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Creative Industries

I accept my hon. Friend's point, but the RDAs also have to capture the importance of those factors because they relate to the added value that the creative industries often bring. The hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Field) made two important points. One was the importance of vocational courses. I endorse his remarks on that. I referred to the fact that we must work to ensure that the competences offered in courses and the content of courses reflect the needs of people in the industry. The individuals who take those courses, and now often pay for them, would then be able to move straight into the world of work. We have not dropped the piece of work relating to that, as the hon. Member for Wantage suggested. The university of Brighton is taking forward a piece of work precisely to look at course content across the university sector and the conservatoires. That will ensure the relevance of that work. I was pleased to hear him endorse the importance of vocational courses, but they must be of the right quality. Small and medium-sized enterprises were also mentioned. It would be wrong to have a Minister for the creative industries because businesses in that sector share many of the characteristics and problems generally experienced by industry. The fact that there is a concentration of SMEs means that we must get the whole framework right to support them across all sectors. When I did business support simplification in my previous job, we tried to drive out many of the specific funding programmes that we had for individual industries so that we could view them in a more general way. If something is simple, businesses will take advantage of it; if it is complex, they will not find their way through the maze. It is right to have cross-Government working. I work incredibly closely with the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform and the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills. I also work closely with colleagues in the Treasury, in local government and elsewhere. The way in which we are dealing with the issue is right. On the whole, our work on deregulation supports the SME sector. The additional capital allowances that businesses have for investment after the Budget are important. We do not simply want businesses to start up, but to grow. The incentivisation is now taken away from the capital gains tax relief and put into capital investment, which is important. The hon. Members for Bath (Mr. Foster) and for Wantage mentioned statistics not being precise enough. We are trying to address the problem with information. When we put together the Will Hutton report, there was a lot of discussion about the basis on which he made his observations. The data are not comparable. There is an issue with information; it is always an investment, and we are considering that matter. I agree about video games. Far too often, they are attacked, but they actually account for more than 50 per cent. of gross value added in the creative industries. Video games are hugely important to us and are increasingly enjoyed by a wide range of people. For example, more women now play them and the average age of those who play is 28, which is much higher than I thought. It is not only Whittingdale junior, but many adults—men and increasingly women—who are enjoying such games. I take on board the points made by the hon. Member for Bath about extending intellectual property and ““use it or lose it.”” I agree that there are some simple, basic realities, and that is why we turned the document from a Green or White Paper into a strategy document. The document is full of real action. It can be attacked by saying that some of the action has been trailed before, but this is real action that will make a difference to the industry. We could have had another strategy document, but I think that Will Hutton did his job pretty well. It is now down to us to take his work forward and to ask what the Government will do to ensure that we provide the economic conditions to enable the industries to prosper. That is what we have done in the document. I am proud of it, but I consider it to be a stage in the journey. The creative industries sector is fragile and operates in fast-changing circumstances—whether that involves the introduction of broadband, the convergence of technology or the competition from globalisation. We have to respond quickly and we can only do so in partnership. The partnership we have established is broadly welcomed by most people with whom I converse and we want to preserve it for the future by working across the Government in the interests of the creative sector.