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 potential merits of extending the Film and TV Production Restart Scheme that was available during the covid-19 outbreak.

The UK Film and TV Production Restart Scheme was introduced as part of Her Majesty’s Government’s commitment to provide support during the Covid-19 pandemic and enable productions to proceed in the absence of insurance for Covid-19 related risks.

The Scheme has supported a production boom during the pandemic, protecting over 100,000 jobs and £3bn of production spend, ensuring the continued production of content for our screens. Thanks to the Government’s Living with Covid plan, the success of the vaccination programme and effective risk management by productions during the pandemic, the risk to productions posed by coronavirus has diminished, with no civil authority restrictions in place that require production shutdowns. As a result, the Government is confident it no longer needs to intervene in the market and has closed the scheme to new applications.