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Creative Industries

I very much welcome the fact that we are debating the creative industries. The Minister gave us some statistics showing that their importance to the economy is growing, and I think that we all recognise that. Our manufacturing industry has slowly disappeared eastwards and has been followed by our service industries, which are now run from call centres in Bangalore or administered by migrant workers in this country. The one thing that we are left with that we are extremely good at is the creative industries, so it is extremely important that we give them every support. There are many things in the documents that I welcome. The ““Find your Talent”” programme certainly has a worthy objective, although I am little sceptical about it, given the figures that the hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Foster) mentioned that show what the programme actually amounts to in financial terms, and given that already hard-pressed teachers will have to squeeze the programme into the school day. None the less, the objective is a noble one, and other measures, such as the growth in apprenticeships and the investment in research, are also admirable. I shall, however, focus on one key issue. In supporting the creative industries, the Government have a fundamental role to play in respect of copyright, because that is the one thing that only they can enforce. Without copyright, the creative industries cannot survive, because they depend on being able to achieve a return on the creation of intellectual property. Copyright enforcement has always been a challenge. A long time ago, I started life as a special adviser at the then Department of Trade and Industry; I remember the debates that took place about whether we should introduce a levy on blank digital cassette tapes. I could see why they were a problem because, as a teenager, I had always tuned into the top 20 on a Sunday evening, with my cassette tape recorder poised to record—