Speeches by Irons.

“I have been waiting with patience and bated breath to speak to you, because your evidence is fascinating. As a parent of two boys—one born in lockdown, when screens became the thing we all clung to—I find this fascinating. Time and again, what we have gone back to in this conversation is content being king: not all scr…”

“I completely agree; that makes sense. But if you are building an online world for young people, secure in the knowledge that your children are not experiencing it, maybe there are guardrails that you would put in for your own kids that you should put in for the rest of the world’s kids.”

“I have one final question. How much interaction or discussion have you had with parents in the organisations that are creating these things? Do they let their children use these platforms, and how do they let their children use them?”

“But you would make it a public service, so you do not create a situation where if you cannot afford it, you get the soup and if you can, you get the premium product where your brain is not overstimulated.”

“Is there any sense of a cultural shift in the sector towards monetising comprehension rather than attention? That is not just for early years but for all of us—anyone who is online. Is there any appetite for us to move that culture towards comprehension rather than just attention?”

“Maybe you would not ban it, but you would say, “You can’t market this to children,” if it has a certain sort of thing.”

“If we think big—if there is no limit; let’s just wipe the slate clean and start again—is there a space in which you regulate the type of content? We were talking earlier about the food standards for what is in baby formula, or the standards that we have for the materials that go into toys. The reason we made those chan…”

“More of a focus on long-term stability rather than necessarily a massive—obviously we would want more money, but not just pumping more money into it, it is the long termism of it rather than the—”

“Happy new year. I am going to ask a little bit about funding. Obviously, when it comes to this Committee, whatever sector it is there is always something around funding. What changes are needed to the funding models to make heritage organisations more financially resilient?”

“Leveraging the opportunity to train up the next generation. You talk about the pipeline. It feels like a good opportunity to train up the craftspeople who could come up behind. We are keen to understand if that is part of the thinking when going out and tendering these contracts.”

“Finally, do you feel there is a lack of craftspeople in the industry? Do you come up against it when you are trying to maintain your estate? Do you struggle to get projects delivered on time because of that sort of thing?”

“Are training and apprenticeships specifically focused on heritage and preservation part of the procurement process for those specialist projects?”

“I am going to ask a bit about how you are funding your Departments but also about future skills and training and things like that for young people. There is an opportunity for us to use these public buildings to train young people to fill skills gaps in this area. What steps are your Departments taking to secure adequa…”

“Going back to that point about making things more long term and a bit more stable, how could Government change their funding structures to encourage long-termism rather than the little projects that you are talking about?”

“What was the impact on the sector of the recent Budget?”

“More of a focus on long-term stability rather than necessarily a massive—obviously we would want more money, but not just pumping more money into it, it is the long termism of it rather than the—”

“Happy new year. I am going to ask a little bit about funding. Obviously, when it comes to this Committee, whatever sector it is there is always something around funding. What changes are needed to the funding models to make heritage organisations more financially resilient?”

“Finally, do you feel there is a lack of craftspeople in the industry? Do you come up against it when you are trying to maintain your estate? Do you struggle to get projects delivered on time because of that sort of thing?”

“Leveraging the opportunity to train up the next generation. You talk about the pipeline. It feels like a good opportunity to train up the craftspeople who could come up behind. We are keen to understand if that is part of the thinking when going out and tendering these contracts.”

“Are training and apprenticeships specifically focused on heritage and preservation part of the procurement process for those specialist projects?”