry North West has received four awards totalling £221,063 from the Culture Recovery Funds: Mercurial Arts Limited received £64,548; The Highlife Centre received 2 amounts of £79,515 and £61,000; and the Canal and River Trust received £16,000.
Asked by: Taiwo Owatemi (Labour - Coventry North West)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, whether his Department has made an assessment of the economic effect on (a) festivals, (b) music venues and (c) the live events sector of his Department (i) announcing an indicative date and (ii) delaying an announcement of an indicative date in 2021 for Stage 5 re-opening during the covid-19 outbreak.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
The Government acknowledges the importance of the live events sector to the UK economy and that it has been significantly affected by the impacts of Covid-19.
We recognise the importance of giving the live events sector clarity for when Stage 5 activity can resume and acknowledge the lead in time required for productions to go ahead. However we have always been clear that the activity permitted would be in line with the latest public health context. No assessment is currently available regarding the potential effects of announcing an indicative date for stage 5 reopening.
We are committed to continue working with the live events sector to understand the challenges they face and to work towards reopening events with fuller audiences.
Asked by: Taiwo Owatemi (Labour - Coventry North West)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, how many and what proportion of (a) music festivals have accessed and (b) the number of roles in music festivals have been supported by the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme to date.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
The Government has worked closely with music and cultural sector representative bodies to maximise the survival of businesses and employee retention in the sector, through the extensive range of support the Government has provided to businesses and the self-employed.
The Government has not made an assessment of the extent to which music festivals have accessed the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme.
As at 30 September, the sector with the highest proportion of its workforce eligible and receiving the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme support was arts, entertainment and recreation at 23%. In all, 45% of employers in the arts, entertainment and recreation sector were using the furlough scheme at the end of September.
Asked by: Taiwo Owatemi (Labour - Coventry North West)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Minister of State, Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what steps his Department is taking to increase the provision of youth centres.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
This government is investing £500 million over five years through the new Youth Investment Fund. The fund will be used to build new youth centres, refurbish existing youth facilities, provide mobile facilities for harder to reach areas, and invest in the youth work profession and frontline services.
Government is also funding up to £7 million this financial year through the Youth Accelerator Fund that will expand existing successful projects delivering positive activities, and address urgent needs in the youth sector. The charity UK Youth have launched a small grants programme to distribute funding to deliver extra sessions in youth clubs and youth groups across England.
Asked by: Taiwo Owatemi (Labour - Coventry North West)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Minister of State, Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what recent steps he has taken to improve access to the arts and culture in the regions and nations of the UK.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
As cultural funding and policy is a devolved issue, I will focus on the work we do across England.
Through the Arts Council England (ACE), we are investing and promoting the arts and culture all around the country and will continue to do so. There continues to be a shift in ACE's National Portfolio funding outside London, increasing from 53.8% outside London in 2012-15 to 60.3% in 2018-22.
As part of this, ACE expects the organisations they fund to ensure that their cultural offer is accessible to as many people as possible. A great example of this is the Royal Shakespeare Company’s increasing number of “relaxed performances” which make the theatre more accessible to a neurodiverse audience.
In October 2019, the Government also announced a £250m Cultural Investment Fund (CIF) - of which £125m will be invested in regional libraries and museums across the country, helping these cultural institutions to enhance their offer and benefit every more people.