Letter sent to Andy Burnham ahead of Budget

Almost 700 comedians and industry figures, including Sir Stephen Fry, Miriam Margolyes and Bill Bailey, have written to prime minister Andy Burnham asking him to ‘back British comedy’ in the next Budget

Their letter says comedy is ‘everywhere in British culture and nowhere in British policy’.

Jason Manford, Joe Lycett, Iain Stirling, Daniel Sloss, Kerri Godliman and Alex Horne are also among the 669 signatories, along with producers, agents and others behind the scenes.

The letter was organised by Craft, the Comedy Representation and Artform Trust, which is supported by 25 parliamentarians from across the parties. Chair Lu Jackson, said the message was that ‘Britain can’t afford not to back comedy.’

Craft says that over 25 years comedy has received under £15 million in direct public investment — an average of £576,000 a year.

In Arts Council England's 2025/26 annual report, out of total expenditure of £947million, £0 is attributed to comedy. 

Chortle has also determined that the word ‘comedy’ appears just twice in that 248-page report – and one of those is in connection with a Benjamin Britten opera. The other is about planned a National Lottery-funded event to celebrate culture in Bolton. 

However, the body did last week award £45,000 to the Live Comedy Association to support its work in the sector.

Craft's 1,400-word letter – below –also calls on comedy to be a separate, recognised art form to help unlock funding, and asks for a meeting with Burham ahead of the October 28 budget.

Backing it, Tom Walker, the performer behind the Jonathan Pie character, said: ‘Britain – home of Python, Fawlty Towers and the Edinburgh Fringe – has never once named comedy in its own arts policy… So fix it. Recognise comedy in the Budget. It’s the easiest punchline this government will ever land.’

Manford said he was supporting the call for comedy to be formally recognised in policy and funding decisions, ‘so the next generation has a fair chance to build sustainable careers in it.

Margolyes said: ‘Please recognise the contribution comedy in all its forms makes to the public purse and the public joy.’

According to Craft, 84 per cent of comedy professionals earn less than £30,000 a year from comedy, and 65 per cent earn less than £12,570, the personal tax allowance. 

Burnham has himself called comedy ‘a social intervention which lifts, helps, and takes a bit of pressure off people’.

Richard Quigley MP, chair of the comedy all-party parliamentary group, said: ‘The question the Comedy APPG members would like answered, by Government and key institutions alike: Why is comedy excluded?’

Sign the letter here.

The letter in full:

Dear Andy,

In every national crisis, comedy shows up. The comedy sector is in crisis now, and is asking for your help: can you show up to save one of Britain's greatest economic, cultural and healthcare assets?

We are the UK comedy industry — a serious business ecosystem and artform spanning live, broadcast, streaming, digital, and visual and illustrative comedy, and the surrounding businesses — serving audiences and communities across Britain and around the world. We are writing to ask, again and urgently, for comedy to be seen beyond the jokes: that our representations be given full consideration in October's Autumn Budget and for a joint meeting with CRAFT ahead of the budget announcement.

Our asks are specific. The annexes below set out (i) where comedy is excluded, (ii) the measures we are asking for, (iii) a brief overview of our requests made, and (iv) what inclusion looks like where other sectors have already done it.

• Tax reform, in the Autumn Budget 2026.
• Classification, so comedy can be counted.
• Named recognition, where comedy becomes an artform and category, not a genre.
• Funding, across departments for culture, education, creative healthcare and innovation.
• A meeting before the Budget announcement, and an impact assessment.

BRITISH COMEDY IS A PARADOX.

Comedy is one of our major economies, generating trillions in views, billions in revenue, and millions in tax — yet little of it is reinvested to flywheel more of it, which stifles economic growth, innovation and opportunities.

Unlike other major industries, including music, theatre and museums, comedy does not have intergenerational patronage — it's an industry born from the working class, made up of individuals working in isolation. The sector has been commercially resilient precisely because it has had to be. That resilience is now running out.

Britain cannot rely solely on household names and major brands to sustain comedy without supporting the underlying grassroots sector, as is done for other creative industries. This is an especially urgent matter in an AI-accelerated era where the sector's work has been misappropriated and jobs are being replaced in multiple categories including voiceover, scriptwriting and research. Investing in creative healthcare, education and innovation creates new professions and sustainable careers, especially if the tax system and public investment supports it.

COMEDY IS EVERYWHERE IN BRITISH CULTURE AND NOWHERE IN BRITISH POLICY.

Comedy is one of the UK's most-consumed artforms across live performance, podcasts, digital video, TV and film — and a proven export, with some of the biggest talents and brands in the world. It also runs deeper into national life than any framework recognises: British satire and political cartooning hold power to account, and, in a polarised world, the UK largely supports freedom of artistic expression in the comedic arts. The BBC puts it plainly: British humour is as much a part of the UK's cultural export and soft power as music, the monarchy and Sir David Attenborough. Their research found that "humour" is the word most associated with British shows and films of any category.

