There were a lot of entries of an extremely high standard to the 2022 Mid Norfolk Parliamentary Christmas Card Design competition, and I am especially delighted to announce that the winner was Olivia, aged 4 of Brisley Primary School, with her design.

The standard of entries reflects the hard work put in by all pupils and, of course, the inspiration of their teachers across our area.

Olivia receives a £20 book token this year, with Isla Elvin and Ethan La Grange receiving a £10 book token to be redeemed at Wymondham’s Kett’s Books..

You can view the winning design, and the highly commended entries below:

Winner Oliva Harris (age 4)

Highly Commended Isla Elvin (age 6)

Highly Commended Ethan la Grange (age 8)

To be a #ScienceSuperpower means deepening our commitment to the global impact of UK Science and Technology.

That’s why it has been fantastic to be at Keio University this week to:

• Announce £119m International Science Partnerships Fund
• Set out the UK’s Science Superpower mission

Anyone familiar with Mid Norfolk knows that our area is home to a much loved sense of spirit and community that binds us all together. This was evident none more so than during the pandemic – when the goodwill and generosity of local people really came to the fore in order to support one another and keep our local communities going. 

That’s why, as part of my ongoing work to tackle flooding AND boost local water management and resilience in our part of the world, I welcome the opportunity to highlight Watton Town Council’s Emergency Plan this winter (full details of which can be found here). 

The Plan seeks to build on that fantastic local spirit and strengthen community resilience by bringing together volunteers who are prepared to actively support their fellow residents, especially the vulnerable, in the event that they are affected by any one of a number of important issues, such as: 

• Severe weather – floods, heavy snow, heatwaves, high winds. The Emergency Group will take the lead working with the emergency services and the District and County Councils. 

• Major Fire – The Emergency Group will work under the direction of the emergency services. 

• Civil unrest – Cllr Stan Hebborn will work with the police. 

• Hostilities (war/invasion) – Cllr Jane Fountain will work with the relevant authorities. 

• Loss of power/water/heating – utility companies and Anglian Water will help vulnerable residents who are registered with them. Contact them if you have special needs. The Emergency Group will work with the companies to ensure the safety and wellbeing of residents. 

• Infectious Disease/Pandemic – The Emergency Group will support the Public Health agencies as directed by them. Individuals should follow NHS and Government advice and regulations. 

• Loss of a child/vulnerable adult – The Emergency Group will support the police and emergency services under their direction. 

This is a hugely worthwhile local effort and I would encourage everyone to take a look – particularly those who may be interested in offering their services. 

I am told that neighbouring Saham Toney are also developing their own Emergency Plan – which is welcome news too. 

As we enter winter, I know that there are a number of people in the Watton and Saham Toney area that have a specific concern about flooding. Almost two years on from setting up the Mid Norfolk Flood Partnership, I remain committed to working with key stakeholders, including a number of our dedicated local councillors and community groups, to make the case for greater support for communities affected by flooding, as well as improved coordination by authorities to respond to, and better mitigate for, future flood events. 

Parts of Watton have long suffered from flooding and while much work has been done to improve the situation, there remains more to be done – something I am determined to support the Watton and Saham Flood Action Group, as well as local councillors Claire Bowes, Tina Kiddell and Helen Crane, drive forward.  

Rest assured, I will keep on with this work. If I can be of any assistance to YOU on such matters, please do email me at george.freeman.mp@parliament.uk 

If you would like to learn more about my work on flooding and water management, please click here.

This is an important first step towards Norfolk being able to take back control from London of how we run vital local public services like social care, and having more freedoms to attract investment & shape housing and infrastructure development to better reflect what Norfolk needs.  

A Development Corporation for Norfolk would allow the new Mayor to raise hundreds of millions for much needed local infrastructure, science & business parks, railway station regeneration & public transport for the A11 Innovation Corridor to attract investment and drive regeneration in our coastal towns.  

The key now is to make sure that this deal & the Mayor brings all the relevant councils and agencies together to deliver tangible local benefits for the people we all serve.  

