Funding for the Arts

Debate between Lord Vaizey of Didcot and Kelvin Hopkins

Tuesday 13th September 2016 Westminster Hall

[Mr Vaizey]

I am glad to have the support of the Scottish National party on that issue, as I do on so many others. It is worth pointing out, with the very distinguished spokesman for the SNP, the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (John Nicolson), here, that broadly speaking I will be talking about funding in England. No doubt the SNP spokesman can talk about funding in Scotland and he will tell a great tale that the Minister will rightly treat with some scepticism; he will point out that the Scottish story is not as great as the SNP would make out.

Anyway, back to England. I was lucky enough to serve as the Minister responsible for the arts for six years, until I left the Government in July. I warmly welcome the new Minister to his position and want to tell him that he need have no worry about my being a backseat driver. I am not planning to leave Parliament to give him the space that he needs to develop his position, but I am certainly not planning to second-guess what he does in his new role. I know already how talented he is, but those of us who leave Government perhaps not of our own accord do not have the chance to make a resignation speech, so perhaps I can treat this motion as a review of some of the things that I did as an Arts Minister and explain why I think there is an opportunity to increase Government funding for the arts.

The arts in England in particular, but also in the UK as a whole, have always relied on what is known as the mixed economy. We are relatively unique and very lucky, in that our arts organisations depend not just on straight Government funding but also, obviously, on their income and on philanthropy. In the last six years, we as a Government worked hard to encourage philanthropy, and arts and heritage organisations responded in kind and raised a great deal of money. Schemes such as Catalyst, which introduced match funding, enabled them to raise additional money from private donors.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

I will just point out to the right hon. Gentleman that the level of public funding for the arts in Britain is lower than that in most continental European countries and below the European average. I think the Government ought to look at that.

[Mr Vaizey]

I will take that point when I come to address the levels of actual Government funding. I was talking about the mixed economy and pointing out that arts and heritage organisations have responded brilliantly, by not only raising private money from donors, but raising what is in effect commercial income from ticket sales, sponsorship and the like. In fact, for most successful arts and heritage organisations, Government funding is only a small proportion of their overall funding. Having said that, I believe that Government funding is vital. It is vital in providing core funding support for many of our most popular and successful arts organisations, as well as smaller arts organisations all over England. It is also vital in attracting additional money. A grant from the Government, Arts Council England or the Heritage Lottery Fund is a great vote of confidence that ends up acting as a catalyst for attracting private sponsorship and commercial funding as well.

We are very lucky in this country to have not only the mixed economy, but very talented arts and heritage leaders. I pay tribute to the people I worked with at the Arts Council: people such as Liz Forgan and Peter Bazalgette as chairmen of the Arts Council and Alan Davey and Darren Henley as chief executives. I am incredibly pleased to see that Sir Nicholas Serota is taking over from Peter Bazalgette as the new chairman of the Arts Council. Again, that is a great vote of confidence in the condition of the arts today.

When we came into government, we did have to impose cuts on the Arts Council, but in my view those cuts were misinterpreted. We kept to a minimum the cuts in money that actually went to arts organisations through grant in aid. We did stop some very expensive programmes and reduce the overall bureaucracy of the Arts Council, but the money going to arts organisations was reduced by far less. The amount of money going to arts organisations through the national lottery was increased significantly, by hundreds of millions of pounds.

It is also worth pointing out that in the last couple of years the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Mr Osborne), began to introduce tax breaks for arts organisations. I understand that the theatre tax break, for example, is now worth some £25 million to theatres in England. The orchestra tax break, which is just coming into play, will no doubt have a similar impact, and I know that the Government are taking forward plans for an exhibitions tax break as well.

Nevertheless, there have been cuts. The point I wanted to make was that the arts organisations that have had to deal with those funding reductions—as with many other sectors, covering every part of Government, that have had to deal with funding reductions—have responded brilliantly.

In my opinion, the heritage industry has perhaps been treated rather worse, because it suffered cuts under the last Labour Government and we did not protect it additionally when we came into office. The overall grant for English Heritage, now known as Historic England, has been significantly reduced, curtailing its ability to carry out vital heritage regulation. Nevertheless, the new model that the Government have put in place, putting the historic buildings and monuments that English Heritage was responsible for into a separate charity, along with a very generous capital endowment, will make a big difference. I pay tribute to people such as Simon Thurley, who led English Heritage for much of my time as a Minister, and to the current chairman, Laurie Magnus, who has done a brilliant job in making that split happen and providing a confident future for heritage.

