Local Arts and Cultural Services

Lord Cashman Excerpts

Thursday 30th March 2017 Grand Committee

[Lord Cashman (Lab)]

My Lords, I refer your Lordships to my registered interests. We are discussing extremely important issues that go to the heart of our communities. I sincerely thank the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, for not only securing this debate but also his brilliant opening submission. I reiterate that we are discussing the steps that the Government intend to take or are taking to protect and improve local arts and cultural services, including museums, libraries and archaeological services. As we have heard, such services are always under threat, especially when local authorities are faced with diminishing budgets, not least from central government and as already outlined by the noble Earl.

Local authorities face very real and difficult choices, for instance when funding the increasing demands for social care services, but I would argue that it must not be one or the other; it should be both. What is the quality of life if it is devoid and deprived of culture, arts, libraries, museums and archaeology—the very things that open our minds and give us reasons to learn and live? Yet this is exactly what some local authorities and funders are having to face: difficult choices, creating a concept of basic services that will be supported and others which will not. I do not accept that concept. Indeed, my own life and life chances were enhanced in my very poor, impoverished community in the East End of London in the late 1950s and 1960s precisely because schools and local authorities believed that lives would be improved by exposure to and familiarity with the arts. I want these chances and experiences to reach beyond my generation and to be accessed by all.

I wish to refer to evidence given by the actors’ union Equity and to concerns expressed among visitor organisations. Equity expressed concern to your Lordships’ Select Committee about cuts in public funding of the arts through Arts Council England and local authorities, as this impacts on theatres that no longer produce their own productions, with a subsequent loss to the local economy and talent pools. It called on the Secretary of State to provide leadership on this and give local authorities direction on how to tackle these difficult funding issues.

Smaller, local authority museums and civic collections are deeply concerned that they are at the mercy of local authority cuts. They say that the decisions by some local authorities to place their collections into independent trusts may work in some circumstances but not all, and that it requires ongoing investment. Finally, a case in point is Birmingham City Council, which placed the stunning Birmingham Museums and its galleries into a trust but will not commit to providing core funding beyond this year. There is a very good argument to make that such collections, along with others, should be re-designated as national collections—like Liverpool’s—and therefore that the DCMS and Arts Council England should become responsible for them. Will the Government adopt such a model nationally?