Lord Byron: 200th Anniversary

Earl of Clancarty Excerpts

Tuesday 16th April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

I hope that the campaign to move the statue into Hyde Park, where it can be seen and admired by more people, will help to inspire people into art, whether that is sculpture or poetry, and to investigate history. The efforts of the Byron Society to promote this legacy are important. Many towns in Greece have an Odos Vyronos—that is, a Byron Street. He is perhaps better commemorated in Greece than in the land of his birth. I hope that this bicentenary will help inspire new generations of admirers.

[The Earl of Clancarty (CB)]

A wider concern here is the protection and conservation of all our public sculpture and heritage, from ancient to contemporary, including concerns over stone and metal theft. Has the Minister seen the excellent recent report by the APPG on Metal, Stone and Heritage Crime and the important recommendations it makes in relation to heritage crime? Is the department working closely with the Home Office in this area, as well as with Historic England?

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

I am happy to reassure the noble Earl that, yes, we are. Historic England does a great deal of work, working with police forces across the UK on this important issue. We have to protect our public statues from, alas, vandalism and theft, and from the challenges of climate change. On this, the department, Historic England and many others work closely.

Regional Arts Facilities

Earl of Clancarty Excerpts

Wednesday 27th March 2024 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[The Earl of Clancarty]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to protect regional arts organisations and facilities funded by local authorities, particularly where those local authorities are facing financial difficulties.

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

My Lords, we recognise that local authorities face challenges. That is why we have announced an additional £600 million to bolster our existing support, alongside our £64 billion local government finance settlement. We have also made permanent the increases to cultural tax reliefs and provided support for energy bills over the past two years. DCMS continues to advocate for and help local decision-makers understand the full value of culture, including through our culture and heritage capital programme.

[The Earl of Clancarty (CB)]

My Lords, local government funding has been the foremost means of support for our arts and cultural services. How then will the Government address the significant underfunding which, over so many years, has deprived organisations across the country of the core investment essential to the day-to-day running of our museums, galleries, libraries, theatres and orchestras? Does the Minister accept that tax relief and the kind of capital investment the Arts Council announced this week, though welcome in themselves, are not the solution to a problem now driving our arts and cultural services to the point of collapse?

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

The noble Earl is right to point to the importance of local government, which is a bigger funder of the arts than national government or the Arts Council. It is a really important partner. He points to the things that the Government have done through the cultural tax reliefs—making them permanent is an important part of the help, alongside the support we have given to organisations in the face of rising energy costs. But, as I said in my initial answer, my department advocates for the importance of cultural spending, not just because it is a good in itself but because it is a way for local authorities to deliver many of their other statutory obligations in education and in health and well-being. That is why we capture the data and measure it in a Green Book-compliant way, so that we can have the conversation with our colleagues at the Treasury and bring the successes that we saw in the Budget, but also so that we can make that case clearly to our colleagues in local government.

Charities: National Minimum Wage

Earl of Clancarty Excerpts

Thursday 29th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

The noble Lord is right to point to the important contribution of civil society and charitable organisations—the Government recognise that. We saw that very clearly during the coronavirus pandemic, when we pledged £750 million to ensure that voluntary and civil society organisations could continue their vital work supporting the community during the pandemic. As I have pointed to, we see that in the face of the rising cost of living now.

[The Earl of Clancarty (CB)]

My Lords, can the Minister say whether he has had representations from museums and galleries about this? If so, what steps will the Government take to support them in the light of this change?

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

Yes, I have discussed the same issue with museums and arts organisations. The rise in the national living wage has implications for employers of all sorts. Through our increased grant in aid, Arts Council England is supporting a record number of organisations in more parts of the country than ever before. I continue to discuss these issues with organisations of all sorts.

Arts

Earl of Clancarty Excerpts

Thursday 1st February 2024 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Clancarty (CB)]

My Lords, I too congratulate the Government on deciding to ratify the UNESCO treaty on intangible cultural heritage. I thank Patricia Lovett, who has campaigned on this for so many years. I also applaud the Government’s stated commitment to negotiate the artist’s resale right with other countries, which is much appreciated. However, the triumvirate of crisis areas—arts funding, arts education and Brexit—is now causing firefighting on a daily basis in terms of cost, red tape and feasibility.

