Lisa Nandy should keep a “very close eye” on international challengers to UK film and TV, a Conservative shadow minister has suggested.
Julia Lopez asked the Culture Secretary about her plans to monitor tax incentives abroad so British studios like Pinewood and Elstree do not “lose their edge”.
Ms Nandy told the Commons on Wednesday she had laid secondary legislation, which enables UK filmmakers with budgets of up to £15 million to claim back 53% of spending on items such as equipment, location costs and paying actors.
The Irish government unveiled a similar 40% tax credit for films with a maximum qualifying expenditure of 20 million euros on Tuesday, October 1.
Ms Lopez, the Conservative shadow culture secretary, said: “Can (Ms Nandy) commit to keeping a very close eye on international competitors so we don’t lose our edge?”
Max Wilkinson, the Liberal Democrat culture spokesman, later asked the Culture Secretary to consider the benefits of “full participation in Creative Europe”, the European Union’s film and TV support programme.
He added: “In light of Ireland’s announcement, is the Secretary of State satisfied that the announcement today gives enough of an advantage over our neighbours in Europe?”
In response to Mr Wilkinson, the Labour Cabinet minister said: “We’re very keen to secure a closer relationship with our European friends and neighbours but obviously those negotiations are ongoing, so it’s not something that I can comment on at the present time.”
Ms Nandy had earlier told MPs: “We’ve heard loud and clear from industry that concerns for any further delays to introducing this secondary legislation, even to the end of the month, might mean investment in the UK independent films are lost.”
She confessed Paddington was her “personal favourite” film and vowed to promote an “internationally competitive tax regime, and this I think is something that is beyond party politics”.
Ms Lopez pointed to the former Conservative government’s 2024 spring budget, which first proposed the 53% enhanced Audio-Visual Expenditure Credit, and added: “With 100 days of Labour looming, she has the honour of announcing on day 97, Labour’s first decent policy.
“And we know it’s decent because it’s a Conservative policy.”
The shadow secretary of state continued: “We have gifted the Culture Secretary something to say, the Chancellor to back rather than tax, the Prime Minister another sparkling event to go to, and the Home Secretary a new police escort to fund.
“But it’s taken too long, and the consistent feedback we’re getting from every DCMS sector is very simple: what is going on? Where is the plan?”
Ms Nandy replied: “She mentioned the fact that the Conservative government had brought in this independent film tax credit at the last budget. If that were true, we wouldn’t be needing to legislate today.
“The truth is that the Conservative government did what the Conservative government did for 14 years – it talked a good game and then did absolutely nothing to deliver for the people in this country.”
She said: “If I’d left a sector that had 25,000 vacancies that they couldn’t fill, if I’d left a legacy of creativity being erased from our communities, in our classrooms, and most of all, if I’d left a £22 billion economic black hole that working class people are paying the price for up and down this country, if I’d done all of that and then had such a resounding rejection from the electorate only a few months ago, I think I’d be speaking with little bit more humility from the despatch box.”
In her reply to Mr Wilkinson, who told MPs his favourite film was Paddington 2, Ms Nandy said: “The cross-party consensus has now completely broken down, in fact not just across these benches but on them, because Paddington 1 is a far superior film to Paddington 2.”
Labour MP for Rochdale Paul Waugh welcomed “the cross-party consensus on the brilliance of the Paddington films”, and added his wife’s cousin worked on the series, which is due its third instalment on November 8.
Clive Jones, the Liberal Democrat MP for Wokingham, claimed his Berkshire patch as “the Hollywood of the United Kingdom”, but faced similar claims from the MPs for Calder Valley (Josh Fenton-Glynn) and Basingstoke (Luke Murphy).
