Arts: Impact of Brexit

Earl of Sandwich Excerpts

Thursday 11th October 2018 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Sandwich (CB)]

My Lords, there is a lot of artistic talent around this House. We are all grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Bragg, as one of our leading practitioners, for introducing this debate, which persuades me that the evidence is overwhelming that we will lose money from Brexit, especially from the arts.

Arts and culture are, as all of us know, critical to our society and our economy, and their contribution is inestimable. Yet they are viewed by some as somehow additional and expendable. They are therefore always vulnerable to sudden change, whether to loss of funding, local authority cuts, or to the menace of Brexit in all its forms. Most arts projects routinely have to struggle to find money these days both for capital and for running costs.

At this point I pay a very brief tribute to the city of Dundee and all the other backers of the new V&A museum there, including government. My wife and I visited it last month. It is spectacular architecture in a compelling setting on Tayside—indeed, a tribute to the city’s industrial past—and it is attracting thousands of visitors, showing that even during austerity there are people who can stand up for the arts and ensure that it receives proper funding.

On the crucial question of free movement, the noble Lord, Lord Bragg, and others have already mentioned the ICM poll that showed that nearly two out of three of our arts organisations currently work inside the European Union. Nearly half of those need regularly to move equipment and objects between the UK and the EU and they say that artists need to work at short notice in either jurisdiction. In the case of dance organisations, more than half employ EU nationals. Film companies expressed their concern this week. One company, Framestore, said that it would have to pay £3,000 per person, including legal fees, to obtain visas for its 300 European staff. Many speakers have already mentioned the position of the lower paid.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Hooper, said, our own home affairs sub-committee reported on the movement of artists post Brexit. I stress its repeated conclusion that the Government,

“pursue preferential arrangements for UK-EU migration”.

I am confident that this Minister appreciates this, but I am not sure that it fits into the PM’s latest announcements on migration or the recommendations of the Migration Advisory Committee. She well knows, however, that our culture is a European culture and most of us cannot conceive of a new offshore world that ignores this obvious fact.

The Arts Council has outlined the general problem of Brexit, referring to negative feelings and the economic uncertainty arising from the referendum, but we do not need to demonstrate the consequences of Brexit—some of us feel it in our bones. I have to express the emotional side as well. I was brought up to enjoy and experience literature, music, opera, theatre and dance originating in Europe. In my own career, after studying languages I trained with Piper Verlag in Munich and Gallimard. At the time of the first referendum I spent a year co-founding a journal called the European Gazette, which summarised the European press.

When I heard the second referendum result I immediately emailed friends in France, Belgium and Germany—most of them in fact involved in the arts—to apologise for the appalling so-called democratic decision that was actually advisory, not binding on government, and in any case was based on several false alarms about migration and the NHS. I was sorry that we had not remained as one of the EU’s architects to reshape the Union and that, worst of all, we were going to suffer considerable losses from our close association with fellow members. As far as my friends and I are concerned, we were part of Europe and our separation is retrograde. All these friends appreciate the value of European arts and culture and the huge advances made over centuries in common interpretation and exchange of experience. The Minister may say that these will remain, but he must accept that Brexit, if it ever comes to pass, could be an earthquake as far as funding and scholarship are concerned.

What will continue, of course, are the landmark occasions. I have been lucky, like many others, to hear Simon Rattle conducting Mahler in Berlin and to visit the great museums in Vienna and Amsterdam, and these things should not be affected. What may not survive is the experimentation, the work of younger artists, the regional theatres and other smaller-scale projects which have benefited from European exchanges or funding.

I will stray briefly into culture and heritage, because my wife was on the HLF for the south-west and I was once on the ITV “Telethon” in Plymouth. Through this, I came to understand the importance of local identity and pride in local buildings as well as arts projects in the West Country. There are some magnificent examples of regeneration through these funds and through EU regional funds. More recently, European regional funding has helped my son with the conversion of a 17th century coach-house as a venue for weddings and arts events. All these projects might not or would not have happened without the EU, yet they bring huge advantages to the national and local economy. There is little sign that the HLF or Historic England are going to make up the shortfall—rather the reverse. The Minister may argue that the UK will get its money back, but can he say today that more money will flow into the arts and culture? Of course he cannot, but I wish he would.