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UK Music welcome business select committee report
By CMU Editorial | Published on Monday 21 February 2011
Cross-sector trade body UK Music last week welcomed a report from parliament’s Business, Innovations And Skills Select Committee which criticised the government for the way it engages with and supports the creative industries.
The select committee also proposed the creation of a creative industry council and requested that the government move to ensure creative companies can benefit from the Enterprise Finance Guarantee Scheme, which reduces the risks to banks who provide loans to SME businesses. Both these recommendations please UK Music because they were both included in their own previously reported Liberating Creativity report, published last year.
On the potential for a creative industries council, the select committee’s report said: “The creative industries sector is a significant wealth creator in the United Kingdom. It is therefore surprising that government engagement with the sector appears to be somewhat haphazard. While we welcome the creation of an ad hoc ministerial committee to cover the sector we believe that a more structured approach would be more beneficial. Industrial councils have been established for the automotive, aerospace and marine sectors and we recommend that the department consider establishing a similar council for the creative industries”.
While on the loan guarantee programme, it said: “The Enterprise Finance Guarantee Scheme should be available to all sectors of the economy. It is therefore unacceptable that the creative industries sector – which is one of the six sectors designated by the Government as growth sectors – is effectively being excluded from this avenue of funding. We recommend that the government, as a matter of urgency, ensure that the criteria for receiving EFG funding is sufficiently flexible to accommodate the creative industries. We expect the government, in its response to this report, to set out clearly how it will achieve this aim”.
Welcoming all of this, UK Music top man Feargal Sharkey told CMU: “Music generates revenues of nearly £4 billion a year for this country. It sustains an estimated 100,000 jobs. And, vitally, it is a driver of economic growth in terms of tourism, in terms of a host of ancillary businesses and in terms of the digital economy. I am delighted that the Select Committee has recognised our potential, and particularly the need for the music industry to be treated as ‘an industry’. Like all other sectors of the economy, we need coordinated policy-making and our creators and investors require access to finance and support”.
He added: “In terms of talent and entrepreneurialism, the UK is already globally-renowned. Our artists and composers consistently deliver the kind of high quality content that the whole world demands. With support from the Department Of Business, now commonly referred to as the ‘Department Of Growth’, I am positive we can deliver even more benefit for UK plc”.