Nevertheless, heritage funding is not as high as it could be. There have been individual programmes that have made a difference. As a Minister, I tried to go to the then Chancellor with individual programmes to draw in additional funding and I was successful—for example, with the capital programme for cathedrals. I should say, of course, that heritage did benefit from, again, a significant uplift in lottery funding, which has made a massive difference, because obviously heritage projects require a lot of capital funding in order to fund improvements.

Then we come to our wonderful national museums. They are national, serving all parts of the United Kingdom, but they, too, have seen a significant reduction in funding, while all the time maintaining free access to the national collections. Again, they have responded magnificently. I cannot think of a set of national museums anywhere in the world that have the prestige that ours do. They have seen their visitor numbers increase successfully. Take a museum such as the British Museum or Tate. These are world-leading museums, attracting millions of visitors every year and highly regarded throughout the world. It would take too long to list all the incredibly distinguished directors whom I was lucky enough to work with, many of whom continue to run our national museums, but again, if people want to see an example of a sector that has responded brilliantly to straitened financial circumstances, I think our national museums represent that.

The arts are resilient. The value of the contribution of arts and culture to our economy has increased by one third. They have increased the revenue that they earn, they have increased the money that they bring in through philanthropy, and they make ever more impacts in other parts of life, whether through cultural diplomacy—our calling card around the world—or impacts on health, the criminal justice system or education. The arts and our heritage sectors deserve support. There was—I do not think I am underestimating—an outpouring of joy from the arts and heritage sector at the last spending review in November 2015 when the then Chancellor announced that he was not going to make any cuts at all to the arts and heritage. That is the position we had arrived at. It was not just that he was not going to make any cuts; it was the way he put his position in his statement. He said:

“One of the best investments we can make as a nation is in our extraordinary arts, museums, heritage, media and sport.”—[Official Report, 25 November 2015; Vol. 602, c. 1368.]

He also said that

“deep cuts…are a false economy”.—[Official Report, 25 November 2015; Vol. 602, c. 1368.]

I agree with him and am glad that in that last settlement the then Chancellor recognised—as I think the arts and heritage sector took his meaning to be—that we had come, as it were, to the floor of where we were going to come to.

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[Kelvin Hopkins]

Briefly, I strongly support what the right hon. Gentleman is saying. In the last few days, he may have seen a television programme about Cambodia. They are trying to revive their culture after the terrible predations of Pol Pot and his people, and their simple slogan is “No culture, no nation”. Culture is how we define ourselves and it is absolutely vital that it is preserved.

[Mr Vaizey]

That is so true and that is why I am so pleased that this Government also brought into being the cultural protection fund—£30 million of funding that is available to preserve the culture and heritage of other nations. In fact, all told, if we add the individual programmes to the core funding of heritage, museums and arts, we have a fantastic story to tell, both in the financial support of the arts and heritage, and in the range of programmes that this Government have supported.

Local authority funding is always a huge issue. I have to say that I am more robust on this than I am on other issues. Local councillors are elected by local people and they have the freedom to spend their taxpayers’ money as they see fit. I do not support statutory funding or statutory requirements for culture in a local area. I think that wise local councils should support the arts and heritage in their areas and understand the impact they have.

Creative Industries

Debate between Lord Vaizey of Didcot and Kelvin Hopkins

Thursday 7th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Vaizey]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his kind words. He has allowed me to make a further point about the culture White Paper, in which we announced our proposed Great Place scheme. We have seen the huge success of Liverpool’s designation as European capital of culture, and the huge success of the city of culture scheme, initiated by the last Labour Government, which first benefited Derry/Londonderry and will benefit Hull next year. The Great Place scheme is designed to allow local authorities a small amount of funding to create a cultural strategy. The North East Culture Partnership was one of the inspirations for the idea. In the NECP, 12 councils and five universities have come together to create a coherent vision for culture in the north-east. It is important to note that it is a long-term vision, covering not just the next 12 months but the next 15 years.

I agree with the hon. Member for Glasgow North that we should encourage councils to understand the importance of culture in shaping places, creating jobs and bringing communities together, but also in improving health and wellbeing and contributing to education.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I agree with the Minister that we should encourage councils to support culture, but when their funding is being squeezed, they have to cut because there is no alternative. Does the Minister not agree that we must provide the funds as well as the encouragement?

[Mr Vaizey]

I do not want to range too far from my brief and start commenting on local authority funding, but, in my view, that is possible. I object to the fact that culture is always at the back of the queue, and that when it comes to making savings, it is the first thing that some councils look at. However, many imaginative councils—Labour and Conservative, and possibly even SNP—have shown that it is possible to continue to fund culture, and to embed it in many different areas rather than simply putting it in a silo labelled “culture”.

