I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. It is slightly unfortunate that the Government have brought the new clause and new schedule to the House now, because this is the only opportunity we are going to get to scrutinise this.
The object is obviously to support the development of British theatre and, in particular, to support touring. We have some of the best theatre in the world; we all know that. It all began with having the best playwright in the world. We have built on that over time, and our theatre is one of the major attractions for inward visitors and a major export industry. I point out to the Minister that we can draw a distinction—it is a little crude—between two parts of the current theatre industry. The commercial part is a series of chains of theatres producing successful, profitable plays that are often sold to New York and have very long runs, particularly in the west end of London.
If the sole benefit of the tax relief was to make those companies more profitable, that would be very nice for them, but it would not achieve what the Minister is aiming for—namely, to support the development of the industry. We therefore need to look at whether the relief supports the part of the theatre that is not always profitable and is supported by the public purse. That is why the question that my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) asked about whether the allowance will be claimable by companies that are charities is very pertinent. Large parts of the subsidised theatre sector, the Minister hopes, will be getting a tax subsidy instead of a public spending subsidy; I appreciate that that is his aim. However, that will not happen if their legal structure is not in line with what the Bill provides for. It is rather disappointing that we are being asked to agree this primary legislation when the guidelines on the definitions have not yet been published and so it has not yet been possible for them to be scrutinised by people in the industry who understand this very well.
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To take a concrete example, the National Theatre is a publicly supported theatre, and the publicly supported theatre, by and large, is more innovative, more adventurous, puts on more new productions and, as some might say, is more interesting. That theatre has a wider portfolio of riskier and more different productions, and sometimes, some of them turn out to be extremely popular and can transfer into the commercial sector. The most obvious recent example is “War Horse”, which has done very well indeed. It started at the National, it went to the west end and now it has been on in New York as well. We obviously want more of that.
The Minister must tell us more about who can claim the relief if he is to convince us of its effectiveness. He also needs to understand that we will not accept that it completely cancels out the effect of the public spending cuts that the present Government have imposed on the theatre. Yesterday, Arts Council England announced its new set of national portfolio organisations; it has had to cut the number because the Department for Culture, Media and Sport has taken a £70 million cut.