Regional Arts Facilities

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Excerpts

Wednesday 27th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Rawlings (Con)]

My Lords—

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

My Lords, we have a bit of an impasse. Could we hear from the Conservative Benches and then the Labour Benches?

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

As my noble friend rightly points out, some of the national museums are prevented in statute from deaccessioning items in their collections. Other museums are under the direction of their trustees, and about 18 months ago the Government, working with Arts Council England and the sector, provided some guidance so that the trustees of those collections were able to reflect on the importance considerations as they made those decisions.

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister will know that, for the past 40 years—probably more—the arts sector in this country has been reliant principally on three sources of income: one is what it can earn for itself through trading, another is the public funding that comes from the Arts Council and local authorities, and the third is private giving. He will also know that all three of those funding streams are currently under enormous pressure. Therefore, while accepting and being grateful for the work that the Government have done recently, in view of the widespread challenges that all arts organisations are currently facing, does he think that it is enough?

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

The noble Baroness is right. All three elements that she mentioned are important, and all three are facing challenges at the moment. That is why we were so pleased that the Chancellor agreed to make permanent the tax reliefs in the Budget, because that encourages the sort of risk-taking experiment, such as touring a new production, that can help be a part of the commercial income of our brilliant arts organisations. I am glad that the noble Baroness has agreed to join the advisory panel for Dame Mary Archer’s review of Arts Council England, which can look at this important landscape and, I hope, inform the review and the recommendations that it makes to government.

Charities: National Minimum Wage

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Excerpts

Thursday 29th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

Yes. My right honourable friend Stuart Andrew, the Charities Minister, regularly meets charities. I will ensure that the noble Lord’s point is passed on, so that he can have those discussions.

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab)]

My Lords, in the course of this short debate the Minister has produced a large number of statistics involving sums of money that are eye-wateringly large if you look at them on their own, but it is very difficult to understand how those figures relate to the actual need in the sectors to which they are being applied. If I can take him back to the question from his noble friend—the noble Lord, Lord Young—the gap between the need of the early years providers and what is available to fund them is very considerable, and it is not being improved by what is happening in local authorities. Can he tell the House how that gap is to be addressed?

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

The noble Baroness is right that these are eye-watering figures. As people live longer and the pressures on local authorities to deliver social care grow, we can see the implications for their budgets and spending. Those are part of the conversations that the Government have with local authorities all the time. As I said, just last month another £500 million was announced to support local authorities with the cost of social care, which we know is rising. Overall, local authorities’ core spending power is set to increase by 7.5% this year. We continue to have discussions to make sure that there is money available to local authorities to deliver that statutory responsibility and to continue to support the wonderful arts organisations, charities and others for which they do not a statutory responsibility but which can be part of delivering their statutory obligations by looking after people in so many ways.

Arts

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Excerpts

Thursday 1st February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab)]

My Lords, I will come to my noble friend Lord Bragg later. I remind the House of my current and past interests, including as a former executive director of the National Theatre and a former deputy chair of the board of the Royal Shakespeare Company. I ask the House to be so good as to take it as read that I agree with virtually everything that has been said so far and that I anticipate agreeing with most of what will be said after I have sat down. I will strive to repeat none of it.

I will talk slightly differently about why I think the arts matter—not for their economic impacts, important as they are, nor because studying music improves our maths skills, for example, which it does, but for the power that the arts have to change us and thereby to change the world.

In the New Statesman last month, the journalist Anna Leszkiewicz wrote:

“In narrating this injustice with empathy, immediacy and urgency, television drama has succeeded where journalism has failed … The series has invited the average person to step inside the experience of Bates and so many others, to feel the iron walls of bureaucracy closing in on them, to take on their panic and powerlessness. It is an extraordinary and rare example of a drama not just capturing but creating a national moment”.


