§ Mr. SpringTo ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport what action will be taken, following the creative industries mapping exercise, to(a) protect intellectual property rights, (b) stimulate creativity and innovation amongst young people, (c) improve access to venture capital in new ways and (d) promote creative industry exports. [59781]
§ Janet AndersonThe Government are committed to ensuring that British talent is able to reap the rewards of its creativity. We are negotiating in Europe on the draft782W Copyright Directive and with counterparts in other countries on frameworks for intellectual property management and ways of helping industry combat piracy.
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Employment set up the National Advisory Committee on Creative and Cultural Education last year to look at creative and cultural development in young people. We expect a draft report shortly and we shall consider its recommendations in detail.
My Department is reviewing a possible networking seminar in conjunction with the DTI in the first half of next year, to bring together creative entrepreneurs with venture capitalists, corporate venturers and business angels, in order to facilitate understanding between them and establish ways in which they can work together.
The Creative Industries Export Promotion Advisory Group, which was set up at the Creative Industries Task Force's recommendation, is drawing up a series of export strategies based on clusters of creative industries which share certain characteristics. We anticipate that we will publish those in the course of next year.
§ Mr. SpringTo ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport what the total cost was of the creative industries task force; what the cost was of printing and distributing the mapping documents; how many mapping documents were printed; and what the cost of each document was. [59780]
§ Janet AndersonThe only quantifiable cost relating to the Creative Industries Task Force (CITF) is that of refreshments for meetings, which amount to £156 since its first meeting on 8 October 1997. Costs incurred by my department in copying and circulating papers for CITF are not separately recorded.
Publication of the mapping document, including design, print and paper costs and arrangements for the launch cost £53,000. We estimate that the full costs was around £ 110,000, but sponsorship secured us substantial savings on hire of the launch venue, print, paper and other costs. In addition, much of the initial research was done on Task Force's behalf free of charge.
5,000 copies of the document were printed. Distribution costs cannot be extrapolated from my Department's budget for postage and parcels. Although costs relating to the document's launch are included in the sum of £53,000, we cannot disaggregate these from publication costs. We therefore arrive at a cost per document of £10.60.