Clause 40
Finance (No. 2) Bill
2:00 pm
Theresa Villiers (Shadow Chief Secretary To the Treasury, Treasury; Chipping Barnet, Conservative)
Clause 40 focuses on the requirement that a film be culturally British. I can see the merits of focusing film tax relief on culturally British films and of the indirect benefits of the promotion of UK plc around the world by the film industry. Those benefits would be more direct and stronger with films of particular cultural Britishness.
I shall flag up one concern, however: there could be room for debate on what is sufficiently British. For example, would “The Chronicles of Narnia” have been sufficiently British? Will the “Red Dwarf” movie—currently in production—be sufficiently British? There is a lot of involvement in that film by the British film production industry. Would that pass the test?
The points-scoring system, whereby it is possible to take diverse factors into account such as a film’s cultural content and setting, the nationality of its characters and its use of UK cultural hubs, seems to be broadly workable. I welcome the fact that the test makes provision for a UK cultural hub for visual and special effects because those are some of the strongest aspects of the UK film industry; our visual and special effects industry is one of the most successful in the world. Encouraging film makers to use those facilities is desirable.
My principal concern is the same as that which I raised during deliberation on another part of the Bill: is the EU state aid regime the principal concern motivating clause 40? Or did the Government form the view that we need a test of Britishness?