I see this as a first step on a transformational journey. Long term I would like to see even bolder devolution towards more power coming back from Whitehall with:  

• A Norfolk Health and Care Service led by NCC, replacing the NHS bureaucracy in London and Cambridge with a properly integrated local Health and Care service prioritising local needs  

• Two strong East and West Norfolk local Councils for all other local services (housing, planning, transport, economic development), 

• An elected Mayor for East Anglia to win the big regional infrastructure and investment our region needs.  

But this is an important first step by Government and Norfolk towards much bolder local powers for our area.  

Now we must make a success of it to show both Norfolk and Whitehall we can deliver the strong local leadership needed. 

George Freeman, Minister for Science, Research and Innovation, and the minister with responsibility for the Intellectual Property Office, responds to a Westminster Hall debate on remuneration for songwriters and composers.

The Minister for Science, Research and Innovation (George Freeman)

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone—in the warmth of your chairmanship in this cool room this morning. I congratulate the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) on securing the debate and on his ongoing work in this field. I welcome the chance to update him on the progress that has been made and to re-emphasise the message that I gave at the Dispatch Box several months ago before the turmoil of the summer. I want to reiterate the commitment made by my officials, the Government and me to get the issue right and to strike the right balance and continue the pressure that I know he welcomes in trying to secure that.

I am here as Minister for Science, Research and Innovation in the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, and as Minister with responsibility for the Intellectual Property Office. I also co-chair the Office for AI with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. I am also here as a Member for Parliament and a citizen of this country who is very cognisant and aware, as the hon. Member for Cardiff West has highlighted, of the role of music in our society and our economy. I am the husband of a theatre director, Fiona Laird, who has composed her own music. I have watched her go through the motions as a creator and as a musical theatre director. She composed the music for her recent Royal Shakespeare Company production of “The Merry Wives of Windsor”. We have a friend, a digital entrepreneur in the music scene, who uses the global streaming revolution to get a foothold as a minor artist in this incredible global economy. I therefore have some personal feel for the challenge, and I know how strongly the industry respects the commitment of the hon. Member for Cardiff West to try to get the balance right.

The strengths of the UK music industry are a major part of our economy. It contributed £4 billion to our economy in 2021, and probably more this year. A key component of that is exports. British music brought £2.5 billion into the UK in 2021. It is also a major force for soft power. Next week I will be in Japan making a speech on global science soft power. I suspect the Japanese associate the UK with the Beatles, Ed Sheeran and the fabulous creative artists we saw celebrated in the Jubilee, as well as with our science. They go together as global projections of our values as a democracy and a creative powerhouse in the world.

I absolutely share the hon. Member’s view that songwriters and composers should enjoy a fair share of the value. The challenge is to make sure we get a framework in the UK where that is true—it is a lived experience and reality—without unilaterally moving so hard or fast that we undermine the sector. We must try to establish best practice, which fits with the wider work I am doing on innovation and regulation. This country has an opportunity to set the global standards in many of these sectors, which could then, through our soft power, become international standards. That is how we see this.

The principles of fairness and sustainability underpinned the inquiry by the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee into music streaming, which kicked off so much of this. I want to reassure Members that those principles absolutely underpin the Government’s approach. I will address the issues that the hon. Member has raised and give him the update that he asks for. On streaming, we kicked off a significant piece of work on data, which the Intellectual Property Office has completed. The data gives us a good grasp of what is going on, which is key to fair remuneration. Too often, information that identifies songwriters and composers, along with their works and owners, is incomplete, inaccurate or missing entirely, which means that creators often face delays in being paid, and some are not paid at all. That predominantly affects not rock stars and superstars but the smaller creators on modest incomes, who depend on that data for their livelihoods.

