Covid-19: Orchestras and Cultural Venues

Lord Mandelson Excerpts

Wednesday 1st July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran]

The noble Lord is absolutely right to highlight the importance and variety of our cultural heritage. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State has been absolutely clear that the Government will continue to take action that is commensurate with the scale of the crisis at the time that action is needed.

[Lord Mandelson (Lab) [V]]

I declare my interest as chair of the Design Museum in its new premises in the former Commonwealth Institute building in Kensington. Perhaps I may acknowledge the emergency short-term help that has been offered by the Government to national portfolio organisations, but this amounts to £90 million spread over 800 cultural organisations, and therefore inevitably it is being spread very thinly. I would remind the Minister that, extraordinarily, after the Second World War, at a time of huge deprivation and austerity, the Arts Council was created with cross-party backing under the leadership of Maynard Keynes to deliver major co-ordinated support for the performing arts, museums and other cultural venues. Now that these entities are once again facing the extreme financial consequences of forced closure and further restrictions as a result of Covid-19, will the Government mount a similarly extraordinary and co-ordinated long-term response to sustain their existence?

[Baroness Barran]

The Government understand the hybrid nature of the way the arts sector is funded in this country and are keen to encourage funding from many different directions. The noble Lord asked about the scale of ambition. He will be aware that the Secretary of State has set up the Cultural Renewal Taskforce, which includes a range of leading thinkers and experts in this field. Its report will be very important to influencing the scale of our ambition.

Covid-19: Museums, Galleries and Historic Buildings

Lord Mandelson Excerpts

Thursday 21st May 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mandelson (Lab)]

My Lords, I chair the trustees of the Design Museum, which opened in 2017 in the iconic former Commonwealth Institute building. There is no other design museum like it in the world, with its exhibitions and its learning and entrepreneurial programmes, which are inspiring a whole new generation to forge their professional careers in arts and science in order to design a better world.

Design is Britain’s great competitive advantage, so I say to the Government: please do not just support the venerable publicly funded institutions, with their endowments and reserves, through this crisis, at the expense of the new. You also need to support the independent and hitherto privately funded entities, which the lockdown is depriving of all their revenue and pushing towards a precipice. If the Government fail in this responsibility, museums such as the Design Museum will go under because they do not have a big enough financial cushion to fall back on. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s reassurance.