Key General Election manifestos are out – what does it mean for the Cultural and Creative Industries?

We said: To achieve the UK Government target of one million new jobs by 2030, a culture-rich education – complete with skills-focussed careers guidance – should be available to young people from all backgrounds to ensure a diverse, skilled talent pool for the future. 

The Liberal Democrats want to: 

• Include arts subjects in the English Baccalaureate 

• Give Ofsted power to monitor the curriculum so that schools continue to include subjects like art, music or drama 

• Expand provision of extracurricular activities, such as music and drama with new free entitlement for disadvantaged children 

• Maintain free access to national museums and galleries 

• Replace the apprenticeship levy with a broader, more flexible skills and training levy. 

The Conservative Party want to: 

• Fund 100,000 apprenticeships for young people by “curbing the number of poor-quality university degrees that leave young people worse off” 

• Ensuring that everyone who wants to work in the film, TV, gaming and music sectors can work on live productions and at least 12 months of secure training 

• Introduce the Advanced British Standard 

• Give teachers in priority areas and key STEM and technical subjects bonuses of up to £30,000 tax-free over five years from September 2024, extending to eligible teachers in further education colleges. 

The Green Party want to: 

• Review assessment targets in schools so that arts and vocational subjects are treated equally within the curriculum 

• Invest £12.4 billion in skills and training, equipping workers to play a full role in the green economy.  

• Increase school funding by £8 billion, with a £2 billion pay uplift for teachers 

The Labour Party want to: 

• Remove VAT exemption and business rates relief for private schools, aiming to redirect funds towards state education 

• Support children to study a creative or vocational subject until they are 16 and ensure school accountability measures reflect this 

• Launch a new National Music Education Network with information on courses and classes for parents, teachers and children.  

• Establish Skills England to bring together business, training providers and unions with national and local government  

• Work with the Migration Advisory Committee to make sure training in England accounted for the overall needs of the labour market 

• Reform the Apprenticeships Levy and create a flexible Growth and Skills Levy, with Skills England consulting on eligible courses to ensure qualifications offer value for money 

We said: Strengthening protections for freelancers and appointing a Freelancing Commissioner will provide better support for people who work in this way. If we get this right, it will serve as a blueprint for more successful UK-wide self-employment.

The Liberal Democrats want to: 

• Establish a new ‘dependent contractor’ employment status in between employment and self-employment, with entitlements to basic rights such as minimum earnings levels, sick pay and holiday entitlement 

• Review IR35 reforms to ensure self-employed people are treated fairly 

• Review pension rules to protect portability between roles and address gig economy  

The Conservative Party want to: 

• Abolish the 9% National Insurance main rate for the self-employed 

• Promote digital invoicing 

• Improve enforcement of the Prompt Payment Code

The Green Party want to: 

• Bring the Prompt Payment Code into law 

• Bar late payers from public-procurement contracts 

• Mandate the Small Business Commissioner to investigate potential instances of poor payment proactively, instead of only when a complaint has been made 

• Establish equal employment rights for all workers from their first day of employment, including those in the ‘gig economy’ and on zero-hours contracts. 

• Deny operating licenses to gig employers that repeatedly break employment, data protection or tax law  

The Labour Party want to: 

• Take action on late payments to ensure small businesses and the self-employed are paid on time 

• Implement ‘Labour’s Plan to Make Work Pay: Delivering a New Deal for Working People’ in full – introducing legislation within 100 days banning zero hours contracts; ending fire and rehire; and introducing basic rights from day one to parental leave, sick pay, and protection from unfair dismissal. They would consult with businesses, workers, and civil society on how to put these plans into practice before legislation is passed. 

We said: Make the UK the best place to build and retain creative talent and their businesses. Return the arts share of National Lottery funds to 25% and create and maintain genuinely competitive fiscal reliefs and incentives.  

The Liberal Democrats wants to: 

• Protect arts funding via the National Lottery 

• Boost funding for cultural and creative projects by applying to participate fully in Creative Europe 

• Expand the British Business Bank “to perform a more central role in the economy” 

• Ensure that viable SMEs have access to capital, and enable it to help ‘crowd-in’ private investment 

• Establish creative enterprise zones “to grow and regenerate the cultural output of areas across the UK”. 

The Conservative Party want to: 

• Ensure that creative sector tax incentives “remain competitive” 

• Maintain existing research and development tax reliefs 

• Explore extending the “‘full expensing’ policy to leasing, once the fiscal conditions allow”, to further incentivise businesses to invest. 