An artist’s work is primarily a contribution to society, which is why public funding is so important. Visual artists, for instance, should be properly remunerated for participation in public exhibitions on the kind of scale that, for example, Stuttgart has recently announced for artists there. Compare that progressive model with Suffolk and Nottingham, which are the latest councils to announce zero funding for the arts. There will be no exhibitions, let alone payment for artists, and theatres are now in danger of losing much of their total funding, as the excellent introduction by the noble Lord, Lord Bragg, made clear.

I read with horror this week of the possible plans for a fire sale of public assets to deal with local authorities’ financial woes, including buildings that might be used for arts and cultural purposes. This is so short-sighted. Councils have already lost many precious buildings that cannot be recovered. Local authorities ought to be part of the solution, rather than hindering the provision of, for example, our increasingly scarce music venues, which were mentioned earlier.

The Arts Council and local authorities are blamed, but ultimately the long-term cuts to central government funding are responsible. The key to arts funding lies in reversing the cuts to local authorities, particularly as through the “Let’s Create” strategy the overstretched Arts Council has taken on the kind of community projects that used to be funded by local authorities.

Brexit has yet to be properly addressed for the arts. While much can be done to ameliorate the situation, including renegotiating the deal the EU originally offered us, in the end the real solution must be to rejoin the single market. I say this particularly because many of the jobs that used to be on offer in Europe to performers as an accepted part of their career path are now advertised only for those with European passports. We will always remain at a disadvantage to our European neighbours in the creative industries until we are an equal member of that market again.

One specific thing the Government could do to help touring musicians would be to speed up and reduce the red tape on the issuing of A1 forms. I have an Oral Question on this on 12 February, to be answered by the Treasury, but I take the opportunity here to ask DCMS to impress on the Treasury the importance of addressing this concern.

The third main area of concern is arts education, with GCSE arts entries falling by a massive 41% since 2010. The key issue here is the accountability measures, with their built-in hierarchy of subjects. Look to the recent report by the Lords Education for 11-16 Year Olds Committee that recommends the EBacc be scrapped and Progress 8 reformed. One should bear in mind that the EBacc was set up to cement the then Education Secretary Michael Gove’s vision of a narrowly academic bias to school education, not the properly rounded education that all students deserve and that would most benefit society.

BBC Funding

Earl of Clancarty Excerpts

Tuesday 12th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

The review aims to ensure that the BBC’s funding model is fair to licence fee payers, sustainable for the long term and supports the BBC in the vital work it does, including its important role in growing our thriving creative industries. We know that, if we want the BBC to continue to succeed, we cannot freeze its income but, at the same time, we cannot ask households to pay more to support the BBC indefinitely. So, the review will look at a range of options for funding the corporation, including looking at how the BBC can increase its commercial revenues to reduce the burden on licence fee payers.

[The Earl of Clancarty (CB)]

My Lords, I am not against a review of the funding model, but that is a completely different matter entirely from the long-term squeezing of funds available to the BBC—which is surely, as has just been said, the central problem. One problem should not be used as an excuse not to solve the other problem.

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

As we know from previous exchanges, there is the immediate decision about licence fee increases and the settlement that the Government reached with the BBC at the beginning of 2022—which saw the two-year freeze to help house- holds at the time—and the longer-term questions which are right to ask to make sure that we are funding the BBC in a sustainable way, so that it can continue to do important work in the decades to come, which are going to look very different from the BBC’s first century.

Classical Music

Earl of Clancarty Excerpts

Thursday 7th December 2023 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[The Earl of Clancarty]

To ask His Majesty’s Government whether they intend to take steps to improve support for classical music, particularly for orchestras and opera companies.

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

My Lords, opera, orchestras and classical music enrich our lives. Through its investment programme, Arts Council England is spending almost £60 million per year on classical music and opera. More opera organisations are being funded than previously, and support for orchestral organisations has increased in both number and value, with nearly two dozen sharing over £21 million a year. We have also extended the higher rate of cultural tax reliefs, including orchestra tax relief.

[The Earl of Clancarty (CB)]

My Lords, many of us will no doubt have had recent listening experiences which give us hope that there is a future for classical music in this country. But will the Minister accept that this excellence does not describe the wider narrative of declining educational opportunities and funding cuts, which have led inevitably to a necessarily costlier art form being under considerable threat wherever it is located? Among numerous concerns, can a way can be found to retain orchestra tax relief claims on EEA expenditure as, on top of Brexit, this may otherwise prove disastrous for touring in Europe?

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

Since it was introduced in 2016, £75 million has been paid out through orchestra tax relief. We have extended it at the headline rates for another two years and are grateful to the Association of British Orchestras and many others who have joined the consultation since that was announced in the Budget. Since our departure from the EU, we are of course bringing our tax reliefs in line with World Trade Organization rules. I am grateful for the collaboration we have had. We have made changes on connected party transactions and the going concern rule, and we are keen to continue discussion with orchestras to ensure that they know that only 10% of orchestral output needs to be produced in this country; they will still be able to tour around the world, so that people overseas as well as here may enjoy their brilliant work.

Creative Industries (Communications and Digital Committee Report)

Earl of Clancarty Excerpts

Friday 7th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Clancarty (CB)]

My Lords, this is an important report and I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, on her introduction to it. The report divides into two parts. The first concerns the problems facing creators when they are already creating—IP and tax relief are just two examples—and the second explores how to get creators to that point when they are having to deal with those problems; the chapter on skills is about that. There is a horse-and-cart aspect to this, although skills are also needed to sustain the industry as well.

I will pick out a couple of things that the report highlights, one from each of those areas. While bearing in mind the technological/business bent of the report, I will try to explore the idea of the arts as a thing in itself—a kind of missing key for the Government in the puzzle about how we drive forward these industries.

First, there has clearly been some success in drawing the Government’s attention to some of the concerns raised by the report. For instance, one issue I raised in January in an Oral Question referencing this very report was the concern over a broad copyright exception for text and data mining, which the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, talked about in some detail. Can the Government update us as to where things currently stand with the IPO on this? Have the Government asked the IPO to pause the originally proposed changes, as they said they would in response to the report? Importantly, how much are interested parties, such as the music sector, being kept in the loop on this? I look forward to, I hope, a detailed response from the Minister on that.

Secondly, the statement on higher education in paragraph 158 in the chapter on skills says:

“The Department for Education’s sweeping rhetoric about ‘low value courses’ is unhelpful”.


Other noble Lords have referred to that. This concern was raised by my noble friend Lady Bull today, as well as in an Oral Question on higher education on 28 June, in which she made the point that

“individuals can and do choose to pursue careers that earn lower salaries but have vital social and cultural value”.

One might add artistic value, an aspect of work that makes it a valid contribution by an individual to society, irrespective of the economic value of that work.

Artists, as we discussed in the debate on freelancers recently, want to be paid. Artists and technicians want to be paid more, but they should not be penalised if that is not achieved. The Minister’s reply to my noble friend’s question was that

“it is … important that students are really well informed and understand the choices they make when they opt for one qualification or another”.—[Official Report, 28/6/23; col. 700.]

That is perfectly right, but what the Minister did not say is that universities can now be penalised for what are wrongly regarded as low outcomes, and courses can be withdrawn. In this case, the Government’s response to that recommendation was, frankly, more than unhelpful.

The cutting of arts courses in universities pre-dates this new policy, as the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, referred to, since cutting arts courses has been perceived over a period as an easy option when a university has got into trouble financially. It is perhaps better if financial problems can somehow be avoided altogether. In this sense, too, there is an analogy with schools today and their arts offer, which is hugely important for the creative industries. In a sense, the new regulation acts as a further turn of the screw.

The University of East Anglia has suggested something that the DfE could do that is a relatively small change but could make a difference to finances: to drop the metric that separates Russell group applicants from other universities so that there is more of a level playing field and application interest is better shared across the university landscape. Many of the problems that have occurred are to non-Russell group universities. In very general terms, that is perhaps indicative of the conflict between the academic and the creative that is bedevilling education more widely. This would be in line with the egalitarian principles of the DfE’s lifelong learning policy. It would also fit with Robert Halfon’s assertion in his speech to the Higher Education Policy Institute’s annual conference on 22 June that universities should not exist to reinforce privilege. I ask that the Minister pass this suggestion to the DfE. It might well help save further cuts to creative courses.

On school education, the obstacle of the EBacc is rightly highlighted in this report, as is the current emphasis on STEM rather than STEAM in schools—although I note that careers advice is given rather more space. The fact remains, however, that the erosion of an arts education in schools is now an urgent matter. Why does it matter? It matters both to the arts in their own right and to the creative industries as a whole. One has only to think of our great designers in so many areas, as the noble Baroness, Lady Rebuck, pointed out, for whom an arts education was key.

Another question is how those who are to take up a T-level in a creative subject are to be enthused in the first place. If one considers the talent pipeline or training pathway most practically as a series of stages—one might almost say key stages—the Edge Foundation, with its particular interest in technical education, is entirely convinced of the importance of arts subjects in schools as a crucial stage along the way. It has to be art and design as well as design and technology, as well as other arts subjects. If the Minister doubts the urgency I refer to, I ask him to look at the new Art Now report, produced by the All-Party Group for Art, Craft and Design in Education, of which I am a vice-chair, which finds that 67% of teachers surveyed are thinking about leaving the profession, with well-being and workload cited as major reasons.

There is a case to be made that as technology changes, other new media can and should be introduced in schools, but, most usefully, this should be as part of an arts education. In drama in schools, for example, we should think not just about acting and directing but about lighting, sound, set design and digital input. All these technical jobs are much-needed skills in theatre and the performing arts in general, but it needs investment, and what hope is there at present for that additional investment in schools if we are not even reaching first base in our arts education offer? Private schools are streets ahead.

This report is called At Risk: Our Creative Future. Three things threaten our creative future. One is the erosion of our arts education, the importance of which I have just outlined and to which this report refers. The second is the huge fall over the past 13 years in public funding for the arts, which has clearly reached a crunch moment this year. The Arts Council’s grant in aid has shrunk by 47% in the past 15 years. Perhaps I should add that the most startling observation I have heard recently in this House was made by the noble Lord, Lord Razzall, in the recent local government debate when he observed that Stuttgart’s arts funding is

“greater than the whole of the Arts Council budget”.—[Official Report, 15/6/23; col. 2181.]

That is very much food for thought.

The arts are separate from the rest of the creative industries but, paradoxically, are their beating heart. Harm the arts and you harm everything, because of the dependency of the creative industries as a whole on the arts sector, which, as the great research project that it is, inherently needs the public investment that has been steadily removed in recent times. It should be emphasised too that the amount of money that should be afforded to the arts is a drop in the ocean in Treasury terms. Cuts are a political decision. Public funding of the arts has consciously not been addressed in this report but business cannot do everything.

Finally, the third major threat to the creative industries is Brexit, as the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, talked about. We have talked quite a bit in Parliament about music touring, but Brexit is affecting every part of the creative industries and we do not talk enough about that. I will give just one example: architecture. In a survey conducted this year, Dezeen found that 84% of the architecture studios surveyed

“would rejoin the EU if the option was available”,

with many citing

“higher construction costs, difficulties attracting European talent and additional administrative burdens”.

The founder of one Somerset-based studio that is now thinking of leaving the UK said:

“Brexit has been a catastrophe … The barriers are obvious but it is the cultural loss that is even greater. Architecture depends on cross-cultural exchange of ideas and benefits from free movement. It is staggering how diminished the UK scene has become post-Brexit”.


These are the challenges. The solutions are obvious—increasingly so in the case of Brexit—although it would take some political bravery to effect them. I hope that a Government do.

Arts and Creative Industries: Freelancers and Self-employed Workers

Earl of Clancarty Excerpts

Thursday 15th June 2023 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[The Earl of Clancarty]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what support they intend to give to freelancers and other self-employed workers in the arts and creative industries; and what assessment they have made of the case for a Commissioner for freelancers.

[The Earl of Clancarty (CB)]

My Lords, this is an interestingly timed debate, not least because of yesterday’s announcement of the Creative Industries Sector Vision, about which I will say something later on. As theatre critic Lyn Gardner said earlier this month in the Stage:

“It is time to make more noise, more usefully, to support freelance creatives”.


We have received some excellent, detailed briefings listing the many and varying concerns of freelancers. As the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society says,

“For a long time, freelancers have faced systemic challenges relating to their work. There are multiple areas where focused government engagement would improve the situation of UK freelancers”.


I will try to go through some of those concerns and I look forward to the contributions from all those who have signed up to this debate. However, I say now that we also need a much longer debate on the whole area of atypical work, which over the last few decades has become less atypical.

Although freelancers make up 15% of the workforce, they represent about 32% of the creative industries, rising to 70% for the visual arts and 70% for theatre, while 80% of musicians are freelancers. I declare an interest as a self-employed artist, while my wife is a journalist who has worked both as staff on newspapers and as a freelancer.

The Arts Council says that:

“Without talented artists, technicians, designers, curators, producers, writers and other practitioners, our buildings, fields, streets, shelves, walls would be sorely lacking in creativity and culture.”


Freelancers, particularly in the arts, have been described as the backbone of the landscape. This is a particularly apt metaphor, with its sense of the strength and necessity of the sector but also its vulnerability. The pandemic very much highlighted that, with many workers forced out of the sector—a terrible waste of skills—because of patchy support that the Government provided at the time. Equity says that 40% of members received no support from the Government’s self-employment income support scheme and 47% of artists missed out, while many musicians did not qualify for support. In the event, I hope that that mistake would not be made a second time.

A major argument in favour of the appointment of a freelance commissioner is the lack of good data about a workforce of a diverse nature. As ALCS says,

“a dedicated commissioner would help to relay expert information and feed into government policies that will impact this valuable proportion of the workforce”.

One of the clichés of the freelance world for the wider public has been the tacit acceptance of the trade-off between freedom and security. Yet, if the trend in all work is towards more flexible working arrangements, something that many workers are demanding, is that trade-off acceptable any more in the modern world? Freelancers have very few of the employment rights and protections that standard employees have. The Incorporated Society of Musicians and BECTU ask that shared parental leave and statutory sick pay are extended to the self-employed. BECTU asks that Section 44 of the Employment Rights Act 1996 be extended to strengthen protection for health and safety. Job sharing, term-time working, career breaks and sabbaticals are other areas that BECTU believes should be looked at. Without effective protection, there is the concern that bullying and harassment will remain unaddressed because of the imbalance of power between freelancer and client. ISM’s second Dignity at Work report found that 88% of self-employed musicians did not report the discrimination they suffered, even when this was sexual harassment, often for fear of losing work.

Another area of concern focuses on tax and benefits. I believe my noble friend Lord Colville will elucidate concerns around IR35. One area that the Government could address immediately is the universal credit minimum income floor, which shuts out many actors and others because of irregularity of payment. I tackled the DWP on this a year ago in a debate on the Social Security (Additional Payments) Bill. I now address it to DCMS, which perhaps might be able to convince the DWP of the importance of these concerns. Since then, new research by Equity and the University of Warwick demonstrates that, of nearly 700 members, 41% of those subject to the MIF had gone without food or utilities and 5% had had to leave their homes. Furthermore, many self-employed people have been excluded from the cost of living payments by the MIF.

As actor Julie Hesmondhalgh said in an interview with the Guardian last month when talking about having once put on plays by novices, including Rufus Norris, in a basement:

“That would not have been possible if we were living under the benefits system that exists today, that absolutely refuses to accept artists as having a ‘proper job’”.


Heidi Ashton of the University of Warwick says:

“In the past, people from working-class backgrounds relied on social security in the early stages of their careers … due to the precarious nature of freelance work. Without this safety net people without other financial means are either leaving the sector entirely or face losing their homes”.


There may never have been a golden age for freelancers, but the experience under UC contrasts significantly with the former, more flexible social security system. I personally remember how useful the original enterprise allowance scheme was. Equity is rightly calling for the abolition of the MIF, but we also need a fundamental, wide-ranging review of the way in which the current benefits system affects the self-employed.

Similar concerns affect all freelancers who may also experience downturns in pay or work opportunities, which may be temporary, such as the dearth of current opportunities for unscripted TV work. If skills are not to go to waste, we need to look more closely at how we can support freelancers under these conditions, rather than simply leaving it only to the marketplace.

Another hugely significant area is payment. Late payment is the bane of freelancers, affecting many working in different areas, from artists and musicians to journalists and others. Payment rates themselves are a huge concern. A recent survey by Industria finds that visual artists who worked on a freelance basis on projects in publicly funded galleries earned on average £2.60 an hour for their work, compared to a minimum wage of £10.42. Although shocking, this is not surprising when one considers the significant cuts to government investment in the arts that have taken place over a long period, inevitably reducing pay levels for freelancers in particular but of course meaning devastating under-financing of the hugely important subsidised arts sector. The past 15 years have seen the Arts Council’s grant in aid shrink in real terms by 47%. Between 2009 and 2019, local authorities have seen cuts to funding of 37%, meaning that the Arts Council has taken on responsibilities that it did not previously have.

I have yet to look at the new sector vision in detail, but we need a vision for the arts as well as the already commercialised end of the creative industries—they are not quite the same thing. It is good if extra money is being found to help save our grass-roots venues, but my first impression is that a large part of the arts—for instance, the visual arts—is left out of the plan. Part of the importance of the arts is that they inform the wider creative industries. Increasingly, there is a growing sense that arts production should be valued for its innate worth over its commercial potential—however welcome that is to the Treasury. That is something that the Minister might ponder while he listens to the London Symphony Orchestra performing Messiaen tonight.

Much of my plea so far has been for greater support of freelancers, but I also want to strike a cautionary note: support is not the same as uncritical promotion. ISM has drawn attention to the worryingly increasing casualisation of some sections of the creative workforce; for example, visiting music teachers, who are moved to zero-hour contracts. The threat to BBC musicians is another case in point. I firmly believe that the BBC Singers should remain as properly salaried employees of the BBC. There are a number of reasons for that, including, as my noble friend Lord Berkeley of Knighton has pointed out, the question of who retains artistic control—the independence of which, I argue, is most secure, as it has proved to be, in a publicly-funded organisation free of commercial or other external interests.

There is no clear channel for dialogue between freelancers and government. The Creative Industries Council contains no representation by unions or societies which advocate for individual artists or creatives. A freelance commissioner would help to bridge that gap.

There is much I have not covered in detail: Brexit’s curtailing of opportunities for musicians and others; the skills shortage; the huge importance of arts education for the next generation of practitioners; the effect of the ongoing closure of art spaces, including music venues, which one hopes this extra money will alleviate; the disappointing closure of the University of Brighton Centre for Contemporary Arts, which feels too much part of the narrative of the degrading of the arts in higher education; and the structure of the workforce itself in terms of class background and gender. I look forward to some of that detail being filled by other speakers.

Arts Council England: Regional Distribution of Funding

Earl of Clancarty Excerpts

Thursday 15th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Clancarty (CB)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Storey, for his excellent introduction to this debate and to the noble Lord, Lord McNally, for originally tabling it. I wanted particularly to speak in this debate rather than last week’s debate because it is helpful to have a debate which concentrates, at least in theory, just on the arts rather than them being grouped with the creative industries, although last week’s debate was clearly very helpful for this debate.

I strongly support the Arts Council model of funding for two reasons: first, because public funding of the arts is a benefit to us all for the whole of society; and, secondly, because to enable that there should be a properly independent body that can make decisions about to whom and where funding is to be awarded without government interference. I emphasise “where” because that will inevitably affect “whom”. Yet last Thursday, the day of the arts and creative industries debate in this House, Darren Henley made it very clear in oral evidence to the DCMS Select Committee that the Arts Council was not asked but instructed—he used the word “instruction”, as indeed has Nicholas Serota—by Nadine Dorries to shift a considerable amount of money from London to the regions, in my view breaking the arm’s-length principle and resulting in the controversial cuts we are seeing to certain organisations.

I will ask the Minister again the question that the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Hudnall, asked in last week’s debate but to which she did not receive a reply. Does he think it is appropriate that the Secretary of State should instruct an arm’s-length body? The unhealthy result of such interference and uncertainty about where responsibility lies is the open but extremely understandable lobbying, of not just the Arts Council but Parliament, the Government, the press and the public that we are now seeing from organisations which not only feel hard done by but that the decision-making process is being levered by government, and the two things may be connected.

It may be that the Minister, if he does answer this question, will say simply that the Arts Council is an arm’s-length body, but unfortunately that is not how it is currently being perceived, as I hope the Minister will acknowledge. This needs to be properly and constructively addressed by all the concerned parties. I make these points irrespective of the particular decisions that the Arts Council has made, although all of us, perhaps more than usual, will have our personal views on these decisions, and I will come to mine in a moment. Meanwhile, it is worth pointing out that we have a new Secretary of State and the instruction was made by a previous one. However, there should never have been such an instruction if the Arts Council is to remain an arm’s-length body.

We should not forget that these concerns are taking place against the backdrop of long-term cuts to the arts, the necessary help given in response to Covid notwithstanding. In the last 15 years, the Arts Council’s grant in aid has decreased in real terms by 47%. Through Brexit, we have lost the funding from Europe, and central government grants were cut by 37% in real terms between 2009-10 and 2019-20. Some councils do not now spend anything on the arts at all. It has been reported that some councils are on the verge of declaring bankruptcy. Now, of course, we have the added stress of energy costs and inflation.

Unfortunately, the arts are going to be a long way down the list of priorities for many councils, despite local authorities being vital to many of our arts organisations, including museums and regional theatres, which are particularly concerned about their day-to-day running costs. The noble Lord, Lord Bassam, pointed out in a previous debate the necessary expenditure of specialist lighting for museums and galleries—one instance of something that cannot be got round. Irrespective of where you stand on austerity, these long-term cuts need to be reversed. In the debate last week, the noble Lord, Lord Howarth of Newport, made this pertinent observation:

“Fiscal austerity for the arts is not needed to salvage our economy. The DCMS budget for the arts and culture is indiscernible in the national accounts.”—[Official Report, 8/12/22; col. 280.]


I have argued for a long time that we can do much more to support artists across the whole country, but that should be done through an equitable funding model based on increases in funding, not through redistribution of the kind that the former Secretary of State insisted upon, which is surely a coarsening of the envelope of funding available to the Arts Council. This has led inevitably to the “invidious choices”—the Arts Council’s own term—that it has felt it has had to make. If £43.5 million is being made available to the regions—which is very welcome—why are these cuts still being insisted upon?

There is another significant consideration: the growing concern that the Arts Council, in the absence of other funding, is trying to take on too wide a range of projects. In particular, there is concern that through the Let’s Create strategy, it is losing its focus on what should be its core project—the funding of artists and arts production by professional artists—and shifting that focus instead to amateur community projects, particularly in areas of the country where cultural engagement is low, as the Independent Society of Musicians has pointed out. There is absolutely a place for such projects, and they should be funded, but the funding of professional artists and arts organisations should not be sacrificed in their favour. It is notable that the cuts over which there is so much current concern are aimed at organisations involving or directly impacting on professional artists and their co-workers.

Much of the focus on these cuts has been, quite rightly, on classical music and opera, but theatre and the visual arts have also been impacted. Here, there are also potential knock-on effects in terms of the production of new art. The Hampstead and Gate Theatres in London and the Watermill Theatre in Newbury, which have all had their funding cut entirely, all support new writing. Hampstead Theatre has said that it will not now be able to support its new writers programme, so I ask the Minister whether new new writers programmes are intended to be set up elsewhere in the country. If so, how will they be supported in the longer term? The danger is that removing funding from these flagship theatres, as the Writers’ Guild and playwrights themselves point out, will simply lead to more risk-averse programming, less commissioning and less new writing everywhere.

There are cuts to significant London gallery spaces. The wonderful Camden Art Centre—I am looking forward to seeing the Forrest Bess exhibition there—and the Serpentine Galleries are nationally important spaces which put on international work by visual artists. If these spaces are diminished, the whole country will be diminished in terms of the visual arts.

There is an ecology of mutual support between London and the regions, the great danger then being that if you hurt the arts in London, you will also hurt artists and audiences for the arts in the regions. Cuts in London will have a nationwide impact, and this will be true in the business sense as well. As the Heart of London Business Alliance said in a letter to the Financial Times last month:

“Central London’s dynamic arts sector and rich culture and experiences make the West End such a unique and special place, bringing in millions of tourists every year. Many of these visitors go on to visit other parts of the UK contributing £641mn to local economies in 2019. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that short-changing London is going to make us all culturally and financially poorer while making the UK a less attractive destination for visitors.”


London is not just the place that has historically received the most money for the arts. It is also the country’s centre of business and the major centre of higher education for the arts; and the galleries, theatres and concert halls there belong to the country as much as to London. For things to change radically from the present asymmetry, which I do not dispute, we need the cuts to grants for local authorities to be dramatically reversed. But local government across the country should also have strong revenue-raising powers, as regional government has in Germany, where there is a much greater spread of arts geographically.

There are brilliant artists, arts organisations and events across the whole of this country, but even in the digital age, the natural tendency remains for artists to gravitate to the big, powerful cities; artists and arts-producing organisations should be funded wherever they are. The former Secretary of State’s artificial arts engineering is not in the long run going to change this tendency, even as it frustrates the arts. The way forward is rather to empower our English regions and regional cities politically and financially to allow artists to thrive within them, and to be able to do so in the longer term.

Music Education

Earl of Clancarty Excerpts

Wednesday 9th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Clancarty (CB)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Fleet, for the opportunity to speak in this debate. I welcome the Minister back to the arts brief and trust that the Department for Education will take careful note of everything said in this debate. I will talk about the plan but, as we have the Arts Minister in front of us, will also touch on arts funding. Indeed, both these concerns are closely related in terms of an ecology—as the noble Lords, Lord Black and Lord Berkeley, have talked about—and the value that we as a country ascribe to the arts, including music. My background is as a visual artist.

It is good that the plan has been a joint presentation between DCMS and the DfE. Some of us have argued for a long time that there should be greater communication between the two departments—long may that continue.

