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

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what steps her Department is taking to promote the UK as an attractive destination for filmmaking.

The Government is committed to ensuring that the UK remains the leading global destination for inward investors in filmmaking.

In recent years, the government’s actions have helped the film and TV industry bounce back from the pandemic, with production now stronger than ever. This includes the £500 million Film and TV Production Restart Scheme, supporting over 100,000 jobs and productions worth more than £3 billion, and the Culture Recovery Fund, supporting over 200 independent cinemas.

To build on this, and support the industry to not only survive but thrive, further actions have been taken. This includes the government’s current £1.6million annual funding of the British Film Commission, which has driven a near doubling of UK studio capacity, the £28 million UK Global Screen Fund, which is expanding the global reach of UK independent content, and the continued success of our screen sector tax reliefs (for film, high end TV, animation and children’s TV), which in 2021-22 provided £792m of support for over 1000 projects.

The Government will continue to engage closely with industry, the British Film Institute, and the British Film Commission, to further promote the UK as a filmmaking destination and to build upon the success of 2021, which saw a record-breaking £5.64 billion in screen production in the film and high-end TV sectors alone.