That is why, since the DCMS Committee’s inquiry last year, the IPO has established a working group on metadata, which we have tasked with developing industry-led improvements. These are complex issues and there is no silver bullet, as the hon. Gentleman knows, but the working group has made real progress on a good code of practice on metadata and a two-year roadmap for industry to deliver tangible improvements through education and technical solutions. That output is very close to completion. Since returning to office a month ago, I have asked to see it, so that I can ensure that it reflects the undertakings that I gave to the hon. Gentleman and the House. Officials in the Intellectual Property Office will share it with the music industry more widely very early in the new year to seek final agreement.

Similarly, the IPO has established a working group to develop a code of practice on transparency. That code is also close to completion, and we will be seeking wider industry agreement on that early in the new year, too. I hope and believe that those actions on data and transparency will achieve their aim: real improvements in the fair remuneration of songwriters and composers, and songwriters enjoying more timely and accurate data payments as a result of the improvements in data. Those are key elements of the package.

Let me turn to competition and the distribution of revenues. However good the data is, many feel—the hon. Gentleman made this point very well—that the share of streaming revenues that go to songwriters and publishers, particularly the smaller creatives at the lower end of the pecking order, as it were, is too low. It is key that the remuneration is fair and internationally competitive. Let me break those two points down. As the hon. Gentleman said, the CMA published its final report on the market for music streaming last week. The report was launched after the DCMS Committee and the Government encouraged the CMA to look into this and other claims.

We read the report carefully. As the hon. Gentleman said, it found no suggestion that publishing revenues were being deliberately suppressed by distorted or restricted competition. The report also set out the fact that the overall share of streaming revenues enjoyed by publishers and songwriters increased from 8% in 2008 to 15% in 2021. At the same time, the share enjoyed by the recorded music industry has remained steady. It is true that the publishing share has declined slightly since 2017—from 17% to 15%—but during that time overall publishing revenues paid out by the larger streaming services in the UK have more than doubled. More and more money is being paid out to songwriters and publishers from streaming, which is great. Because songwriters typically enjoy the largest share of publishing royalties—an average royalty rate of 84% in 2021—the vast majority of the publishing share is going to songwriters.

The key point, however, is whether streaming revenues are fairly distributed within the ecosystem. There are still many who feel justifiably that the devil is in the detail. They want to know how that overall number is allocated, and think that we need to do more to ensure that the allocation is fair. The question of how revenues are distributed between artists, songwriters, record labels, publishers and streaming platforms is complex, and we have a responsibility to ensure that any arrangements work for the industry as a whole. There is no perfect solution, but I repeat that there is more that we can do, by working with the industry, to get closer to something that is widely recognised as fairer.

Record labels and publishers each play an important role in supporting and investing in British artists and songwriters. We do not want any unilateral or dramatic reapportionment to undermine the UK sector, but we want to ensure that we do right by the next generation of talent, which we require to feed the whole sector. The Copyright Royalty Board in the US recently laid down that song rights holders should receive around 15% of streaming revenues, which is similar to what we have achieved in the UK. Given that, and given the movement in France, which the hon. Gentleman highlighted, it is interesting that there is a global movement towards ensuring that this growing sector is based on principles of fair remuneration.

I will come on to the changes to copyright law. The DCMS Committee recommended several changes aimed at improving remuneration, including a right to equitable remuneration for streaming, a right to regain ownership of copyright, and a right to renegotiate contracts; those are measures that the hon. Gentleman brought forward in his private Member’s Bill. I made it clear at the time that further consideration of those measures was an active priority, and that remains the case. We have seen some positive action from some in the music industry on remuneration for creators. The three major record labels have agreed to disregard unrecouped advances in older contracts, which means that many artists are now being paid from streaming for the first time. Several independent record labels have announced minimum digital royalty rates in their contracts of 25% or more, even for contracts agreed prior to streaming. There has been some progress and these steps are welcome, but I appreciate that creators want to see more substantial and wide-ranging action on remuneration; that is why, in the coming months, we will be actively considering the evidence from the research, as well as the voluntary action taken by the industry, and weighing up our approach on remuneration.

