Education: Conservatoires

Debate between Baroness Stowell of Beeston and Lord Lipsey

Wednesday 10th October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lipsey]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they will meet the funding needs of the United Kingdom’s conservatoires.

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

My Lords, before we start the next debate noble Lords will obviously know that it is time-limited. This is one of those tricky ones where we have great interest in the debate, which leads to a very limited speaking time for Back-Bench contributions: two minutes, except for the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey. I will endeavour to have us working together. If everybody were to have three minutes, it would take us over the hour but at two minutes I will try not to be too draconian. I am sure noble Lords would not want me to be that. If we can all come in together at an hour at the end of it, that would be marvellous. Thank you.

[Lord Lipsey]

My Lords, I start by declaring two non-pecuniary interests: as chair of the all-party classical music group and, as of 1 October, as chair also of the Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance in London. I imagine that most of the many noble Lords participating in this debate have had the experience of walking into a music conservatoire. In my new position, I have the privilege of regularly walking in to the magnificent old naval college building in Greenwich, where the Trinity music school is situated, to find a jazz saxophonist practising up there, Bach cello music coming from down there and a bit of John Cage—I do not necessarily move towards that window—coming from over there. On the same visit, I may go to the Laban dance building, which won the Stirling architecture prize. There, because it does modern dance, you see bodies of all shapes and sizes—and yes, of course, of both sexes but also of every kind of racial background that you can imagine—working and working to perfect their art form. Every time that I go in there, it sends a tingle down my spine.

I am tempted just to say that and sit down, which might be very welcome as the House does not like people to go on for too long. The reason that I could sit down is the number of noble Lords who have put their names down to speak in this debate, even though they know that once they have cleared their throat they will have to sit down again. This really shows that this is one of those issues which may not seem huge on the great national tapestry but are of burning importance, not just to the people who work or study in the sector but to the whole of the culture. If anything in this world is of value, it is music, dance and drama and the conservatoires that make them possible.

I should also say at the beginning that this is not a “bash the Government” debate. I can do “too many cuts” speeches off the top of my head; I have been doing them for many years. When the Government introduced their new arrangements for higher education funding, I think that the special circumstances of the conservatoires did not enter their heads. That was certainly the impression that I got from ministerial correspondence at the time. However, to be fair, the Government have since woken up to the problem. My classical music group had an excellent meeting with David Willetts, the responsible Minister, over the summer. He was very concerned to listen to us. The Higher Education Funding Council for England is also sympathetic. This is not about “damn cuts” but it is, I suppose, special pleading and I will now make that special plea.

What, in a nutshell, is the problem? It is this: conservatoire education is by its very nature expensive to provide. You need one-to-one teaching; you need lots of space for people to practise; you need decent instruments, which are a lot more expensive than the whiteboard arrangements needed at a normal university. In recognition of this, successive Governments have provided funding for the sector—most notably through the exceptional funding that HEFCE provides. This is now coming under pressure. The higher education review that the Government published envisaged much higher fees and a consequent reduction in special funding. We are not going to argue with that; our fees will go up, as have those of other undergraduate institutions. However, we do not even have a guarantee that special funding will continue beyond the end of this year. HEFCE has kept it going for a further year in 2012-13 but is reviewing it now. An announcement is expected in December 2012. My colleagues and I operate every day with the sword of Damocles still poised over our heads.

The situation is very tough. HEFCE funding has been reduced by £9.7 million in cash terms and 16.1% in real terms since 2009-10. All conservatoires have been hit by the previous Government deciding that if you had done a first degree somewhere, you could not then go and do a first degree somewhere else and be funded for it. So someone who is a chemist but turns out to be a brilliant pianist cannot now get any funding if they go off to do a degree in piano. There has been a virtual removal of capital funding for teaching, which, as I said, needs to be much higher—you cannot buy a Steinway for the price of a blackboard. So the general situation that we face is very tough.

We ought to have a sense of proportion about this funding gap. The total funding for exceptional funding from HEFCE is £20 million. At the Conservative Party conference this week—this is not a party political point—the Government said that they were seeking, from social security benefits alone, cuts of £10 billion. That is 500 lots of our total funding. This money is not material in terms of its impact on the deficit, on the Exchequer or on anything like that, but it is oh so material regarding what happens at our conservatoires.

It is not easy for us to find other income. For example, we are looking the whole time for more foreign students but we face a great deal of competition, including from European institutions which are subsidised by their Governments, and now we have the problems created by immigration law, which were dramatically illustrated by the London Metropolitan affair. Trinity Laban suffers because the Americans have just cut off loans that were previously paid to fund students from the Americas because we do not have degree-awarding powers yet. The Government have made it more difficult for our students to get jobs after graduation, since you have to show that you can earn £20,000-plus a year and it is not easy for a music student to do that because they have a portfolio of earnings that come from different places.

We are also trying for philanthropic support, but that is not an instant solution either. The easiest thing to raise philanthropic support for is scholarships, but that just means that you get one student paid for by philanthropy who otherwise would be a student paid for through HEFCE in the normal way of business. It is not just money that goes through to the bottom line. We work on commercial money like mad but it is not easy to make yourself a billionaire from music.

Costs are being cut to the bone. I mentioned the beautiful buildings in Greenwich but I am afraid that the paint is peeling. It is hard to escape the conclusion that a proper contribution from government is essential if the conservatoires are to survive and prosper. This was recognised in the report by Darren Henley, the boss of Classic FM—no egghead he, but a good egg nevertheless—whose cultural education review in 2012, which the Government were very keen on, said:

“The government should recognise the need for exceptional funding for culturally based conservatoires, which train the artists, actors, dancers and musicians who will create and perform the culture of the future. The funding settlements for these conservatoires should be secured for the long-term”.

That last sentence is very important. It is not easy to plan the future and institutions such as this if you do not know where next year’s money is coming from.

With cuts here, there and everywhere—£10 billion of cuts—some might question whether institutions such as the conservatoires should be a priority for public spending, but no one should doubt the contribution that they make to the economy. Trinity Laban is in the top five higher education institutions in the country in terms of its graduates going into jobs. These are motivated people who are determined to work and find a way of making a living. Conservatoires contribute to jobs and to foreign exchange with students from abroad, and culture today is big business. However, I defend conservatoires not simply on those grounds but on these: our resilience as a nation in the crisis that we face in our economy depends not just on material matters—it depends on the values that sustain us as a society. A land without music, every kind of music, or dance of the highest quality is a land that has lost its soul, and once it has lost its soul it will lose the rest of its way too.