The only word with which I disagree is “rare”. She was, of course, talking about “Mr Bates vs The Post Office”. After it was broadcast, there was widespread confusion: “How did this happen? How did this drama have such an impact?” The hard-won experience and skill of researchers, producers, designers, a remarkable writer and director, and a peerless group of actors and many more took us into the minds of others, obliging us to confront experience that we do not have and perspectives other than our own. This is how a drama about the Post Office succeeded in altering the course of events when so much excellent previous research and journalism—on which, of course, the drama relied—could not.

All of us watching certainly gained knowledge, but much more importantly we gained insight. Our imaginations were engaged and we felt the “iron walls of bureaucracy”, the “panic and powerlessness”, closing in on us and we were moved. This is what art and artists can do: they link us to each other, remind us of our common vulnerabilities and help us to make sense of an often chaotic world.

Human beings need stories. It is how they learn. They need to hear them and to tell them. Art, in all its many forms, is how stories are shared. This is why encouragement of creative thinking should be central to any well-balanced school curriculum. Education cannot be about just acquiring knowledge, important as that is, but must also be about learning to process that knowledge, to challenge it thoughtfully and to use it imaginatively.

We live in a dangerous world—angry, frightened and divided. The power of the arts to help us navigate it has never been more needed. We must protect and nourish them. Now I come to my noble friend Lord Bragg, who has probably done more than anybody alive, in his extraordinary career, to protect and nourish them. I hope that I do not embarrass him by saying that he is a true national treasure but, more importantly to all of us, he is an inspiring colleague and has been for many years. How very lucky we are to have him.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Culture, Media and Sport (Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay) (Con)]

My Lords, I happily join in with the tributes that have been paid to the noble Lord, Lord Bragg, not just for securing this debate in the way he introduced it, but for a life and career devoted to championing the arts and their transformative power. The noble Lord’s contribution to the arts in this country is, indeed, unparalleled. His work on “The South Bank Show” has left an indelible mark on our cultural landscape, and he has inspired legions of people, through more than one thousand episodes of “In Our Time”, about topics they did not even know that they did not know about. The noble Lord is a living embodiment of the power of the arts, in the way that he sets out in the terms of his Motion today, but also directly on people’s lives. They are what have borne him, as the BBC profile of him on his 75th birthday put it, from Wigton to Westminster and how glad we are that they have. The great turnout that we had today is another recognition of that.

Another noble Lord who I know would have joined us, had she not lost her voice, is my noble friend Lady Sanderson of Welton. However, her voice is certainly heard loud and clear through the independent review of libraries that was published last month, which I commissioned from her, and which I hope the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley of Knighton, the noble Baroness, Lady Rebuck, and others who rightly mentioned the importance of literacy and reading have had the chance to see. It will inform the Government’s strategy for libraries for the next five years.

It is important to start by reflecting on art for art’s sake. When I go to the theatre, to the opera or to a gallery, I rarely take my seat thinking of the social benefits accruing to me by being there, or of the economic impact of the drink I buy at the bar or the magnet that I buy in the gift shop. I am thinking about what I have seen and witnessed, and how I have been challenged, moved and changed by the experience. The noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, rightly extolled the power of “Mr Bates vs The Post Office”, a TV drama that has moved and motivated us in a way that so many column inches and debates in Parliament have not. Although the economic and social impact of the arts is vital, the reason that I am proud of the way this Government support the arts and culture is because they are an essential part of what makes life worth living. Governments should be confident in helping people experience that. It is also why, for me and the Secretary of State, excellence in the arts is so vital. We believe that the unique and life-enriching quality of the arts are at their most potent when they combine creativity, talent, skill and rigour to create truly excellent cultural experiences. Undoubtedly, excellence comes in many forms and can look different in different places but, whatever the context, we should never be ashamed of aiming high. To that end, I agree with what noble Lords have said about the English National Opera and the Welsh National Opera and the excellent work that they do on and off-stage.

