Finance Bill

Baroness Chapman of Darlington Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd July 2014 Commons Chamber

The Minister must tell us more about who can claim the relief if he is to convince us of its effectiveness. He also needs to understand that we will not accept that it completely cancels out the effect of the public spending cuts that the present Government have imposed on the theatre. Yesterday, Arts Council England announced its new set of national portfolio organisations; it has had to cut the number because the Department for Culture, Media and Sport has taken a £70 million cut.

[Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend has spoken about how the changes might apply to the National Theatre. Is she intending to move on to talk about regional theatre and how those changes may or may not benefit somewhere such as the Darlington Civic Theatre?

[Helen Goodman]

I am, because I know that my hon. Friend has a keen interest in that, as do people up and down this country.

So we have had big cuts to the Arts Council. The Government have also imposed big cuts on local government, and from answers that I have received to freedom of information requests, we now know that on average local authorities are cutting their arts provision by even more—some 14%. So, given the estimates in the Red Book of the value of this tax relief rising from £5 million to £20 million per year, we can immediately see that it does not compensate for the reductions that have been experienced in public support.

My hon. Friend is right: there is a big issue about what is going on in the regions. The “Rebalancing our Cultural Capital” report suggested that the Government were supporting cultural institutions to the tune of 14 times as much per person in London as elsewhere, and that is not conscionable in the long term for this country. It is clearly because of that concern about regional imbalance that the Minister has decided to provide a slightly more generous relief for touring.