Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what steps his Department is taking to support the video games industry.

Government is committed to working with the creative industries, including through the Creative Industries Council, to further boost their growth. Our support specifically for the video games sector includes tax relief which was introduced from 1 April 2014. To date 25 projects have been formally certified as qualifying projects under the scheme. A further 21 new applications have been received in December alone. We have also invested to ensure that games companies have the skills they need, for example with DCMS match-funding for skills initiatives like Creative Skillset’s Trainee Finder scheme. As of October 2014, Trainee Finder had placed 122 trainees in 67 video games companies.