I will not go all the way that the noble Lord, Lord Murphy of Torfaen, advocates and tell the Arts Council, in either England or Wales, precisely which organisations they ought to fund. When I became Arts Minister, it was impressed on me, very clearly, how important the arm’s-length principle is, and I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Bonham-Carter about its importance: Ministers should not decide who gets what, no matter how deserving. That unenviable job is done by the Arts Council, which does the micro while the Government do the macro. I have acknowledged before that the instruction that we gave the Arts Council before the last funding round, to ensure that its funding was more equitably spread around the country, made its job harder and presented it with some invidious choices. However, I am proud that it has resulted in a record number of organisations being funded in more parts of the country than ever before, including, as the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, rightly mentioned, in rural parts of England. I visited Pentabus theatre company just outside Ludlow, which does brilliant work in telling the stories of rural England to audiences around the country.

Our forthcoming review of the Arts Council allows us to ask some important structural questions about how it makes its decisions and sets its strategy, how it measures them and the timeframes by which government asks it to do it. I hope that noble Lords from all corners of the House help us to inform that review.

Notwithstanding the inherent cultural value of the arts, their economic and social impact cannot be ignored. At a time when decision-makers are looking at budgets in all sorts of contexts, be they philanthropic givers, corporate sponsors or colleagues in the devolved Governments and local authorities, they would all do well to be mindful of the benefits that have been set out so clearly today. I spoke to a number of local authority leaders about this matter only yesterday and I pay tribute to groups, including the Campaign for the Arts, which keep them and us on our toes.

As the noble Lord, Lord Bragg, did in his opening, I turn to the economic role of the arts. It is not by chance that economic growth is one of the key things identified by the Government’s Creative Industries Sector Vision, published last summer. As we set out in that document, over the past decade, the creative industries’ output has grown more than 1.5 times as quickly as the economy overall and its workforce has grown at almost five times the UK rate. The first goal set out in that vision is for the creative industries to add an extra £50 billion in gross value added by 2030. The second goal addresses one of the key enablers of that growth—its workforce. The vision makes it clear that we want to ensure that our creative workforce embodies the dynamism and talent of the whole UK, while addressing skills gaps and shortages. The arts are a vital part of that mission.

In 2022, the arts sector contributed £9.5 billion in output to our economy; that was a sharp rise from £7.4 billion the year before. We also saw increases in the workforce of the arts sector, which has grown at over 3.5 times the rate of the UK as a whole over the last decade. However, there are important skills gaps and shortages that we must address to optimise its productivity, including in technical roles across our creative and cultural venues. In part, that is because of the great demand for prop makers, set designers and technical professionals of all sorts in our booming film and television sectors, but these people are vital to our live performing arts. The Department for Education skills bootcamp funding, both nationally and locally, is one part of our work to address this; another is our work to ensure that parents, teachers and guardians have access to helpful and up-to-date careers guidance to inspire people to pursue these enriching careers.

During the pandemic, as my noble friend Lord Vaizey of Didcot set out, the culture recovery fund of more than £1.5 billion supported thousands of organisations and venues across the land, helping to preserve the environment in which so many creative professionals work. The evaluation of that unprecedented fund estimated that organisations supported by it worked with more than 200,000 employees and freelancers. The impact on growth goes further: creativity might not be unique to arts and culture, but it is certainly where it is most prized and cherished. Creativity is at the heart of innovation across our economy, as the noble Lord, Lord Kinnock, rightly said in his contribution. Skills and attitudes to innovation, which are incubated in the arts, can spill over happily into the rest of our economy, so we should applaud the arts and creative industries not only for their own output but for how they make us more creative, productive and globally competitive in so many other industries. As the noble Lord, Lord Bragg, said, they are not the cherry; they are the cake.

As many noble Lords pointed out, the impact of the arts goes far beyond their pure economic value. That is why the third goal of the Creative Industries Sector Vision is to maximise the positive impact of the creative industries on individuals, communities, the environment and the UK’s global standing. We start from a good foundation: people engage with the arts in the UK on a very wide scale. According to the DCMS’s participation survey, more than four in five adults engaged with the arts in the previous year—a powerful demonstration of how the arts remain an integral part of our national life. It is clear that this engagement has a positive effect on people’s lives, improving their health, education and well-being.

