Back in Apr 13, the DCMS put out a Consultation Paper on proposed changes to the way that the Creative Industries in the UK were classified and measured.
Basically, the DCMS wanted to see ‘the best bits’ of the ICT industry reclassified as Creative. It was, in my view, a political move; a land grab by DCMS. Before that, ICT largely came under the remit of BIS. I really believe that the ICT industry in the UK should be represented by one Department. Indeed I was so moved by this, and the ambiguities in the detail of the proposals, that I wrote my own submission to the Consultation process. I understand that other organisations – like Intellect (now TechUK) and e-skills - had similar concerns.
Yesterday, the DCMS published the Creative Industries Economic Estimates – January 2014. Without any other announcement, this document incorporates all the changes proposed and has completely ignored the representations I and others have made.
Let me give you some examples of the ambiguities:
- Telecomms directors are now classed as Creative but all their engineers are not.
- IT Directors are now Creative but their Project & Programme managers are not.
- Programmers are now Creative but their Managers are not.
- Business Software Development and Computer Consultancy are now Creative but IT outsourcing is not.
- All important Cloud datacentres are not creative.
Because of the move of these selective ICT activities to Creative, 43% of all Creative’s £71.4b value is now from IT, software and computer services. The group represents a value of £30.9b in 2012 – a 10.6% increase on 2011. These bits represent 791,000 of the 2,550,000 employed by Creative industries in 2012; an increase of 11.6% on 2011. Just shows what you can do with stats when you cherry-pick the ‘best’ bits!
Putting this into context, the second and third largest elements in Creative are Publishing (£10b growing at 5.2% in 2012) and Advertising (£8b and growing at 26.3%) Other elements are Architecture, Crafts, Fashion, Film, video etc, Museum & Galleries and Music. Overall the Creative industries grew in value by 9.4% in 2012 compared with growth of just 1.6% in the UK as whole.
Maria Miller, the Culture secretary said these were ‘incredible statistics’. I wholeheartedly agree. ‘Incredible’ is exactly what you get when you cherry pick bits of industries and ignore others. TechMarketView’s stats for the UK IT, software and computer services sector for 2012 showed a mere 1.7% growth as it includes big and important segments like Infrastructure services which declined in 2012 but are NOT included as Creative.
We have long said that the Creative Industries are all-important for the UK and, indeed, can be a powerhouse for growth in the future. But we need stats that give a proper and complete picture. It’s a bit like saying that retailing is in rude health by looking at only online sales (which are growing) and ignoring the still much larger in store sales (which are largely declining). Ignoring large elements of the UK ICT sector just so you can claim growth in some bits seems disingenuous to me.