I think that I have covered quite a lot of ground in a slightly bitty way. I have not really put together the narrative that I hoped to put together, partly because I was slightly discombobulated by the pithiness of the remarks of the hon. Member for Luton North, but let me say this. I think that we in the United Kingdom are incredibly lucky to have such extraordinary cultural and creative industries, driven by some remarkable people. They have been supported strongly by Government, particularly through tax reliefs, and also in focusing on skills and a wider strategy.

We must make sure that in a Brexit world we work with the arts and creative industries, which are the calling cards of this fantastic country. We must ensure that they are part of the debate. We must ensure that, as the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) said, they have a voice in a practical way. I can tell her that I came here from a meeting this morning of the inter-ministerial group, where we discussed DCMS-relevant sectors, looking at key business areas across Government. Tourism, the creative industries, the media, and arts and culture were all part of that debate. We have already seconded one very senior civil servant to the Brexit unit. We will make sure, in a practical way, that culture and the creative industries are taken account of, but also, in a more wide-ranging way, that the voices of our artists and creators are heard as we forge a new way forward for the United Kingdom.

Artistic Remuneration for Online Content

Debate between Lord Vaizey of Didcot and Kelvin Hopkins

Wednesday 6th July 2016 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Culture and the Digital Economy (Mr Edward Vaizey)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray; it feels like normal service has been resumed. I thank the hon. Member for Selby and Ainsty (Nigel Adams) for securing this important debate. I saw him briefly on the television as the Tory leadership campaign got under way, and he looked a bit like a special branch officer as he held open the door for one of the candidates getting into their armoured vehicle. But he has now returned to normal service, campaigning for the rights of artists as he has done since he became a Member.

The quality of the debate has been second to none, with fantastic contributions from the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy), my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome (David Warburton), the hon. Members for Bristol West (Thangam Debbonaire), for Strangford (Jim Shannon), for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) and for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart), and of course the hon. Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins), whom I have to formally welcome as the official Labour party spokesman on cultural matters. I gave my maiden speech just after he had spoken, so there will be a wonderful symmetry if I give my final remarks as a Minister with him sitting opposite me, before I get fired by the new Prime Minister in the coming fortnight. That would be a lovely bookend to my comet-like parliamentary career.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

The Minister is being modest. He stands to be promoted, rather than sacked.

[Mr Vaizey]

It is invidious of me to single out individual contributions, but I particularly welcome the contribution of the hon. Member for Bristol West. I did not get the chance to have debates with her while she was briefly the Opposition culture spokesman, but I thank her for her kind remarks about me in one of her speeches when she held that role. In that speech she showed what a huge contribution she would have made to debates on culture as a Front-Bench spokesman, and definitely will make as a Member of this House.

I do not want to be snarky, but I noticed that the spokesman for the official Opposition spoke for around four minutes, whereas the Scottish National party spokesman spoke for 15 minutes. Perhaps we are seeing the shifting sands in the SNP campaign to become the official Opposition, although sometimes brevity is the soul of wit. Before I am ruled out of order, Mr Gray—

[Mr Vaizey]

Let me get on to the subject in hand.

This is an important debate about a very successful industry. It is important for us to recall just how successful the British music industry is. For example, in 2015, one in six albums purchased around the globe were by British artists. We are the second-largest source of repertoire in the US and one of the biggest music markets in the world, alongside the US, Japan and Germany. Last year, Adele once again released the world’s best-selling album. Interestingly, that was the eighth time in 11 years that the global bestseller has come from the UK. Indeed, five of the world’s top 10 best-selling albums in 2015 were by British artists.

As hon. Members noted during the debate—particularly my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome, who took us right back to the beginning of music streaming—the digital technology revolution in consumer behaviour, which is disrupting almost everything at varying speeds, has of course disrupted the traditional model for distributing music. In the decade or so that I have covered this brief, both as an Opposition spokesman and as a Minister, I have seen that change take place. Indeed, when I first became a Minister, we inherited the last Labour Government’s proposals to tackle piracy, which involved sending notices to individuals who were breaching copyright. At the time, I was sceptical about how effective that would be.

I do not want to prejudge matters, but I think the strategy we adopted has, to a certain extent, been successful. There has to be a combination of carrot and stick. We were successful—this is actually thanks to the music industry—in using existing fraud legislation in the courts to ensure that the most egregious pirate sites were blocked. Interestingly, because that was existing legislation, it did not provoke the kind of controversy that surrounds almost any attempt to “regulate the internet”. When such a measure was proposed in the United States, it resulted in a lively campaign, with people claiming that it would mean censoring the internet. Why anyone would accuse people who want to take down illegal content of censoring the internet is beyond me, but people somehow feel it is a legitimate point to make.

Alongside using legislation to block websites, the carrot, as it were, has been the rise of legal music services. I was particularly pleased to see the report issued yesterday by the Intellectual Property Office, which showed that the establishment of well-known music streaming services such as Spotify has helped to shift more people towards using legal sites. It is clear from reading the IPO report that we are not nearly out of the woods yet in terms of illegal downloading and listening, with some 7 million people in the UK apparently still accessing illegal content, but it is good that music streaming services have become more mainstream, even to the extent that I now use such a service. Some progress has been made.

Before Baroness Lucy Neville-Rolfe took over the intellectual property portfolio with such enthusiasm, I regularly held round-tables with Google and many others in the industry to discuss how they would help reduce access to illegal sites, with particular attention paid to searches that threw up such sites. I am pleased to say that the Minister in the other House has continued those round-tables. I have a huge degree of sympathy with those who say that Google could and should do more. Indeed, when it came to images of child sexual abuse, we were able to work with Google to ensure that something like 130,000 different search terms would result in a blank search return, so it is clear that Google can do work on its algorithm.

The Google argument is twofold. First, an image of child sexual abuse is clearly illegal and criminal, so Google feels it can act without the intervention of the courts. Secondly, Google likes to say that for material that infringes copyright there can sometimes be a grey area. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that it can do more. It has claimed that it has changed its algorithm, but any of us who go on Google every so often and type in the name of an artist to see what emerges will still see a list of illegal content websites coming up in the results. Google does work with some of the trade associations to ensure that links to illegal sites are taken down. As the hon. Member for Bristol West pointed out, the debate is shifting and Google is starting to take a more proactive attitude on such issues, in partnership with the music industry and artists.

We have also worked with the advertising industry. People put up websites with illegal content not as an act of altruism—if one can call it that when they are stealing somebody else’s property and giving it away—but to make money. We should not forget that. One way the people who run such sites make money is by having advertising on their websites, so we have worked closely with the UK advertising industry to ensure that legitimate advertisers do not see their advertising put on such websites. We lead the world in taking such action.

Before I address some of the substantial issues that have been raised, I should mention the Digital Economy Bill, which recognises the importance of tackling online infringement. We have extended the penalties for online infringement to match the penalties for physical infringement, as the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire mentioned, and the Bill will give us a chance to debate many of these issues again. I look forward to some of the brilliant contributions we have heard today being echoed in that debate. In congratulating hon. Members on their contributions earlier, I should have said how impressed I am by how many active musicians there currently are in the House.

On the issue of platforms, when we talk about safe harbour we are referring to the situation that has traditionally existed for the past 15 years. Intermediaries such as YouTube claim that they are passive recipients of content and that it is not necessarily their responsibility to police that content, although they claim that they do so voluntarily but do not have the resources to ensure that such content is not online. They claim simply to be a platform on which people can put their content.

As the hon. Member for Cardiff West said, the safe harbour legislation was introduced to encourage innovation. In many respects, it has been successful. When we debate these issues and look at the negatives, we should also remember the positives. A lot of platforms, and indeed the internet as a whole, have given an extraordinary opportunity to many artists who would potentially have remained undiscovered without them. Before the existence of the internet such artists had only one door to a successful career in the music industry, which was through the record labels. The internet has widened opportunities for artists as well as causing them considerable problems.

Obviously, what sits behind the idea of safe harbour is the e-commerce directive, but that is now quite legitimately a subject for debate, and it is perfectly appropriate for rights holders to argue that the hosting defence is being abused to allow copyright-infringing content to be hosted indiscriminately without their being remunerated. That is why the hosting defence creates a value gap, as it benefits intermediaries without compensating rights holders. The hosting defence also leads to a mismatch in negotiations, giving the whip hand to intermediaries rather than to artists themselves. There are also concerns about the different types of streaming business models, and about whether they provide the correct levels of remuneration to rights holders.

As a Government, we believe that businesses must act in a socially responsible manner. That applies to platforms, which should co-operate in the removal of copyright-infringing material without harming freedom of expression. However, as I said earlier, we must also recognise the role that platforms play in driving innovation.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

Too often we have heard Ministers just exhorting people to behave well. Is the reality not that we need strict, firm, strong regulation to make sure that things happen, so that we do not just have to rely yet again on warm words to help musicians when what they really need is legislation to protect them?

[Mr Vaizey]

The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point. Many hon. Members have asked what the position on the copyright framework will be going forward, given that as a member of the European Union we have sat within the EU copyright framework. They will know that the situation is currently being considered to ensure that the right balance is struck between providing the right incentives and having the right protections.

The European Commission is considering reform in this area as part of the digital single market package. Clearly, circumstances have changed in the last fortnight. The UK was a leading voice in the debate on the future of the digital single market, and the Government and individual Ministers have built strong relationships with the Commission and with leading nations such as France and Germany, which obviously also have strong voices in this debate.

It is my personal view that we will continue to have some influence on how things develop, because this is a very public debate and the UK, along with a number of other countries, submitted a letter a few weeks ago to make the point about platform regulation. We argued first that not all platforms are the same, so we cannot simply have one-size-fits-all regulation, and secondly that we must ensure that we do not throw out innovation. I have said consistently to the commissioners that the UK Government welcome a debate on platform regulation. We are not saying that the Commission should not examine the issue; at this stage, we are simply raising some of the concerns that exist.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I appreciate what the Minister is saying, but Britain’s interests in this area are far greater than those of the other nations he mentioned. We need to have national legislation that is at least as strong, if not much stronger, than what the EU proposes. Does he have any idea of the sheer volume of our interest in popular music compared with that of France and Germany? I would guess that the popular music industries in those countries are much, much smaller than ours.

[Mr Vaizey]

I accept that the British music industry is probably bigger than the music industries in France and Germany given the profile of British artists. However, a company such as the French firm Vivendi, which owns Universal, is a pretty big music company. I do not know what impact Brexit will have, but at the moment the projections are that we will overtake Germany in the overall value of our entertainment market. Nevertheless, the German market is currently bigger than the British one, and no one needs any lessons about how seriously the French take their own cultural offer and the work they will do to ensure that it is protected.

What I am really saying to the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire is that I see a partnership developing between France, Germany and the UK, in which we look for areas of agreement. However, I hope that at the heart of that partnership there will be an emphasis on protecting remuneration for artists and achieving a fair balance between the innovation that platforms have brought to the distribution of music, for example, and some of the issues that have been thrown up by trade bodies in particular. For example, it has been pointed out that the number of music videos on YouTube has doubled, yet the revenue for artists and labels has flatlined.

It is also important to remember that there are different emphases within the music industry itself. Clearly, the BPI does a fantastic job in representing the music industry and talking about issues such as safe harbour and copyright infringement, but of course the Featured Artists Coalition, the artists’ organisation that is so ably led by people such as the brilliant musician Sandie Shaw, has its own proposals that we need to consider properly and seriously, for example about transparency in the value chain.

I want to talk briefly about the relationship between creators, their producers and the publishers, because that relationship is absolutely vital in helping creators bring their product to market. Nevertheless, as we have already heard from some hon. Members, there is a fear that authors and performers are missing out as a result of restrictive, imbalanced or opaque terms and practices. We take such issues seriously. We want to understand how we can make progress and what the impact of certain reforms might be in different sectors and scenarios. We want to ensure that there is a balance; we want creators and performers to receive fair remuneration, but we also want investment in innovation and resources.

Any proposals that would result in restrictions on freedom of contract would need to be subject to rigorous examination. Transparency is an important feature of well functioning markets, and I know that creators would welcome moves to make it easier for them to understand the value that their works have generated. Again, there is an opportunity for partnership in that regard. For example, I welcome the BPI’s introduction of a portal that allows an artist to measure the remuneration they are receiving from streaming services.

I have covered a lot of ground, and this has been a great debate, but we should have the opportunity to hear again from my hon. Friend the Member for Selby and Ainsty about what progress he thinks has been made in the past hour and a half.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Vaizey of Didcot and Kelvin Hopkins

Thursday 16th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Vaizey]

The hon. Lady is a great champion of live music, so it does not surprise me that she is raising this issue, and I will certainly consider the invitation to Venues day. As for The Fleece, I understand that Bristol city council has imposed some acoustic restrictions on planned developments around it. The agent of change principle has only recently been implemented in Australia. Some elements of it exist in our own planning policies, but I will certainly raise that with planning Ministers.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

I share the concerns of my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) about venues. Is not the real solution to the problem to have much more effective regulation of noise from existing venues—strict noise limiters and so on? The problem is not string quartets or small jazz groups; it is heavily amplified popular music. I know people enjoy that, but should it not be limited in volume?

[Mr Vaizey]

In effect, the hon. Gentleman’s question reveals the dilemma, because the hon. Member for Bristol East was raising the issue of new developments springing up and new residents complaining about a music venue that has been in operation for many years—the Ministry of Sound is the most high profile recent example. At the same time, as the hon. Gentleman says, residents will want to be able to sleep soundly in their beds at night. Squaring that circle is always the difficulty that councils and planning Ministers have to wrestle with.