A key social impact of the arts is its positive impact on our health and well-being, including its use as a non-medical intervention through the growing work on social prescribing. A recent study involving more than 1,100 people aged 40 and above by the University of Exeter found that playing a musical instrument or joining a choir is linked to better memory and cognitive skills in older age, particularly for those suffering with dementia.

Just a couple of weeks ago, I had the opportunity to attend a reception for Paintings in Hospitals, hosted by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London here in your Lordships’ House, in the Cholmondeley Room. The noble Lord, Lord Browne of Madingley, was there, and spoke proudly today of his role as a patron. I am glad that the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, recognised his great generosity, not just financially but through the time and expertise that he brings to so many organisations in the arts in this country. Paintings in Hospitals does wonderful work, loaning artwork to, and running art projects and workshops in, health and social care organisations across the country. Likewise, Arts Council England, in partnership with the National Academy for Social Prescribing and others, set up the thriving communities fund, which has supported many initiatives to increase social connectedness and provided a great boon to many during the pandemic.

Many more arts organisations across the country are doing fantastic work in this field. The noble Lord, Lord Bragg, talked about the transformative impact of the arts on my home city, Newcastle. I had the pleasure of admiring the Laing Art Gallery’s work in 10 Downing Street earlier this week, as it is this year’s museum in residence at No. 10. It delivers a hugely powerful service to the community on Tyneside through its Meet @ the Laing project. The sessions that it runs offer an opportunity for people to socialise, overcome loneliness, and boost their well-being every month by exploring a different aspect of the art in the gallery over a cup of tea. On the other side of the Tyne, I visited Northbourne care home in Gateshead during Arts in Care Homes week, in September. Over a delicious cup of coffee in its pop-up coffee shop, I saw how arts and creativity were helping the residents and their families, both physically and mentally. Last year, we saw the launch of the national creative health associates programme, supported by the Arts Council and the National Centre for Creative Health—and I am glad that its chairman, the noble Lord, Lord Howarth of Newport, took part in our debate today.

Many noble Lords spoke of the powerful impact that the arts can have on children and young people. That is why it is so important that we ensure that children and young people have access to high-quality cultural education and creativity, inside and outside school. I am one of the 93%, and very proudly, educated in the state sector, which is why I want to ensure that everybody has access to the opportunities which are so often illustrated in the posters and adverts for private schools.

The Government’s refreshed national plan for music education, The Power of Music to Change Lives, informed by a panel chaired by my noble friend Lady Fleet, aims to level up music opportunities for all children and young people. As part of the commitments that we made alongside that plan, £25 million of new funding is being made available to purchase hundreds of thousands of musical instruments and equipment for young people, including adaptive instruments for pupils with special educational needs or disabilities. The refreshed plan also renews our commitment to the music hubs programme, delivered by the Arts Council, providing £79 million a year.

Looking ahead, we intend to increase the opportunities for all children and young people in culture more broadly, including, as the noble Baroness, Lady Garden of Frognal, rightly highlighted, in heritage crafts and skills. In the coming weeks, the cultural education plan, being shaped as we speak by a panel chaired by the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, will set out a blueprint for the way in which government and its partners can work together to improve cultural education across the country for all children and young people. The plan is intended to highlight the importance of high-quality cultural education and promote its social value, support career progression pathways, address skills gaps, and tackle disparities in opportunity. I have attended a number of the panel’s discussions so far, and I am grateful for the work that it is doing to encourage us to be ambitious for the lives of young people.

An arts education fosters creativity, critical thinking and emotional intelligence. It cultivates a space where young minds learn to express themselves, develop a sense of self and appreciate diverse perspectives. Moreover, arts education nurtures the skills essential for a dynamic workforce, producing minds capable of critical thinking and adaptability. These are things that no country should take lightly, and certainly should not take for granted, which is why cultural education is such a priority for the Secretary of State and for me.

