Baroness Caine of Kentish Town (Lab)

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Morgan for her excellent speech and this important debate, which is ever more critical as we live in and look to a future revolutionised by digital automation. The evidence is unequivocal: creativity is becoming one of the most critical human capabilities. Deloitte warns of an “imagination deficit” in organisations, where curiosity, empathy and creative problem-solving are now the essential skills that enable people to thrive alongside artificial intelligence. The World Economic Forum identifies creative thinking as a top workforce skill for 2025, and LinkedIn’s global workforce survey shows that senior leaders rank creativity above analytical reasoning as the most important soft skill for the modern workplace. Creativity is not a luxury; it is the engine of innovation, adaptability and resilience. If we are serious about preparing young people for the future, it needs to be recognised as a core capability, not peripheral or optional but central to the skills and education agenda at all levels, including higher-level skills in higher education. If we lag behind the realities of technological change, automation will not liberate opportunity; it will deepen exclusion, creating new barriers for those who already face the greatest challenges. Creative and digital industries are two of the biggest growth sectors in our modern industrial strategy. They overlap, and so increasingly do their skill sets. A substantial proportion of England’s local authorities, including 11 of the 19 mayoral combined authorities, identify them as priorities for growth and for their skills policies. I wholeheartedly believe that enabling devolution, collaboration and flexibilities to local areas is key to success on this agenda. However, it also needs alignment with national policy, which responds to what key industries and devolved Administrations are prioritising, and indeed what the industrial strategy is saying. For example, in higher education, creative courses are not currently on the list as eligible for modular support through the lifelong learning entitlement, and that list has been cited as key to deciding which courses will be eligible for the soon-to-be announced maintenance grants for those from disadvantaged backgrounds. In addition, this year, no creative courses are allowed to bid to the Strategic Priorities Fund for capital grants. The message that sends out from Whitehall is that these courses are not valued as much as the very important STEM areas, and underlying that, one suspects, is reliance on debatable datasets that relate to earnings and the ability to pay back student loans. If we want to strengthen regional prosperity and improve outcomes for disadvantaged learners, we must ensure that the skills we value and teach also match the world they are entering, not the world we are leaving behind. That is one where both digital tech and creative education need to be equally valued and ever intertwined.