Stuart Andrew

Given that the Minister has just been going on about 14 years of the last Conservative Government, I find that a bit hypocritical, but that does not surprise me. The Government have also slashed retail, hospitality and leisure relief, and set out plans to burden businesses with more than 70 radical 1970s-style regulations, imposing £4.5 billion of additional costs on business. I am worried that there seems to have been a failure to protect the creative industries from the Chancellor’s growth-killing Budget, just as the Department failed to protect them from the Deputy Prime Minister’s radical Employment Rights Bill. I welcome the £60 million support package, but will it touch the sides when measured against the impact of the Budget? Do not take it from me—take it from Arts Council England, which warned that the Government’s national insurance jobs tax will have “significant implications for cultural organisations.” Take it from the Music Venue Trust, which has warned that changes to retail, hospitality and leisure relief will put more than 350 grassroots music venues at “imminent risk of closure, representing the potential loss of more than 12,000 jobs, over £250 million in economic activity and the loss of over 75,000 live music events.”