“It’s the jobs that count, not the ownership”
July 18, 2006 – 3:03 pm
Lord Sainsbury and
Shaun Woodward in the
Cabinet War Rooms
Government policy as explained by Lord Sainsbury to Ian Livingstone of Eidos at the games ’summit’ at the Cabinet War Rooms today. Ian was arguing that one of the critical issues facing the industry was the loss of IP to foreign ownership. Sainsbury for the DTI and Shaun Woodward for the DCMS were very clear that they’d rather see a French company doing its R&D in the UK than a British owned company outsourcing to China or the US: “what’s important is who gets the value added. We have to create a climate that uses labour here’.
A discussion about how (if at all) government can help the games industry focused mainly on skills, R&D, perception and EU regulation.
I was there because I had represented the RDAs on a working group on technology invited to make recommendations for a possible Green Paper on the Creative Economy. Our major recommendation addresses the problem that R&D (and ensuing tax credits or eligibility for funding under government schemes) tends not to recognise the combination of technological and ‘creative’ innovation which constitutes research in the creative industries.