While an arts education plays an important role in developing individuals, we know that it has a wider impact on society. For example, the Arts and Place Shaping: Evidence Review, commissioned by Arts Council England and published in 2022, points to a body of evidence that demonstrates how arts and culture-led regeneration and investment can help to promote social cohesion and civic pride. Alongside this study, other research, including the McKinsey study mentioned by many noble Lords today, has testified that cultural participation can contribute to social relationships, community cohesion, and making communities feel safer and stronger. Its impact depends not only on the individual efforts of artists and arts organisations but on the whole ecosystem: creators, educators, distributors and promoters, suppliers, funders and audiences.

To that end, and in line with the challenge rightly posed by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans, we are delivering a number of programmes to help communities across the country to extend and improve their arts and cultural offerings. The £4.8 billion levelling up fund, for example, invests in local infrastructure projects that improve life for people across the UK, focusing on regeneration and transport, and supporting cultural, creative and heritage assets. The second round of the fund, announced last January, included over £500 million of support, awarded to 31 culture and heritage-led projects.

The noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, was right to talk about the infrastructure of live music venues. My colleagues and I have been pleased to meet with the Music Venue Trust. I hope that the noble Lord has seen that £5 million was given, alongside the creative industries sector vision, to support grass-roots music.

Since its launch in 2019, over three rounds of funding so far, the cultural development fund has supported a number of other culture-led regeneration projects. The successful recipients of the third round, totalling over £32 million, were announced last March. Recipients were spread across the country, from Yorkshire to Devon, fuelling projects that will make a real difference to local people. Just yesterday, I launched the fourth round of the cultural development fund, with another £15.2 million available to support transformative projects across England. I warmly encourage people to apply.

My noble friend Lord Holmes of Richmond spoke proudly of his role during London 2012 in fusing sports and art, and he spoke passionately about making sure they are open to people, whatever their needs and background. I am grateful to him for doing so. My department and the Arts Council are committed to ensuring the accessibility of our culture and heritage across the UK for everybody, whatever their background or needs. The Arts Council has done excellent work in recent years to widen access. As part of its national portfolio, it supports a range of organisations striving to improve access, from Attitude is Everything, which seeks to connect people with disabilities with music and live events, to VocalEyes, which works with arts organisations across the UK to remove barriers to access and inclusion for blind and partially sighted people. More broadly, in its new portfolio, the Arts Council is supporting an increased number of organisations—32 of them—led by people with disabilities. The Government’s museum estate and development fund supports physical adaptations to buildings to make them more accessible to everybody.

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, for recording my first visit to Liverpool. I am ashamed that it took me 40 years to make it, but I was delighted that when I went the Beatles were at No. 1. It was a delight to see him at National Museums Liverpool. I know he supports that DCMS arm’s-length body wholeheartedly. My officials continue to talk to the team there about their exciting plans, which I was delighted to see for myself, with our colleagues from the Department for Levelling Up and from the Treasury.

I am very happy to meet the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon, and the campaigners she mentioned who are working to ensure that everybody can play their full part in the arts and creative industries, and to do so safely.

We heard a great number of thoughtful views from noble Lords. I do not think that we are in any disagreement about the inherent power, economic value or social impact of arts and culture in the UK. Happily, this has been, for the most part, a non-partisan speech, as exemplified by the pantheon of cross-party heroes listed by the noble Baroness, Lady Bonham-Carter, in her winding-up speech.

I must take slight exception to what the noble Viscount, Lord Chandos, said. We have had a number of exchanges before about the increased grant in aid provided by the Government to Arts Council England. I hope noble Lords know that I would never seek to insult their intelligence, and I certainly would not get away with doing so. I have acknowledged that the increase of more than £43 million that we provided to the Arts Council in the most recent spending review is hampered by the rise in inflation. That is why the Government are working to bring inflation down and why we have halved it. It stands in stark contrast to the cut in arts funding proposed by the Labour Government in Wales, of nearly £3 million and more than 10%. I hope the noble Viscount will take exception to that.

