London Fashion Week: Tom Watson warns UK fashion risks being hit with lack of talented newcomers

Britain's fashion industry risks being hit by a fall in the number of talented newcomers, a senior MP warned today.

Shadow culture secretary Tom Watson stressed that thousands fewer students were studying art and design and that the number of teachers of these subjects had also dropped sharply.

He published Commons Library figures showing a 2,635 fall in the number of GCSE or equivalent entries for art and design.

They went down from 169,298 in 2009/10 to 166,663 in 2015/16, or 1.6 per cent.

For A-Level or equivalent entries the decline was even more pronounced, from 42,784 to 39,503 over seven years, a drop of 3,281 or 7.7 per cent.

In London, the fall was from 4,779 to 4,520, or 5.4 per cent.

Mr Watson said: “London Fashion Week is one of the best in the world and shows just what our fashion industry has to offer.

“These figures make clear the industry is being let down by the Government on whose watch student and teacher numbers in art and design have been allowed to slide.

“It’s not good enough and the Government needs to step up to provide the pipeline that matches the potential of the fashion industry.”

The figures also showed the number of art and design teachers had gone down nine per cent from 13,200 to 12,000 between November 2010 and November 2015.

Mr Watson also warned of “deep concern” that the new English Baccalaureate focus on English, maths, science, languages, history and geography will lead to “neglect” of arts subjects.

But Department for Education said there was no evidence that the EBacc had hit entries into arts GCSEs, stressing that since 2011 the proportion of students taking at least one GCSE in an arts subject had risen.

A spokesman added: “We want all schools to be able to recruit the teachers they need to support pupils to fulfil their potential. We know there is more to do, which is why we are investing £1.3 billion up to 2020 to attract the best and the brightest into teaching.”