The Green Party want to: 

• Invest an extra £5 billion over five years for local government spending on arts and culture for local museums, theatres, libraries and art galleries 

• End VAT on cultural activities, lowering the prices of everything from museum tickets to gigs in local pubs and making these more accessible. 

The Labour Party want to: 

• Reform the British Business Bank, “including a stronger mandate to support growth in the regions and nations, [and] make it easier for small and medium sized enterprises to access capital.”  

• Cap corporation tax at the current level of 25 per cent, for the entire Parliament 

• Ensuring full expensing for capital investments  

• Act “if tax changes in other countries pose a risk to UK competitiveness” 

• “Strategically use public investment where it can unlock additional private sector investment, create jobs, and provide a return for taxpayers” 

• Work with universities to support spinouts 

• Work with industry to ensure start-ups have the access to finance they need to grow.  

We said: Facilitate innovation by investing in research and development (R&D) funding, and supporting new products, services and intellectual property. 

The Liberal Democrats want to spend 3% of the UK’s gross domestic product (GDP) as minimum in R&D by 2030, rising to 3.5% by 2034. 

The Conservative Party want to increase public spending on R&D to £22 billion a year, up from £20 billion this year 

The Green Party want to increase investment into R&D by over £30 billion in the lifetime of the five-year parliament (focused on tackling climate crisis) 

The Labour Party want to set ten-year budgets for key R&D institutions  

We said: Enable innovation and provide security for creatives by protecting Intellectual Property (IP). IP is the lifeblood of the sector – and the UK Government must uphold the UK’s existing gold-standard framework.  

The Liberal Democrats said they would create a cross-sectoral regulatory framework for artificial intelligence (AI) that “promotes innovation while creating certainty for AI users, developers and investors”. They would also negotiate the UK’s participation in the Trade and Technology Council with the US and the EU, so the UK “can play a leading role in global AI regulation, and work with international partners in agreeing common standards for AI risk and impact assessment, testing, monitoring and audit”. 

The Conservative Party said they would ensure creators are properly protected and remunerated for their work, whilst also making the most of the opportunities of AI and its applications for creativity in the future. 

The Green Party said they are committed to the protection of the Intellectual Property of artists, writers and musicians and other creators. They would ensure that “AI does not erode the value of human creativity and that workers’ rights and interests are respected when AI leads to significant changes in working conditions.” 

The Labour Party said they would ensure industrial strategy supports the development of the AI sector and removes planning barriers to new data centres. They would create a National Data Library to bring together existing research programmes and help deliver data-driven public services, whilst maintaining strong safeguards and ensuring all of the public benefit. They would create a new Regulatory Innovation Office, bringing together existing functions across government, to update regulation, approval timelines, and co-ordination of issues spanning existing boundaries.   

We said: Strengthen the UK’s standing on the world stage with easy movement of people, goods and services as well as supporting trade and exports. 

The Liberal Democrats said they want to negotiate free and simple short-term travel arrangements for UK artists to perform in the EU, and European artists to perform in the UK. 

The Conservative Party said they would not allow any form of free movement to return. 

The Green Party said they want to ensure that musicians have access to visa-free travel to the EU through negotiating a reciprocal arrangement at the earliest possible opportunity. They would also seek to re-join the EU as soon as the political conditions are right. 

The Labour Party said they would help [the UK’s] touring artists; and secure a mutual recognition agreement for professional qualifications to help open up markets for UK service exporters. They said that Britain will stay outside of the EU, “[b]ut to seize the opportunities ahead…we will reset the relationship and seek to deepen ties with our European friends, neighbours and allies. […] There will be no return to the single market, the customs union, or freedom of movement. Instead, Labour will work to improve the UK’s trade and investment relationship with the EU, by tearing down unnecessary barriers to trade.” 

The Liberal Democrats said they would protect the BBC, S4C, BBC Alba and Channel 4 as “independent, publicly owned, public service broadcasters” and would “properly [fund] the impartial BBC World Service from the Foreign Office budget and restoring its global reach”. They would also support the BBC “both to provide impartial news and information, and to take a leading role in increasing media literacy and educating all generations in tackling the impact of fake news”.  They would require at least 80% of on-demand TV content to be subtitled, 10% audio-described and 5% signed. 

The Conservative Party said that the “BBC should represent the perspectives of the entire nation with diversity of thought, accuracy and impartiality as its guiding principles.” They would “carefully consider the findings of the [BBC] Funding Review ahead of the next Royal Charter and ensure it upholds these principles”. They would also introduce a new complaints process for the BBC. 

The Labour Party said they want to “work constructively with the BBC and our other public service broadcasters so they continue to inform, educate and entertain people, and support the creative economy by commissioning distinctively British content.” 

