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Ben Bradshaw closing speech to c&binet forum, 28 October 2009

Andrew | 28 Oct 2009, 14:31

Rt Hon Ben Bradshaw MP closing speech to the c&binet forum, 28 October 2009

Creative industries thrive on calculated risks. This project – c&binet – has been a calculated risk and I hope you feel it’s a risk that has paid off.

We weren’t sure it would fly. It has.

More than 300 here – over-subscribed. A much bigger international audience on Twitter and our website live stream. Four Government Ministers. High level representation from a number of overseas Governments and the EU Commission. 

I hope you have found it useful both in terms of developing ideas and making connections.

Thanks for coming. Thanks to the sponsors Clifford Chance, Coutts and Kinura. 

Thanks in particular to our ambassadors who have put in so much work here and in the preparation. 

Thanks to the exhibitors and to David Rowan of Wired UK who curated the exhibition.

To the British Council and their young creative entrepreneurs who brought a welcome international and younger feel to the event.

Thanks to my team at DCMS who have worked incredibly hard and been under a lot of pressure to make this happen and make it a success.

Thanks too to you Jenny for compering all the way through and to those who led the main and fringe sessions.

Thanks to Curran and the Wolfnotes and Katie Shotter for entertaining us on the two evenings.   

The great thing about modern technology is we don’t have to wait long for a verdict on how c&binet has gone. Comments have been streaming in live since the start and I don’t think I’m putting a positive gloss on things by saying the response has been pretty positive.

Comments like

‘it’s a great thing that it’s happening,’

‘great that Government is involved,’

‘the UK is ahead of the game in holding a conference like this’ 

And the most encouraging thing for me is the strong expressions of interest to take c&binet forward including the possibility of private sector involvement in taking it on – that really would help develop c&binet into a Davos for the Creative Industries. 

That doesn’t mean to say we couldn’t have done things better or differently or that everything has been perfect.

From the first session when it took Anita Ondine’s question to draw attention to the singular lack of diversity of the opening panel, the lack of gender and cultural diversity has been a recurrent theme – striking how an industry that lives off the richness of cultural diversity is so un-diverse at the top. Could that mean they are missing something?

I know a lot of time has been spent discussing peer-to-peer, but what has been encouraging is the overwhelming desire to move on and develop new ways of meeting the expectations of consumers in the digital age.

The fact that I picked up more chat about the age old and creative tensions between the bigs and the smalls or the young and the old rather than just the rights holders on the one side and the ISPs or open rights community on the other is surely an encouraging sign we are moving on.

The impromptu “out of the closet” smalls alternative conference that happened last night in the Amber Foyer was great. But even those of you I spoke to who thought the forum has been too dominated by the bigs acknowledged this has been a refreshingly flat get together.

Not in terms of the atmosphere but in terms of the democratic mixing and cross-fertilisation between some of the biggest and most established and some of the smallest and newest players in the business.

I suggest that flatness would be difficult to recreate in any other industrial sector.

I have certainly learned a lot as have my officials who have been here all through. It has helped highlight for us where we need to do further work on policy.

Some of these were picked up in the Q&A session with Peter Mandelson this morning. We do have more work to do on licensing and the copyright strategy launched today acknowledges that we need to bring out licensing regime into the modern age.

On EU copyright legislation – the current system is a mess. It’s generally life plus 70 years for books but only 50 years from the date of recording for sound recordings. The current EU proposal is to increase that to 70 years – reflecting the fact that for many living musicians that is their pension.

The original EU proposal was for 95 years. Our position is that we support an extension from 50 years as long as there are clear benefits for performers. And in response the question from Adrian Hon –

would we support an ever increasing extension of copyright that would stifle innovation? – the answer is no. There has to be a balance.

A lot of other challenges and ideas for us to do more work on – skills, access to finance, the bank lending point raised by Brian Message with Peter this morning.

And a challenge to all of us is to internationalise this discussion as the ultimate solutions can only be provided at international level.

I want to end where I began on Monday evening when I reminded us that as a proportion of our GDP the UK creative industries are Number 1 in world:

As big as the whole of the building sector to our economy. Twice as important as hotels and restaurants. Twice as many people employed as in financial services.  And that’s just the economic value – it doesn’t include your value to our sense of national health, wellbeing and pride, or the image of Britain you project to the rest of the world.

Yet – if I were to have a conversation with people on the streets of my constituency in Exeter about the importance of the creative industries most of them would not know what I was talking about.

A challenge to all of us is how to embed your importance into the consciousness of the British citizen – in the same way as they understand the importance of manufacturing or the City – so that we in Government and you in the industry have the licence to do what we need to do.

One of the problems has been that this has not been a sector that has spoken with one voice.

C&binet isn’t and can’t be that voice but it has for the first time provided a forum that has brought all of you, the diverse sectors, together with policy makers – that is an historic achievement in itself and we need to build on it.       

ENDS