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

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, if he will make an assessment of trends in the level of the contribution of visual effects and animation industry to the economy in the last ten years.

The government is committed to supporting the UK’s visual effects and animation industries, ensuring that they are able to remain competitive nationally and internationally. We will continue to focus on maintaining a strong and globally competitive sector by keeping tax incentives modern, agile, competitive and attractive; investing in infrastructure; supporting innovation; working with industry on skills development; and promoting independent content.

The audio-visual tax reliefs play a key role in boosting competitiveness, incentivising the production of culturally British content, and contributing to the industry’s - and the nation’s - economic growth. The Government values the UK’s visual effects and animations sectors and the important role they play in the fabric of the creative industries; and is committed to giving creators security and a regulatory and fiscal environment where creativity can flourish and help the UK’s creative industries maximise their economic potential.

During 2019 the VFX industry added £1.68bn in GVA to the UK economy and supported 27,430 jobs. This is likely an underestimate due to the spillover impacts of advertising and brand promotion work that were not captured in BFI's analysis.

The total economic impact for the parts of the sector supported by Animation Tax Relief amounted to: