Local Government: Funding

Earl of Clancarty Excerpts

Monday 27th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

The English Devolution White Paper sits at the heart of the reform we want, and that will involve both funding and money. I understand the pressure for urgent reform of council tax, but we have to be committed to keeping taxes on working people as low as possible. It is for local authorities to decide where they set their council tax. The Government will consider longer-term options to improve council tax billing and all those things, but council tax is a well-understood tax and it has very high collection rates. In terms of business rates, we published a discussion paper, Transforming Business Rates, which set out the priority areas for reform. We have had very good engagement on that and we will publish our update in due course.

[The Earl of Clancarty (CB)]

My Lords, what guarantee can the Minister give that the most locally funded arts and cultural services—including libraries—such as at district council level, will not be further lost in this reorganisation, against a background where, it has to be said, cuts to such services are continuing in many localities?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

As the noble Earl said, arts and leisure services took an absolute bashing as local government funding was successively cut over recent years. The purpose of devolution is to put control for that back into local hands and to make sure that more of the money spent in Westminster gets spent in the local areas to protect the services that people really care about and feel are important to them. I hope that will include those key leisure, arts and cultural services that make life around this country so rich and wonderful.

National Insurance: Employer Contributions

Earl of Clancarty Excerpts

Thursday 9th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I am always very happy to meet colleagues from NALC and have done so several times in the past, as the noble Baroness knows. The issue here is that parish and town councils have not traditionally been funded in the same way. It is for upper tier councils to decide. We have provided additional funding for upper tier councils. The local government funding settlement saw a 3.7% real-terms increase in funding. If upper tier councils choose to provide that funding, they are able to do so, but local councils also have the ability to precept, as she will know.

[The Earl of Clancarty (CB)]

My Lords, in the arts, already struggling theatres and museums are among those affected by these changes. What consideration has been given to mitigate this effect in the arts sector as a whole?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

The noble Earl raises a key point. We have looked very carefully at charities and the voluntary sector. Many arts organisations have charitable status and there has been significant support in the tax incentives for charities. In fact, charities receive a better tax incentive in this country than in most other European countries. I know that it is not ideal and, as I say, it is not a decision we wanted to take. Unfortunately, the financial situation left to us by the last Government meant that we had to take it.

European Union

Earl of Clancarty Excerpts

Monday 7th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

I will take the proposal back to the department.

[The Earl of Clancarty (CB)]

My Lords, the Minister should agree that in the cultural area the UK should have much closer relations with the EU. Although the language has changed, we have not yet seen any action at all to address the specific concerns of the arts and creative industries. When will that happen? Every passing week represents lost opportunities and revenues for many artists and creatives who continue to face huge difficulties in Europe.

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

There is a genuine commitment and determination from the Government to address this. I thank the noble Earl for his question on this point.

Spending Commitments to Local Councils

Earl of Clancarty Excerpts

Monday 22nd July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

Under the previous Government, 19 councils needed to seek additional support from the Government to balance their budgets for this year. This Government are committed to ensuring councils have the resources needed to provide those public services. We are already working closely with local government and other departments to understand the specific demand and cost pressures facing them. We urge any council experiencing financial difficulties to approach the department as early as possible so we can help work through a plan to resolve them.

[The Earl of Clancarty (CB)]

My Lords, councils have many demands placed on them, but a test of how effective the Government will be is whether they can reverse the cuts to cultural and leisure activities, including libraries. This is for the simple reason that they have usually been the first services to be cut.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

The noble Lord is a great champion of libraries, culture and arts in this Chamber. The severe pressure that local authority funding has come under in recent years has had a particular impact there. We will want to look closely at whether we can help alleviate those pressures. Libraries provide such a fantastic resource for our communities, as do the leisure facilities that local authorities provide.

Local Government Finances

Earl of Clancarty Excerpts

Thursday 21st March 2024 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Clancarty (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, for the opportunity to speak in this debate. Like my noble friend Lady Bull, I will talk about the arts and cultural services.

A good place to start is by quoting the briefing that the Local Government Association provided for the debate in this House on the arts in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Bragg, on 1 February:

“Councils have a key role to play—they are the biggest public funders of culture, spending over £lbn a year and running a wide range of other services. They are also place shapers and have a convening and supporting role in setting the context in which the arts can flourish. The arts are discretionary, but councils invest because they see the value to local people”.


One could of course add, “when they have the funding to do so”. The quote is valuable because it describes the intricacy of the relationship between the arts and the local community. On the one hand, the arts are a good in themselves in many different ways—they are something that local people can take pride in, and they may have a national or international reputation—but, on the other, the arts are also inextricably bound up in the identity of a local area. They are or can be a part of the character of that community.

How should all these varied arts be funded? I believe they should continue to be funded primarily through local government funding. That is still the most efficient and comprehensive means by which we can fund the day-to-day activities of the arts and other cultural services: efficient because local governments are the experts in their areas, and comprehensive because every area of the country is covered by local government and therefore much better at levelling up than the patchiness of the levelling up fund, whose purpose in any case ought to be properly understood as additional to the core funding of local government.

The great tragedy of the last 14 years is that, not only for the arts, we have seen at least a partial dismantling of this inherently efficient and comprehensive system. The specific point about the arts in relation to the funding cuts, as the noble Lord, Lord Hall of Birkenhead, pointed out recently when interviewed by the Observer on these cuts, is that they have been a “canary in the mine”. The noble Lord said:

“What we learn in Birmingham will soon matter across the country”,


and we are seeing that in Hampshire, Nottinghamshire and many other councils. It is the arts and other cultural services such as libraries, community and leisure activities that have been the first to feel the effect of long-term cuts. Indeed, around seven years ago Nicholas Serota made the point that the biggest crisis in the arts was in local government funding. It was seven years ago too that we had a debate in this House on local government funding and the arts—for which the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, did the summing up for the Liberal Democrats—which was in effect a warning sign to the Government that, bleak as the picture was then, it was going to get bleaker unless the matter was addressed. As we know, it has not been addressed, with a cliff edge having been reached in some cases.

The Government have had all the warning signs, but the Secretary of State for DCMS, Lucy Frazer, recently gave an interview for the Stage in which she said:

“It’s disappointing when local authorities make decisions to cut the arts”.


What is of course far more disappointing is the refusal by this Government to take responsibility for a situation for which they are ultimately responsible. The evidence is in front of them: it is not about well-managed authorities or otherwise. It is always possible to pick out councils that can be understood as examples of good practice—or in some cases good fortune, as recipients of the levelling up fund—but that does not describe the overarching narrative across the country of decreasing funds and the cutting of services, and of the irreparable loss of infrastructure, including buildings, as others have referred to. It is this that Lucy Frazer and the rest of her Government refuse to acknowledge.

I applaud the Government for giving the arts and the creative industries such a prominent position in the Budget, and one hopes that prominence will continue. However, theatres, museums and orchestras will have a sense of relief, more than anything, that tax relief, which was originally increased to counter the effect of Covid on the arts, has been set permanently at a higher rate. That shows perhaps more than anything how much some organisations that have normally depended on local government funding have come to depend on what was originally a temporary measure.

Staying with the Budget, capital projects are welcomed and will not be turned down, but what the arts really need is that basic help with day-to-day funding for which local government has been key. As a colleague pointed out to me earlier in the week, the Budget is not a spending review.

I will touch on one other area, the nature of the arts themselves. It is impossible in this discussion not to bring in funding streams other than local government, such as the Arts Council, which has started to fund through the Let’s Create strategy much that would once have been funded by local government, such as community arts projects, side by side with professional arts and arts facilities. For a long time my worry has been where this leaves professional artists and performers. Both community arts and professional arts are important, but there is an increasing danger that the professional arts are being shut out. That needs to be addressed because it is happening due to local government cuts.

It has become clear that we do not have a strategy for the arts that includes local government funding. We need more joined-up thinking, including between DCMS and the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. On funding of the arts overall, we are still moving in the wrong direction. I understand that the Arts Council has been asked how it can now make further savings of 5%. This makes no sense. As the LGA says:

“Public funding is an essential part of the ecology of the arts and culture in the UK”.


The Arts Council found that in 2020, for every £1 generated in the arts and culture, an additional £1.23 gross value was generated in the wider economy. Our arts and creative industries are the growth area in this country. They stimulate growth, as my noble friend Lady Bull pointed out. It is high time we reinvested in them, not least at the hugely significant local government level.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Earl of Clancarty Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 18th May 2023 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Clancarty (CB)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 387 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Randall of Uxbridge.

This is not an area I usually speak on, and I apologise for not having spoken at Second Reading. I am prompted to speak for two reasons. The first is that I live in a national park—which is not so unusual, given that national parks account for 10% of the land in England; many colleagues will live in or near national parks. The second prompt was the very concerned letter that Trevor Beattie, CEO of the South Downs National Park—the newest national park, where I live—wrote to the Guardian in November last year, following the reporting of the 40% cut in real terms in government funding to England’s national parks in the last 10 years. I found this quite shocking, particularly considering current environmental concerns, and I asked an Oral Question on this back in January.

On the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Randall of Uxbridge, I am grateful for the helpful briefings from National Parks England and the Campaign for National Parks. I thank Trevor Beattie, South Downs chair Vanessa Rowlands and the rest of their excellent team for the morning I spent in Midhurst last week hearing about the work they do, as well as their ambitions for the future. I very much stress “ambition”. Other noble Lords have provided the technical detail but my argument is really a simple one of principle, or ambition, being turned to practical effect. If we believe that the national parks and other protected spaces are to be considered key resources in the fight against climate change and for nature recovery—not just conservation but recovery and biodiversity—they should be given as many tools as is required to be as effective as possible in these significant and urgent ambitions. Certainly, from my visit to Midhurst there is no doubting the expertise and dynamism of those who work for the parks, and these are measures that they would like to see in place and on a firm legislative footing.

It is clear that we live in a world now with quite different perceptions about nature and our relationship to it than the one that existed when the national parks were set up in 1949, when neither climate change nor biodiversity were concerns, let alone truly urgent ones, and the public have certainly become more aware of the issues and the need address them. The parks ought then to be afforded the legal powers commensurate with our modern understanding of the issues involved. National parks are special places. Almost 30% of the area of national parks is recognised as internationally important for wildlife.

Having said that, it is true of course that the fight against climate change and for nature recovery is a global one without any respect for borders, particularly in the case of climate change. One of the important phrases I heard last week was “permeability”, the importance of the borders and parks being permeable—that people, particularly children from all backgrounds, be encouraged to come into the parks. Another was “taking nature to your doorstep”, which links with what the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, was saying: that outside a park, there is movement in both directions because nature, or indeed environmental concerns, as I said, do not stop at the borders of the park. It seems that all this is about the NPAs having a strong voice that resonates both inside and outside their boundaries. Of course, access is not just about enjoying the parks for their own sake or in the interest of well-being, important though these aspects are. There is an immense educational value here too that needs to be tapped. So, maximising access to protected landscapes should play a significant role in levelling up.

UK Community Renewal Fund

Earl of Clancarty Excerpts

Wednesday 8th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

The UK community renewal fund will ultimately be financed by the taxpayer, although it is the successor to the EU structural funds. It is important to test things out with the community renewal fund, so that we get it right when we introduce the shared prosperity fund, which will be worth over £2.6 billion over the next three years.

[The Earl of Clancarty (CB)]

My Lords, I worry that the Government are not addressing what community renewal means in its wider, profounder sense. This funding, welcome as it is to those who receive it, is taking place against the reality of councils, particularly in deprived areas, that are so starved of money that they are contemplating selling off important community assets such as theatres and children’s centres. Will the Government look more carefully at the meaning of community, rather than seeing it solely as new build and private enterprise?

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

I should probably declare my commercial interests before I answer the question. The reality is that local government has had a pretty generous settlement. The core spending power has increased.

Business and Planning Act 2020 (Pavement Licences) (Coronavirus) (Amendment) Regulations 2021

Earl of Clancarty Excerpts

Thursday 8th July 2021 Grand Committee

[The Earl of Clancarty (CB)]

My Lords, last year in the debate on this in this House, I said that I was very much in favour of this measure, and I am in favour again of a year’s extension, not only for the businesses themselves but because extending bars and restaurants on to the street, even if temporarily, generally represents an enhancement of our public space by increasing the sharing of public space. In a sense, it is good for the vitality of our high streets.

However, although the measure clearly is good for the businesses concerned, particularly during the pandemic, as is the intention of the regulations, the question must be: how have communities reacted as a whole, including non-smokers and the disabled? Have the Government made a formal overall assessment of the effect of this measure? Will they do so? The local authorities are making these decisions, but these are two separate things.

I am in favour of the shared space principle which hovers in the background of this. It is not directly a debate on shared space but I miss the wisdom of Hans Monderman, who died too young at the age of 62, 13 years ago. Others have carried his work forward, but it would be interesting to know how he would have dealt with today’s concerns of the blind and partially sighted in this and other instances. His guiding principle was negotiation between users in the space itself, which of course makes the solution to the organisation of space particularly challenging when some users cannot rely on visual clues. A shared space is not properly a shared space unless it can be shared by all. The space that a blind person has been used to will get altered at certain times if part of a pavement is used by, for example, a bar or restaurant. It will then be important for that space used to be geographically predictable on a day-to-day basis, the territory precisely marked out, to a few inches at the most. It is not just about there being enough space for all pedestrians, including the disabled, to negotiate or navigate without having to walk into the road.

I made a suggestion to the Minister last year, to which he was receptive, that areas could be marked in their corners by fairly sturdy objects such as square plant boxes, and I am glad to see that this has been included in the guidance. The predictability of these spaces on a day-to-day basis will be respectful to use of the whole space for all pedestrians. Councils have gone further, pedestrianising some streets, at least on a temporary basis, to allow greater pavement space for businesses, but here, too, there must be clearly understood and reproducible routes for pedestrians. This might mean a route between one obstacle of one business and an obstacle of another when there is no obvious edge of a footway. Do the Government intend to update the guidance? I am not sure that some of these points are emphasised enough in the current guidance.

Devolution in England

Earl of Clancarty Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, I will write to the noble Baroness on the latest update on progress on that front.

[The Earl of Clancarty (CB) [V]]

My Lords, this is understood as a political and economic matter, as we have heard, but does the Minister agree that there is a significant cultural dimension, not least because our various institutions are seen as a devolutionary tool, moving the Lords being just the latest idea? Should not the regions be enabled to build on their own culture, which will happen in the fullest sense only if our cities and regions have real power and are represented at the national level, rather than being subjected to a form of London colonialism?

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, I recognise the importance of enabling local leadership to drive forward the cultural agenda of particular places and I am sure that that will be discussed more fully in the forthcoming White Paper.

Planning Rules

Earl of Clancarty Excerpts

Tuesday 28th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenhalgh]

My Lords, I point out that the National Planning Policy Framework is clear that local planning authorities are expected to identify all types of housing, including the housing outlined by the noble Baroness.

[The Earl of Clancarty (CB) [V]]

My Lords, what guarantees can the Minister give that we will not lose to commercial development buildings used, or empty buildings that might be used, for arts and cultural purposes at a time when those activities are extremely vulnerable? That is so important for communities and the country.

[Lord Greenhalgh]

My Lords, certain uses—such as theatres, pubs and other venues—are protected in the planning rules. This will continue to ensure that we have entirely the sorts of uses that the noble Lord is seeking to protect.