Speeches by Hinds.

“Adrian, do you have anything to add?”

“The Tattoo is up there with the Farnborough Air Show and stuff. It has a special and particular place in the military ecosystem.”

“I want to come back to the projection of Britain abroad and soft power, and to ask Jason and Simon about it. It is a question that comes up with lots of sectors that this Committee covers, whether it is general tourism, music or film exports, or what have you. Everyone has a great story to tell about soft power until y…”

“Am I right in interpreting that the three of you have three different sponsoring Government Departments? One would be DCMS, one would be FCDO and MOD—”

“I have one final question to anybody who has a view to give on it. It is about something that came up briefly in the last panel, when Claire talked about the proposed visitor levy. She said she thought that it was a great opportunity for the sector. What indication have you had, or what internal assessment have you mad…”

“Thank you. Simon, in a slightly different part of the sector, do you find it is possible, for your own internal measurements, to assess soft power, but also to persuade others, particularly parts of the Government that you may want help and support from?”

“I want to ask about the how. Knitting things together sounds great. It is a bit like joined-up Government or an integrated transport strategy. The question is how you do it. You said not a national body and not necessarily legislation. Who would make those trade-offs? Your points about the off-season and thinking of it…”

“I want to come back to the projection of Britain abroad and soft power, and to ask Jason and Simon about it. It is a question that comes up with lots of sectors that this Committee covers, whether it is general tourism, music or film exports, or what have you. Everyone has a great story to tell about soft power until y…”

“The question I really want to come on to is, who does that co-ordination across the Government, and how good they are? In particular, DCMS is famously not a big Department in Government. It is not a Department with a huge amount of heft or—all these budgets are big budgets—that big a budget in the scheme of things, com…”

“Sorry.”

“The Tattoo is up there with the Farnborough Air Show and stuff. It has a special and particular place in the military ecosystem.”

“Sorry.”

“Why hasn’t it happened?”

“I do not want to interrupt you or be difficult—that is all about that event, and you can talk about the Greater Manchester authority or the Liverpool city region—but you were talking earlier about co-ordinating so that we fill hotel rooms in January and on Sunday nights, the police force are not trying to be in five di…”

“That might be an argument in favour of preferring channels, not against.”

“Let’s put any of the three of you in the policymaker’s chair. We heard, I think, yesterday that there is now going to be guidance on screen time and content type for babies and toddlers. Given that somebody will have to come up with something in pretty short order, and all this research cannot be short-circuited, …”

“A couple of months ago, I put a parliamentary question to the Government to ask what research they had commissioned on the effect of media on babies and toddlers. The answer that came back was, “Well, we expect the platforms to do a risk assessment and think about the effect it will have on children.” In other words, i…”

“Obviously, academic independence and freedom are also very important; you cannot only be working to the requirements of Government or some agency. We are going to be writing a report with recommendations. Would a recommendation of yours be that, say, annually there should be some, probably publicly available, discussio…”

“Exactly.”

“It was kind of a rhetorical question. My hypothesis is that that person does not exist, because it is not physically possible. However well educated you are, you just cannot be on top of all these different systems. They all have their own individual parental controls. TikTok says, “We have parental controls”—well that…”