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab)]

My Lords, I can tell that the Minister is coming to a close, and there are a couple of minutes left. I would very much appreciate it—and I am sure that his noble friend Lady Hooper also would—if he would, in passing at least, address the question of theatre tax relief. It is a very serious matter for the arts sector, and I hope he will address it.

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

I certainly will; I have it next on my list to do. I talked about it with orchestral leaders and the Association of British Orchestras in Bristol last week; we speak about it regularly with museums and theatres as well. But my noble friend is right to talk about the importance of the way that it is encouraging innovation, risk-taking, and new writing, productions and tours. We are very glad to have secured the extension we did at the last Budget. We continue to feed all the evidence of shows such as “Black Sabbath—The Ballet”, which, like my noble friend, I had the pleasure of seeing, to our colleagues at the Treasury to show the impact that that is making—the new productions, the new jobs, and the new enjoyment it brings—and to measure that in a Green Book-compliant way, so that we can make the strongest case for those tax reliefs and their impact.

I hope noble Lords will see that those extensions secured at the last Budget, the funding through the levelling up fund, the cultural development fund, and the work we are doing through the cultural educational plan and the national plan for music education are parts of the way that the Government, like all noble Lords who have spoken in today’s debate, agree wholeheartedly with the sentiments the noble Lord, Lord Bragg, put forward in his Motion. We are very grateful to him for giving us the important opportunity to have today’s valuable debate, and I am grateful to all noble Lords who have taken part in it.

Classical Music

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Excerpts

Thursday 7th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

On a recent visit to Devon, I had the opportunity to meet the new chief executive of Dartington Trust. The noble Lord is right to point to the brilliant work done by Cheltenham Festivals in his time and subsequently. Arts Council England has maintained its level of funding for Cheltenham Festivals at £217,000 per year, but I would be very happy to meet people from Cheltenham Festivals as well as others.

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab)]

The Minister will be aware that opera and classical music still suffer from a quite widespread perception that they are not for anything other than a very small audience. This makes fundraising extremely difficult for small organisations such as OperaUpClose, with which I declare a personal connection, which are trying to take high-quality music and opera into communities where they are not generally available and to engage them in that work. By the way, they are also commissioning young composers. Can the Government encourage a better fundraising environment for those companies, particularly by encouraging, for example, match-funding schemes such as the Big Give, which closed this week?

Arts and Creative Industries: Freelancers and Self-employed Workers

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Excerpts

Thursday 15th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab)]

My Lords, this is indeed an important issue and I am grateful to colleagues at Freelancers Make Theatre Work for their excellent research and briefing, which I recommend to the Minister.

Freelancing in the live performing arts is a deeply precarious existence, as we have heard. Pay is typically low and conditions often poor. The pandemic had a terrible effect on the freelance workforce: many could not access any financial support and consequently left the industry or went, if they could, to the slightly safer and better paid haven of film and television. We now have a skills shortage which is already having a serious impact on organisations of every scale, but particularly on small producing companies such as OperaUpClose, newly included in Arts Council England’s national portfolio and of which my daughter—with long experience as a freelance opera singer—is artistic director and chief executive.

Companies such as OperaUpClose are where much of our most innovative and exciting work is happening and they are entirely dependent on freelancers to deliver that work. OperaUpClose, with a wide-ranging and ambitious programme, has just three permanent employees, who between them carry all creative, managerial and administrative responsibilities, including for fundraising and for all the onerous reporting requirements—far too onerous, in my view—that go with being an Arts Council England client. They operate with small budgets and compete for the services of performers, directors, designers, stage managers, writers and others in a market where those people need either to take the best-paid work or to take far too much work just to survive. This is an existential threat to the whole performing arts sector.

My question for the Minister, which I make no apology for stealing directly from my friends at Freelancers Make Theatre Work, is: what have His Majesty’s Government done, and what more will they now do, to address the serious challenges facing freelancers in the performing arts? Without them, there is no performing arts industry.

