Ed Vaizey is Conservative MP for Wantage and shadow arts minister in Jeremy Hunt's DCMS team.
Labour's last Budget contained an intriguing announcement - a tax credit for the video games industry, along the lines of the film tax credit, which already exists. As recently as December, Labour had ruled this out. So this is a significant U-turn. Although, as is typical with this Budget, the policy has only been put forward to win votes, because Labour will have no time to implement it.
For years, our video games industry has been losing talent abroad, notably to Canada which has huge tax incentives in place. Labour has done nothing to help. They spent years claiming that the World Trade Organisation would sort out the problem with Canada, until we exposed the claim as false. By contrast, the Conservatives have been saying consistently that we would look at ways of helping the industry against this competition from abroad, most notably by looking at whether we should extend the film tax credit to video games.
This U-turn is symptomatic of the lack of leadership at DCMS, where Labour continually follows the Conservatives. In the three years that Jeremy Hunt has been in post he has seen four secretaries of state - Jowell, Purnell, Burnham and Bradshaw; and five culture and creative industries ministers - Woodward, Follett, Simon, Carter and Hodge. When Sion Simon resigned in February, Labour couldn't even be bothered to replace him and simply handed his responsibilites to Hodge. And Hodge is retiring at the election. The creative industries and culture are not taken seriously by Labour.
The tax credit is one of a long line of U-turns prompted by Conservative campaigns. Replacing the BBC Trust, product placement, top-slicing the licence fee to fund Channel 4: on all of these issues, Labour has reversed its position to follow the Conservative lead. Their plans for state-funded regional news look similarly dodgy with the news that ITV will not, after all, abandon regional news as it has threatened to. In other areas, Labour continue to follow our line, whether it is leadership for libraries, superfast broadband or deregulating ITV..
Whenever Ben Bradshaw attacks Jeremy about the Conservatives' plans for the arts, Jeremy has a simple response. We have a policy, what's yours? So an analysis of just one Department shows the difference between Labour and the Conservatives. All the ideas are coming from our side. Labour is directionless, and simply follows where it can. Whether or not you agree with our positions, it can't be denied that we have taken a clear view and Labour has been forced to catch up. This is just one example of why we can't go on like this, and why we need a new, Conservative, Government.