I will come on to a specific proposal that I am making to bring all of this together, including looking at the text and data-mining issue, which is my next point; it is causing real concern for rights holders. As the hon. Member for Cardiff West was kind enough to say, I was out of office when this reform was announced. In the few short weeks I have been back, I have already met with the DCMS Minister for the creative industries, my hon. Friend the Member for Hornchurch and Upminster (Julia Lopez), to highlight the fact that we must get this right. Of course, the UK wants to be a leader in AI—we are, and we want to continue building on that, but we must not allow that support to undermine our creative industries. My hon. Friend the Member for Hornchurch and Upminster absolutely agrees with me, and we have established a small taskforce of officials between the two Departments to ensure that we get this right. Following that meeting and this debate, I propose to convene a roundtable between DCMS and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy of the key voices across the sector to look at the whole issue. It will look at the rate of progress, the report from the Intellectual Property Office and the CMA, and the AI piece to see if we can get a proper settlement that everyone acknowledges would be fair and reflects the principles that we have set out, which—I will repeat again—are absolutely fundamental to our approach.

I believe deeply that, if we get this right, we can establish a Government-supported but industry-led code of conduct that will be respected around the world. It will improve and continue the process by which the industry is improving and ensure that we continue that momentum, so that it does not require private Members’ Bills to keep nudging the industry and we have leadership in setting the standards for fair remuneration that are the envy of the world. As the co-chair of the Office for Artificial Intelligence and Minister with responsibility for the Intellectual Property Office on this issue, I will suggest that my hon. Friend the Member for Hornchurch and Upminster and I convene that roundtable; I will obviously be in touch with the hon. Member for Cardiff West and the DCMS Committee.

In closing, with two minutes on the clock, I will highlight the fact that we believe that there is an opportunity here. The industry has shown willingness to move in the right direction. The Government signal that our preference is not to legislate; our preference is to encourage the industry to move in the right direction but, if we must legislate to get this right, we reserve that right. However, our preference remains to avoid that—not least because we would like to get a quicker solution for the benefit of all those in the industry.

Kevin Brennan 

I understand what the Minister asked, because we have not discussed it previously, but I do not want the point about composer buyouts to be lost in the discussion. I welcome what the Minister said about convening a roundtable and his continued commitment. We need a discussion at some point about the implication of the increasing trend for composer buyouts.

George Freeman 

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for putting that on the record; I will put it on the record that we will include that in the roundtable discussion. I will pick up the detailed point that he made and write to him on it, because that is part of the mix. I hope that the House and the hon. Member for Cardiff West can see that we are making progress, and I look forward to working with him on this in the months ahead.

Hansard

Following the Boundary Commission’s recommendation that Mid Norfolk will be a “Continuity” Constituency, I’m delighted to confirm that I will be seeking re-election as the local Member of Parliament for Mid Norfolk at the next election – to continue my Norfolk Way crusade for rural renaissance.

Please see my full statement in the letter below.

The proper provision of Mental Health services should be a central part of a modern health service. For too long, mental health has been the poor relation of NHS healthcare, with fragmented and inadequate services causing untold distress to patients across Norfolk.

Having seen at first hand in my own family, as well as with close friends, the devastating effects of inadequate mental health services on both patients and their friends and families, this has been, and remains, an issue very close to my own heart since I was elected. Proper diagnosis, treatment and community support services will not only save patients the agony of untreated illness, but will also save our wider society the huge downstream costs of untreated mental illness too.

The NSFT has had long term problems with its level of service, performance, management and staff morale which all of us involved in healthcare in Norfolk have seen and tried to tackle over the last decade.

That’s why I have been working closely with ministers, officials, the CQC and NHS England over the past few months to ensure we continue to highlight this issue and the need for reform – and why I have welcomed an invitation from the Minister for Mental Health to join other MPs from across Norfolk and Suffolk at a meeting to discuss the future of NSFT and mental health provision here in the East. A number of senior figures and officials will also be present, and I look forward to holding them to account, in addition to making clear why we cannot simply go for the same attempted solutions that have not worked as effectively as desired in the past.

