January 30, 2018

The Committee’s report examines the potential impact of changes to three key areas: the workforce, funding and the regulatory environment.

The report found that:

• tourism, the creative industries, and the businesses that make up the digital economy are key sectors of the UK’s economy;
• the creative industries employed 1.9 million people across the UK in 2015; and
• the technology and digital sector grew 32% faster last year than the rest of the economy, boosting GDP by around £145 billion a year.

There are, however, a number of areas of potential challenge to these industries as a result of Brexit:

Workforce:

• the overwhelming message from businesses and organisations across the creative industries and tourism sectors was to retain the access to the talent they need from outside the UK, particularly as a large percentage of the international workforce supporting them is made up of EU nationals;
• there is a need for reliable data now about the workforce and possible skills gaps, should this access to talent not be maintained; and
• clarity of proposed revised immigration rules and processes is essential to businesses in the creative industries to allow them time to prepare for any new Brexit environment.

Funding:

• a Government mapping exercise setting out precise streams of existing, direct European funding for creative and cultural organisations, and an overview of future funding, should be published in order to assuage current uncertainty over the nature of long-term funding.

Regulatory environment:

• in the telecommunications sector particular uncertainty exists around possible price hikes for UK mobile phone customers using mobile data in the EU post Brexit. The Government must be open and honest about the latest predictions regarding data roaming charges;
• Government action plan describing how UK policy development on data protection will take place after Brexit is now a priority;
• the Government must set out its intentions for co-operation with our European neighbours in respect to copyright protection, including enforcement actions; and
• to address profound industry uncertainty the Government must, as an urgent priority, state its negotiating intentions with respect to the Country of Origin rules framework and set out its contingency plan, should the rules cease to apply after Brexit. In addition, the Government should make clear whether the audio-visual sector will form part of the formal trading negotiations with the EU.

To access the report, click here.