The plan has been welcomed on all sides. That is no mean feat. I congratulate the noble Baroness and her team on the expert panel on the hard work they have put in and on her comprehensive introduction. Much in the plan is admirable, such as the re-emphasis on school provision, including in early years, as has been mentioned, being clear what a music education should contain and the promotion of inclusivity, including children with special educational needs and disabilities. I also welcome what the noble Baroness said about teacher training in her speech.

Nevertheless, there are questions about how the stated goals can be delivered and the plan built on, including what it leaves out. I am grateful for the briefings we have received, but one in particular immediately caught my eye: that from the City of London concerning the views of the Guildhall School of Music & Drama. I was struck that, while supportive of the plan, it said:

“The School’s view is that it … has too great a focus on in-school provision, despite no further resource being offered to develop this provision.”


In a way, this is not far off the point of the Independent Society of Musicians that funding is a key concern, although the ISM welcomes, as I do, the emphasis on schools. My worry is that, if there is a lack of commitment to further funding, we will fall somewhere in between the focus on music hubs and the focus on schools. The fact that this plan is non-statutory will exacerbate this. What are the Government’s long-term plans for funding this plan, both in schools and hubs?

I was against music hubs when they started, but it would now certainly be a shame if creative partnerships were to be sacrificed and jobs lost. However, as things stand, schools are not required to engage with hubs. What happens with academies? For maintained schools, local authorities are a key partner. Hubs may vary considerably in size and composition, something which formal competition between hubs will no doubt point up. Music hubs were started to address the postcode lottery, but so far this has been only partially successful. In the end, the prime focus must be back on schools if, to adapt Bob and Roberta Smith’s dictum, all schools are to be music schools. The plan acknowledges this.

We need to explode once and for all the myth that the EBacc has had no significant effect on the arts. The Government are very much in the minority in their belief in this. For instance, a 2017 University of Sussex study found that almost 60% of the schools surveyed highlighted the EBacc as having a negative effect on the provision, while just 3% thought the opposite. The Education Policy Institute identified the EBacc and Progress 8 measures as central to the downturn in the number of entries to arts subjects at key stage 4 between 2007 and 2016. In its briefing, the ISM refers to the music critic Richard Morrison’s piece in the Times on the plan, in which he says these measures have

“skewed the curriculum disastrously against music.”

The EBacc is a major obstacle not only to the delivery of this plan but to the delivery of all arts in schools. It is an obstacle that should be removed, though the plan does not address it.

A further problem is oversight. This year, the Fabian Society and the Musicians’ Union, in their joint report following and inspired by the plan, suggest setting up a national music service, with a national co-ordinating body. This is itself inspired by the Welsh national plan for music education and would be stronger than a board. A strong emphasis would be on music teachers, with good pay and conditions being crucial to delivery. Another significant aspect for which the service would be responsible is data gathering from music hubs, which is fragmentary and flawed currently. The arts premium should also be reintroduced. I support such initiatives, which would clearly aid delivery of the plan.

I turn to the question of arts funding more generally. Yesterday, I attended a remarkable presentation by Ireland’s Minister for the Arts, Catherine Martin, at the Performers’ Alliance All-Party Group meeting. She told us about her basic income for artists pilot scheme, which will last three years and cost €25 million. This scheme would cover hundreds of artists working in a variety of media, including music, the visual arts and literature, but what is particularly admirable is that it would not be assessed on outcomes other than how much it is deemed to have helped the artist concerned. I hope Ireland takes this further. The UK can learn something from this approach, which is about believing in the artist for the work they do and believing in the value of the arts.

There is a contrast here with what has happened to the Arts Council settlement in the last couple of weeks. The regions should receive more funding from the settlement, but I for one do not believe in levelling up if it means robbing Peter to pay Paul. As noble Lords have already mentioned, that is happening in London and elsewhere. The term “levelling up” says nothing about the size of the pot, which is certainly diminishing for artists and arts organisations in favour of community and other projects. There has been a lot of concern expressed in the press about these cuts, and with justification.

Instead, as a strategy for growth across the country and an incredibly cheap one, we should be investing more money in the arts, not less. I say this in the belief that, as others have pointed out, austerity is a political choice, not an economic necessity. The Government have not really grasped that the arts and creative industries are, or should be considered, a crucial part of the future economy of this country. That same argument can and should be applied to the arts in schools, including music, because it is from schools that the talent pipeline starts and the future emerges.