Reform is never easy. But it’s key that this issue is properly gripped now and got right. I am very concerned that, after years of problems at the NSFT and a new management team, the organisation is still struggling to improve sufficiently.

I look forward to speaking up again for patients, and their friends and families, at next week’s meeting – and to providing further updates in the near future.

To stay up to date with my work on this issue, please visit here.

Having grown up on my stepdad’s farm and previously worked as Parliamentary Officer for the NFU, I have always had a strong connection with our environment – and been a big advocate for work that enhances our beautiful landscapes and precious habitats.

That’s why I was pleased to hear of the work being done by the Zoological Society of East Anglia (ZSEA) – who are incredibly active in our part of the world.

In collaboration with the Norfolk Rivers Trust (with whom I have supported in-land and on-farm wetland projects – see more here and here), Banham Zoological Gardens (part of ZSEA) was awarded a £95,300 grant from the Government’s Green Recovery Challenge Fund in 2021 to help boost nature recovery across Norfolk. These funds, a key part of the PM’s 10 Point Plan to kickstart nature recovery and help tackle climate change, have been used to build a hatchery that will protect endangered white-clawed crayfish which, as many will know, have seen their local populations devastated in recent years. In years to come, this work could be seen as the real turning point in the fortunes of this precious Norfolk species.

Furthermore, I am delighted to hear that ZSEA is dedicating their newly opened Christmas grotto to protecting birds throughout the ongoing Bird Flu crisis, with all profits going into the increasing of defences for all the birds in their care at their various East Anglia sites – including Banham Zoo and Africa Alive.

I have been incredibly active on the Bird Flu crisis (please see more on my ‘Food, Farming and the Environment’ campaign page here) and, in addition to being vocal in my support of local farmers and producers that have been affected, I have also stressed the concern of local conservationists about Norfolk (and the UK)’s bird populations. This work by the ZSEA is vital therefore and I look forward to following the work they continue to do with partners across our region in the months and years ahead.

To learn more about all of my environmental work, please click here.

As a former Health Minister and someone with a close understanding of the incredible role our NHS plays each and every day, I am very aware of how difficult the last two and a half years have been – especially for those working on the frontline.

I am also very aware of the concern and frustration of many when it comes to trying to get an appointment at their local GP surgery. People need to be able to access our NHS when they need it – not wait weeks, or even months.

That's why I am paying close attention to this issue and why I am looking forward to engaging with the heads of all our local Mid Norfolk GP surgeries later this month. I am keen to learn more about the challenges they face on a daily basis and what more can be done locally to improve the situation, as well as to establishing what more I need to be raising with Government ministers and officials on this issue, and others, on behalf of our local GP surgeries.

I welcomed the latest commitments made by the Government to our NHS in the recent Autumn Statement (including £8 billion of funding for the NHS and adult social care in England by 2024-25). Ministers and officials are listening and putting historic levels of funding into our NHS – not just to tackle the Covid backlog, but also to ensure that then moving forward we are able to provide more care to an even better standard.

Rest assured however, I will do all I can to speak up for Mid Norfolk (both on behalf of my concerned constituents and those working in our local NHS) and to try and make sure our area gets the funding and support it needs to help improve the situation around waiting times for GP appointments.

Gutted as Duty Minister in the House not to be able to join the Attleborough and Snetterton Business Forum breakfast event this morning at Banham Zoological Gardens in person – but great to join by video link to talk to local SMES about the economy.

Local businesses, particularly SMEs, are the real engine of the Norfolk, and national, economy – and, having had a fifteen year career as an entrepreneur myself helping small businesses grow before coming to Parliament, and now being in my third stint as a minister at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, I have always been deeply committed to speaking up for this key sector and representing their views and concerns in Parliament.

On the day before Small Business Saturday, it was fantastic to have a Q+A with those in attendance and I look forward to following up and staying in touch with many of them in the weeks and months ahead.

To find out more about how I ‘Back Local Business’, please visit my website here.