Comedy contributes far beyond the laughs. It sustains thousands of grassroots SMEs, drives local spend, and supports the night-time economy. The UK's top two comedy festivals delivered around £45 million in net benefit to Britain in 2026. Comedy pays in through VAT, income tax, National Insurance, business rates and corporation tax — and it cannot draw out, because it appears in none of the classifications, reliefs or frameworks that would let it.

Comedy supports communities and venues everywhere, including the hard-to-reach areas the Government has targeted for increasing access to the arts. It is uniquely accessible and it confronts social inequalities.

Like music, comedy is more than entertainment: it is evidence-based healthcare, it connects people, and it sits at the heart of our communities. Comedy keeps Britain likeable and drives social change — and it even helps politicians, whether they are wearing red, green, blue, black, or dark blue, actually.

MIND THE GAP: COMEDY'S SYSTEMATIC EXCLUSION IN EXISTING FRAMEWORKS.

While British statecraft champions creative inclusion, comedy remains the industry's unassigned asset that has never been uniquely assessed for its individual category characteristics and needs.

It regularly surprises parliamentarians that comedy is not a recognised artform, nor specifically named within the frameworks of the Arts Councils, NHS social prescribing schemes, UK Research and Innovation, the Charity Commission, the British Council and other key institutions. It is not classified and directly supported in HM Treasury systems, and has never been given a seat on the Creative Industries Council since its formation in 2011 — nor on the new Creative Trade Forum.

Downstream, this has resulted in comedy remaining unlisted or omitted from the tax credits and reliefs, and the very reports and funding frameworks that shape the economy, including the Creative Industries Sector Plan and the Copyright and AI consultations. Sadly, these lists are not exhaustive — and a sector that is invisible in the data cannot be supported by policy, cannot be included in trade promotion, and cannot access the funding available to its peers.

Devolution now multiplies this. Mayors and combined authorities build local growth and culture plans on national classifications and data in which comedy does not appear, so each new settlement inherits the omission and hard-codes it locally, leaving comedy to negotiate inclusion authority by authority — live comedy venues are already forced to do this for business rates relief. Systemic inclusion of comedy nationally affords the best shot at equal opportunity locally, which helps the sector, communities and audiences thrive.

THE COMMERCIAL CONSEQUENCES OF INACTION ARE VISIBLE.

• Edinburgh Fringe 2026: comedy was 38.4% of the world's largest arts festival — £10.77 million at the box office, 1,077,271 tickets, and around £33 million in net benefit to Scotland. Public funding reinvested into comedy from Scotland: £0. And many talents and businesses are left in debt.
• Across 25 years comedy has received under £15 million in direct public investment — an average of £576,000 a year, or just 0.003% of the £16.7 billion DCMS and UKRI distributed annually in 2023/24 (evidence).
• In Arts Council England's 2025/26 annual report, out of total expenditure of £946.9 million, £0 is attributed to comedy. At the recent DCMS Committee Arts Council Review oral evidence session, it was said that if you fund comedy, you fund it at the expense of something else.
• In a single week in August: Leicester Comedy Festival — Britain's second-biggest, worth up to £10 million a year to its local economy — collapsed owing over £100,000 to more than 170 individuals and small businesses; Underbelly Boulevard Soho announced it will cease trading; and Live at the Apollo was cancelled. Three major British institutions gone.
• Summer is always tough for comedy, which is why we asked Government to consider VAT exemptions. This summer was particularly difficult: heatwaves and the World Cup left many live comedy rooms vacant and comedy talent, who are self-employed contractors, were left unpaid. CRAFT is receiving increased reports of financial and mental distress from SMEs and self-employed professionals across the sector, including an increase in homelessness. This is underpinned by complex issues, like over a decade in talent wage stagnation and slow pandemic recovery — only a handful of businesses received 0.2% of the Culture Recovery Fund: £3.8m out of £1.87bn.

REQUEST FOR MEETING

We have been active with Government, local authorities and key institutions for years — comedy needs help. Has comedy ever been in a Budget? We made representations to the Autumn Budget portal, and the sector is concerned it will be omitted again. We wrote to the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport on 23 July requesting parity in existing rates, tax and relief schemes, and to the Secretary of State for Business and Trade on 4 September requesting representation on the Creative Industries Council and the Creative Trade Forum. HM Treasury declined to name live comedy venues in the relief granted to pubs and live music venues on 14 August.

We request a meeting at No.10 ahead of the Budget announcement, bringing the recipients of this letter together with a cross-section of the comedy industry. And we renew the unanswered questions put to Government at the ministerial roundtable of 9 March 2026:

Will the Government commission a formal impact assessment of comedy's economic, cultural, social and creative health value, and will it ensure comedy is formally recognised within the structures that shape policy? And if the Government agrees comedy should no longer be omitted, what kind of timeframe can we look at for putting these changes in place?

This letter is undersigned by the comedy industry's people and businesses. Signatures are being gathered across the industry by CRAFT, the national body for comedy.

Published: 12 Oct 2026