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Creative Industries

My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend Lord Bragg for introducing this debate at a very timely moment. His remarks cheered me up. In a dark time it is wonderful to hear such enthusiasm. I agree most profoundly with what he said about the contribution of the arts and culture to—as he put it—feeding the inner life. If only we could talk about this with less embarrassment, not in this House, of course, but elsewhere. I should declare a variety of interests—the term "creative industries" draws together a variety of enterprise which includes the live performing arts, where I spent most of my professional life and where I retain connections through membership of several boards, including that of the Roundhouse in north London, the National Opera Studio and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Today, however, I want to talk about two aspects of the creative economy with which I have no personal association, except to the extent that my son started in one of them and now works in the other. The first is television drama—that was briefly mentioned by my noble friend Lord Bragg—and the second is the fashion industry, about which I thought I might be alone in making observations. However, I reckoned without the excellent contribution of the noble Baroness, Lady Young. I am privileged to be a member of your Lordships’ Select Committee on Communications. I am sorry not to be able to take part in the debate later today on the committee's report on public service broadcasting because many of the issues raised in the report have a direct bearing on matters under discussion in this debate. In particular, it draws attention to the current gaps in public service provision and asks some searching questions about how those gaps are to be filled, both in terms of funding and content. My own principal anxiety centres on the future of high-quality drama for television. For the purposes of this debate, I use the term "high-quality" to refer to the kind of work exemplified by, for example, Granada's work in the 1980s such as "Jewel in the Crown" and "Brideshead Revisited", and more recently by productions such as Channel 4’s recent "Red Riding" or "The Devil's Whore", and some of the best of the BBC's output such as "Life on Mars" and "Cranford". I recently embarked on a programme of acquisitions for my own DVD library in order to get together as many of the television drama series that I remembered enjoying over the past 25 years, have another look at them and see whether they stood up to scrutiny. So in the past few months I have watched "Brideshead Revisited", many adaptations of various Dickens novels and of novels by Trollope, Thomas Hardy and George Eliot, two series based on John Le Carre's Smiley novels, "The Edge of Darkness", a brilliant original drama commissioned by the BBC—now something of a cult piece—in which the late and in my view very much lamented Bob Peck gave one of his finest performances, and a lot else besides. Your Lordships may think that I have too much time on my hands. But the fact is that I am not embarrassed to share this aspect of my leisure activity with the House because this little research project focused my mind not on recalling a supposed golden age when there was always something good on telly—although a lot of this work is very good—but on wondering whether in 25 years’ time my children will have a similarly impressive volume and range of television drama to remember in their dotage. For the danger in which we stand now is that the cost of making this sort of home-grown work is so high, particularly when compared with the relatively low cost of buying in product from the USA, that television companies are able to do less and less of it and almost invariably need co-production money to do it at all. We have heard about the crisis facing the independent television companies. ITV has already told us that drama is one of the areas it will cut back. Channel 4's drama output, once one of its great glories, is also likely to decline as the company struggles to find a sustainable way forward. The BBC, although still in the forefront of producing UK drama, is under increasing pressure to share its resources with others, and we must wonder what impact this will have on how it fulfils its commitment to drama in the future. Why does this matter—in particular, why does it matter to the economy? Why should we not leave things to the market and content ourselves largely with a diet of imported drama, mostly from Hollywood? In thinking about this I am indebted to Professor Peter Grant of the Law Faculty at Toronto University. In the illuminating evidence he recently gave to the Communications Committee, he noted the need for Governments and regulators to maintain and enhance their involvement with locally produced drama to avoid a decline in what Ofcom and others accept is the most popular genre of programming on television. Professor Grant says: ""People appreciate having their own stories told and their own experience reflected on the small screen"." He goes on to point out that there is a clear economic justification for government support, noting the importance of creative clusters to economic strategy. He says: ""Creative clusters are essentially groupings of the creative personnel in cities and regions who are able to produce quality cultural products of all types … Drama is the one category that uses all of the creative energies and all of your creative forces together. It is the highest cost within programming but it is also the most ambitious and if you have a structure in the country that supports local drama it is a major contribution to the development of these creative clusters. There have been studies ... in many countries ... about the importance now of creative clusters to the economic well-being of a nation"." The UK is rich in the talented people who form these clusters, and their skills are sought after worldwide, as a number of speakers have said. Furthermore, what they create is popular and highly valued by audiences both at home and abroad. Will my noble friend say when he replies in what way the Government intend to encourage broadcasters and programme makers to maintain their commitment to UK television drama? Will they, for example, consider the introduction of levies, as was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald, and as has been done in other European countries, to provide an additional source of funds for this vital work? Finally, I shall have a brief word about fashion. I love fashion; it is perhaps another indication of my fundamentally frivolous nature, but it is not just because I like nice clothes. I am intrigued by the way the fashion industry represents the bringing together of often radical design ideas with strong commercial imperatives. It is an industry that is highly consumer-focused and depends on innovation—some might say on novelty—making it highly dynamic and highly globalised, for example in relation to the sourcing of textiles, as has already been pointed out by the noble Baroness, Lady Young. As she also said, it has not always been at the forefront of ethical thinking about trade, but now, in a world faced with huge social, economic and environmental challenges, some practitioners are beginning to develop systems to address the negative impacts of current practices and push the huge creative energy within the industry towards imagining—I use the word advisedly—a future based on collaborative models of sustainability and ethical practice. For example, the Centre for Sustainable Fashion, set up in 2008, at the London College of Fashion is already working with big fashion retail businesses to take some of these ideas forward, looking to develop skills and technologies as well as design talent, to create, as it says, ""better lives through a sustainable fashion economy"." I will be interested to hear how my noble friend responds to the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Young, about government support for the sustainable fashion initiatives already under way. In these dark times, and despite all the difficulties, the creative industries in this country provide us with something to feel good about. There is so much to be proud of, and so much to lose if we fail to understand the significance of what these industries contribute. I hope that the Government will continue to do everything possible to support and encourage them.