Online Safety Bill

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 9th May 2023 Lords Chamber

Amendments 35 to 37 not moved.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall) (Lab)]

I advise the Committee that if Amendment 38 is agreed to, I shall not be able to call Amendment 38A by reason of pre-emption.

Amendment 38

Moved by

Broadcasting: Children’s Television

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Excerpts

Thursday 2nd February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

We have indeed been investing: the Young Audiences Content Fund invested a total of £40.5 million directly into brand new children’s television content for exactly the sorts of reasons the noble Lord outlined.

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, rightly pointed out the danger now of the huge oversupply of content—including perfectly reasonable content—from elsewhere, mainly America, particularly for young children. Can the Minister address what that is doing to the skill base in this country? There are lots of people who have, and need, very particular skills to create content for young children, and they must be feeling pretty dismal at the moment. Does the Minister agree?

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

The noble Baroness is right, and the Government are clear that we want to see distinctively British content, so that young people growing up in this country can see it on television and on their tablets, or however they view it. Through our creative industries sector vision, the department is working to address skills gaps right across the creative industries in order to ensure that we can continue to make world-leading content.

Arts and Creative Industries Strategy

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Excerpts

Thursday 8th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Chandos, in securing this debate and introducing it so powerfully, has unleashed a range of comments and expertise in the last two hours which are quite formidable to follow. What is left to say? Well, not much, but I am going to plough on anyway.

Given the breadth and economic significance of the creative industries, it is absolutely clear that a robust strategy for defending and developing them is crucial, as many noble Lords have made clear in the debate today. I underline the comments that have come from so many people about the vital contribution that the education system has to make to sustain those industries. At the moment, we are not doing well enough in that area.

I want to focus a bit more on one small—in financial terms—but absolutely vital part of the strategic network or jigsaw: government support for the arts via the Arts Council. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, I have been around this subject many times in a long career: I chaired a peer review of Arts Council England for DCMS in 2005 and subsequently wrote a report commissioned by the Arts Council itself following its funding decisions in 2008, which were highly controversial, and again after its funding round in 2011, when the outcomes were less contested. I have also been involved for decades in organisations in receipt of Arts Council funding, in both executive and non-executive roles. I say this to declare a long-standing interest, in both senses, but also to apologise for the slightly weary tone that may creep into my remarks, because I have been here before. Checking what I wrote in 2008, for example, I find that sadly some of it applies just as pertinently today.

That said, and for the avoidance of doubt, I have always been, and remain, a committed supporter of the Arts Council model, at the heart of which lie the two main principles that animated its founders in 1948: first, that the arts are a public good from which everyone benefits and which should therefore receive public support; and secondly that the funds allocated to the arts by the Government should be administered at arm’s-length from government, through a body making independent decisions about exactly where and with whom money should be invested. These principles have frequently been troublesome to Governments of all complexions but, even though our cultural landscape is much changed since 1948, they are still worth defending. I fear that both are now under serious threat.

Earlier this year, I observed at close quarters the process that all organisations seeking membership of Arts Council England’s national portfolio—whether large or small, new applicants or long-standing clients, and no matter what quantum of funding they were seeking—had to go through. Everybody I spoke to about it, from the largest to the smallest, found it exhausting and frustrating, at a time of enormous pressure and great anxiety post pandemic. I understand how difficult it is to design a system that works fairly across the board, but this attempt seemed to be unacceptably stressful for everyone, whatever the eventual outcome for individual organisations. Among its most troubling complexities were indeed the special requirements placed on organisations based in London.

To be clear, I think that a lot of the decisions that Arts Council England eventually made, with increased emphasis on diversity, inclusion and regional spread, were excellent. It was inevitable there would be winners and losers: there always are. However, the way the process was designed and managed, and how decisions were communicated, both to clients and to the wider world, left a great deal to be desired and exposed Arts Council England once again to legitimate challenge. So it was very concerning when, faced with considerable dismay as the new portfolio was revealed last month, Arts Council England began to refer to having received instructions from the then Secretary of State, which were subsequently prayed in aid to justify some of the more controversial decisions.

