Arts: Funding

Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville Excerpts

Thursday 3rd February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville]

My Lords, I declare an interest, as stated in the register, which is that I have been for 15 years the president of the British Art Market Federation. I look forward to both maiden speeches and wish the maiden speakers well.

The three most vivid indices of the debt that your Lordships’ House owes to the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, so early in his time in your Lordships’ House, are: first, that we have been given an extra half hour; secondly, that we have been deluged by briefing from within and without; and, thirdly, that our own Library, at 10.30 this morning, had run out of its own composite briefing, which is a compliment to it, too. I congratulate the noble Earl on his speech, which has set the tone for the debate.

There is a mood of ululation about. After an overexcess of public spending, there was always going to be a hangover, although it was sad that the Treasury reverse alchemists should have believed that they had found the elixir that eliminated bust from boom. At this time we are in a mire where all the sources of financial support for the arts, save two, are in retreat. Although there is, of course, interaction between some of the financial sources, which aggravates the decline, this debate will be the better if we look forward rather than back.

I propose to run through the various financial sources via the briefing that we have received, although in no particular order. We shall not know how severe the local authorities’ decline will be precisely until the local government elections in May, but the Performers Alliance has given us an harbinger foretaste, triggered, of course, by the decline in local government central funding. Arts & Business told us last year that all sectors of private support were down from the year before except trusts and foundations. We must hold our breath to see how that element develops hereafter. The sensible qualitative briefing by the Corporation of London warned that changing the culture of private philanthropy—the American version is always quoted—is not simply a matter of turning a switch. As this is the Secretary of State’s preferred option, we must hope that his confidence in metaphorically placing his chips on the number 31, which is of course the highest prime number on a roulette board, pays off before his credit runs out. However, the City of London Corporation’s cautionary advice is prudent, and private support in the mean time is not the best bet to fill a revenue gap.

The Arts Council briefing, coming after its excellent booklet, Achieving Great Art for Everyone, is greatly to be commended for repeating its advice that any applicant for funds—and, admirably, that every hungry mouth must apply if it wishes to receive money—must show that they are contributing to at least two of the council’s five goals, as adumbrated in the booklet. Nor does the council disguise the scale of the revenue gap and the consequent disappointments that will be felt—a matter that is being sensitively and intelligently handled.

However, greater clarity and illumination are needed in the degree of meeting of minds between the Arts Council and the department on how they each see, on the one hand, the difference between administrative and operating costs and, on the other, the difference within private sector funding between sponsorship and donations. Words are cheap; misunderstanding is expensive.

Where the Arts Council deserves praise and support is in its intentions towards the lottery as a financial support, which is the second source of funds that is increasing. In Dame Liz Forgan’s garden, the rose called additionality is being guarded and fertilised and the grants for the arts programme—the GAP—will be one acronymic gap less in hazard, in consequence.

Where the Arts Council has been handed a hot potato is on the proposal to replace the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council and to provide less funding. We shall not know the exact dimensions of the challenge and of the concordat between the council and the department until such sentences as,

“At a broad level we believe this new alliance will for libraries mean a closer alignment of libraries’ cultural role with other aspects of the offer, allowing us to take a holistic view of cultural provision in localities”,

are turned into English. Bears of little brain, such as me, reckon that the ice is thin when the language becomes complex. The great Lord Goodman, at the end of his life, regretted the arm’s-length principle, but less brainy bears regard it and the additionality principle as insurance policies. We may also miss the MLA in its sounding-off role as a commentator on the national scene, as the City of London’s briefing averred.

Finally, we have no direct briefing on ticket sales. Like children, we must hope that the goose that lays the golden egg is not force fed by institutional management, or we shall be still worse off. Those who eat foie gras should not be treated as geese themselves. Where there is doubt as to whether it is the department or the Arts Council that has taken a particular unpopular decision, it is best if the arm’s-length principle is not used to obfuscate and if intellectual honesty prevails.