Creative Industries

Viscount Colville of Culross Excerpts

Thursday 3rd November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Colville of Culross]

My Lords, I thank noble Lords for their kind words and I look forward to the establishment of the “Newsnight” party. It sounds like fun. I of course declare an interest: I work for the BBC as a producer in the science and history departments. I am very grateful for the honour bestowed on me by the noble Lords who elected me to these Benches. My father loved this place and talked frequently of his many friends here, which included both staff and noble Lords. Since I arrived, I have been very touched by the many people who have spoken so warmly about him. I hope that I will be able to make my own small contribution to the life of this place. I should like to take this opportunity to thank everyone for making me feel so very welcome; in particular, as every noble Lord knows, we in this House are very well served by the tremendous team of staff who look after us so assiduously. I thank them for helping and advising me in their wonderful, courteous way.

In 1989, I went to the Soviet Union to work on the first live television programme to be broadcast from Moscow by the BBC. My translator and fixer was an amazing woman called Masha Slonim. She had been a dissident in Moscow in the 1960s and was taken to the West by Dr Henry Kissinger. From there, she broadcast on the English and Russian language services of the BBC World Service and, for two decades, she talked into the ether. The Cold War meant that that she never heard any reply from her audience and did not even know whether there was an audience.

Finally, in 1989, she returned to her home country for the first time with us. As part of the programme we filmed in the small city of Yaroslavl, a few hundred kilometres north of Moscow. We met a priest and Masha introduced herself. When he heard her name, he fell to his knees, kissed her hand and wept. When he had composed himself, he said, “Your broadcasts have kept my mind and heart alive for these many dark years. I can’t imagine what my life would have been without the sound of your voice and the information you gave me. Thank you, Masha. Thank you Britain”.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bonham-Carter, and the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, have spoken of the huge contribution that the British creative industries make to our economy, and they are right. But I know that the creative industries are so much more than just a business opportunity. They also have the power to shine a light into the darkness—not just for audiences and authoritarian regimes but into the darker places of our own minds. However, I am concerned that this extraordinary part of our economy is under threat. The creativity of these industries depends entirely on the talents of those they recruit, but I fear that these industries are increasingly restricting the range of new entrants.

So many of these companies depend on unpaid internships for their pool of new talent. For a week or even a month, they are a wonderful way to introduce new recruits to the incredible opportunities promised by a career in the creative industries. But in recent years there has been an explosion of long-term unpaid internships. I fear that these are not only replacing paid jobs but are driving many would-be recruits, who are not just from poorer backgrounds but from the middle classes, away from the industry. As Tanya de Grunwald, who runs Graduate Fog, one of the many websites campaigning on this issue, told me, people can manage for three months, six months is quite difficult, but nine months is not an option. They run out of money and many give up their dream.

In preparing for this speech, I spoke to many interns. One particularly struck me; she was a young graduate from Cambridge with a good 2:1 in English who wanted to work in journalism. She completed more than 18 months of unpaid internships at three companies in the creative industries. She was doing proper work, such as writing press releases and proof reading. Eventually, she decided that she could not go on working for nothing. She has given up her hope of being a journalist and has gone elsewhere. She told me that many of her friends who had also thought of going into the creative industries had decided that they could not work for so long without pay. They, too, have gone to other professions.

The concerns are not just among graduates themselves; at the very top of the industry, people are worried. Jo Taylor, who runs 4Talent, which sets up paid internships through Channel 4, told me that not paying people for work devalues the opportunities being offered and limits new recruits to a small homogenous pool.

In September, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills brought out guidelines called Common Best Practice Code for High-Quality Internships. These specify that high-quality internships should last no longer than 12 months, although they say the internships last typically for three months. There are no recommendations about whether the interns should be paid or not.

The present economic climate is putting greater pressure on small creative companies. The temptation to take young people on as unpaid interns as part of the companies’ business model has never been greater. However, the industry must take note. It is endangering its future vitality and the creativity of one our greatest exports by not recruiting as widely as possible from the very best talent from across our country and across society.

Will the Minister say what the Government propose to do to collect data on the number of internships, both paid and unpaid, and whether she is happy that the best practice guidelines seem to give little guidance on long-term unpaid internships?