The Liberal Democrats want to: 

• Develop an industrial strategy that will give businesses certainty and incentivise them to invest in new technologies to grow the economy, create good jobs and tackle the climate crisis 

• Support science, research and innovation in zero-carbon, environmental and medical technologies, by continuing to participate in Horizon Europe and joining the European Innovation Council 

• Appoint a Chief Secretary for Sustainability in HM Treasury to ensure that the economy is sustainable, resource-efficient and zero-carbon, establish a new Net Zero Delivery Authority to coordinate action across government departments and work with devolved administrations, and hand more powers and resources to local councils for local net zero strategies 

• Cut energy bills and emissions, and end fuel poverty by launching an emergency Home Energy Upgrade programme, with free insulation and heat pumps for low-income households and a central role for local authorities in delivering this programme; introduce a new subsidised Energy-Saving Homes scheme – with pilots to find the most effective combination of tax incentives, loans and grants, together with advice and support – and introduce a social tariff for the most vulnerable to provide targeted energy discounts for vulnerable households 

• Remove restrictions on new solar and wind power, and support investment and innovation in tidal and wave power, maintain the fracking ban, and introduce a ban on new coal mines 

The Conservative Party want to: 

• Invest £1.1 billion into the Green Industries Growth Accelerator to support British manufacturing capabilities, boost supply chains and ensure our energy transition is made in Britain 

• Legislate to ensure annual licensing rounds for oil and gas production from the North Sea 

• Treble offshore wind capacity, build the first two carbon capture and storage clusters, scale up nuclear power and deliver new gigawatt power plant at Wylfa in North Wales 

• Implement a new import carbon pricing mechanism by 2027. 

• Ensure that green levies on household bills are lower and rule out creating further green levies 

• Maintain the energy price cap, and review and reform standing charges to keep them as low as possible

The Green Party want to: 

• Push for significant investment in a green economic transformation, alongside the private sector – the programme would include: an average of £40 billion per year over the course of the next parliament, including £7 billion annually on climate adaptation; a carbon tax to provide money to invest in the green transition; and nationalise utilities 

• Change the Bank of England’s mandate so that funding the sustainability transition “becomes a central objective, alongside the maintenance of price stability” and require the Bank to “mainstream the climate crisis into its strategic thinking and to produce a carbon-neutrality roadmap for the financial system” 

• Establish regional mutual banks to drive investment in decarbonisation and local economic sustainability by supporting investment in SMEs and community-owned enterprises and cooperatives 

• Focus additional spending on tackling the climate and environmental crisis – this would be through funding research into sectors including: energy storage; agroecological agriculture and soil health; re-use, repair, recycling and designing out waste; carbon neutral construction; carbon-neutral production and carbon capture technology. 

• Partner with universities, other research institutions and business to assess the most economically and environmentally significant areas for research and development 

• Advocate for a circular economy that reduces the waste of resources 

• Aim to introduce new support and incentives for wind, solar and other renewable energies including marine, hydro-power and geothermal. 

The Labour Party want to: 

• Ban the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2030  

• Create a new publicly-owned company, Great British Energy (capitalised with £8.3 billion), to partner with industry and trade unions to co-invest in leading clean power technologies  

• Launch a Green Prosperity Plan where, in partnership with business through its National Wealth Fund, will invest in the industries of the future to create 650,000 jobs by 2030 funded with a time-limited windfall tax on the oil and gas companies 

• Place failing water companies under special measures to clean up the UK’s water, and give regulators new powers, block bonus payment for those who pollute waterways and bring criminal charges against those who persistently break the law 

The Liberal Democrats said they want to replace the immigration salary threshold with a more flexible merit-based system for work visas, “working with employers in each sector to address specific needs as part of a long-term workforce strategy that also focuses on education and training to address skills gaps from within the UK.”   

The Conservative Party said they want to halve migration and introduce “a binding, legal cap on migration, set on work and family visas…[t]he cap will fall every year of the next Parliament, and Parliament would have an annual vote on the level of the cap. They would increase all visa fees and remove the student discount to the Immigration Health Surcharge. They would raise the Skilled Worker threshold and Family income requirement with inflation automatically. 

The Green Party said they would bring an end to minimum income requirements for spouses of those holding work visas.

The Labour Party said they would “reform the points-based immigration system…with appropriate restrictions on visas, and by linking immigration and skills policy”. They would “strengthen” the Migration Advisory Committee, establishing a framework for joint working with skills bodies across the UK, the UK Government’s Industrial Strategy Council and the UK Government’s Department for Work & Pensions (DWP).