Does the Minister believe that this is an accurate reflection of what happened? If so, does he think it appropriate that a Secretary of State should instruct an arm’s-length body? Governments for decades have relied on asserting that such bodies make choices independently and should be accountable for them. How can that be a defensible position if those bodies are in fact acting under instruction? Apart from its inherent dishonesty, that position leaves the Government open to direct lobbying from aggrieved parties who understandably question the integrity of the decision-making process.

The Minister knows that I respect his personal commitment to his role, and I am glad to see him back in it. I hope he will be able to say whether the Government still support the founding tenets I referred to earlier: the arts as a public good and an arm’s-length principle for distribution of funds. I suspect that he will say that the Government are committed to both—I hope he will—but perhaps he will agree that the ongoing disquiet, with questions asked about process and nobody quite taking responsibility for controversial decisions, undermines that commitment and does no favours to the arts sector, the Arts Council or the Government, and distracts from the really important wider issues which are the subject of this debate.

Online Safety Bill

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Excerpts

Monday 7th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

I pay tribute to my noble friend for his work on this Bill while in office. I saw him at this Dispatch Box answering questions that reflected your Lordships’ eagerness to receive it and begin that scrutiny work. He is tempting me to stray into debates on the Bill itself, which we will have plenty of time for when it comes forward. As I say, the strongest protections in the Bill are for children and nothing in the Bill is designed to harm freedom of expression. The Bill holds those in balance, but I know that is one area that noble Lords will want to scrutinise during the Bill’s passage.

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab)]

My Lords, has the noble Lord, Lord Kamall, not precisely made the point by pointing out that what we need to do now is talk about the Bill? We are prevented from talking about the Bill for reasons that may be clear to a number of your Lordships but are certainly not clear to me. Is it not time that we get a chance to have the discussions implied in the question from the noble Lord, Lord Kamall? Although Molly Russell was the most—how can one say it? The noble Lord used the word “heartbreaking”—example put before us recently, there have been many others and there will be many more before the Bill gets on to the statute book.

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

The noble Baroness is right. There have been too many such cases, and we want to get this legislation on to the statute book to prevent as many of those preventable harms as we are able to. I too want to have that debate to continue the scrutiny in your Lordships’ House, but it is important that the other place concludes that before we are able to do so. I hope that it will be engaged in that very swiftly and that the Bill will soon be before your Lordships.

Arts: Energy Cost Support

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Excerpts

Thursday 20th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

Ah, it was my noble friend; I thank noble Lords. Next time I will bring my rear-view mirror. One of things we have to be very careful about are those organisations that are commercial but also receive taxpayer or lottery funding. It is important that we understand which sectors needs support. We are constantly in conversation with individual venues, and the umbrella organisations of different sectors. We want to understand how the plan that we have put in place works and where it might not work, so we can look at the plans beyond March next year.

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab)]

My Lords, I can assure the Minister that the entire sector needs support at the moment. Of course he is right that choices have to be made. We are well aware that some of those choices may be very uncomfortable and will be threatening to a number of sectors. Could he reassure the House that the DCMS will fight the corner of the cultural sector when these challenges come forward? It can look very successful from in front, because it is a very successful aspect of our economy, but behind the scenes it is really struggling and it will need all the support it can get from the department.

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

The noble Baroness makes a very important point about the importance of our cultural sector to our economy, but also to the social life and well-being of so many people across the country. Sometimes that cannot be measured in simple econometric terms. I remember, from my time as Health Minister, how much social prescribing was helpful. Cultural organisations and individuals play a role in well-being, and help people get through difficult situations. I assure her that I am so excited to have this job because I am now the Minister for Civil Society—my dream job. I want to work right across the sector, with the heritage sector, the museum sector and others, to champion them, not only to the outside world but also within government.