Arts Council England: Funding

Debate between Barbara Keeley and Andy Slaughter

Wednesday 18th January 2023 Westminster Hall

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

I declare that I am chair of the all-party parliamentary group on classical music. It is a pleasure to speak with you in the Chair, Mr Bone. I thank the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill) for securing the debate and for the way he opened it, and all right hon. and hon. Members who have contributed to it.

I start by congratulating colleagues across both Houses and the wider arts sector on achieving the apparent 12-month reprieve announced yesterday for the funding of the English National Opera. It does not settle all the questions raised about the damage done by the decision, but I am pleased that there can at least be a longer-term conversation about the ENO’s future, which is right. The ENO has worked hard to increase access to opera, bringing it to younger and more diverse audiences. It has delivered innovative education and health projects throughout the country, and it is right that this is finally being recognised. However, the back and forth of the decision has caused acute anxiety among the ENO’s 300 full-time employees and the 600 freelancers whose job security was put at risk. The screeching U-turn is further indication of the total lack of strategic planning involved in the national portfolio organisation funding decisions that we have been debating.

First, I want to reflect on the arm’s length principle of arts funding, which we have heard about in the debate. At the core of the recent dispute about arts funding is the issue of who makes decisions about arts funding and what the criteria for those decisions are. When the answers to those questions are unclear, there will always be discontent and frustration about how the investment of taxpayers’ money is being made.

[Andy Slaughter]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point: there is a lack of transparency. I am very lucky that the two main theatres in my constituency, the Bush and the Lyric, have maintained their grants—in one case, it has slightly increased—but every organisation was on tenterhooks waiting for the announcements, and they will be next time as well, because they have no idea on what basis Arts Council England makes a decision. Other theatres in London, such as the Donmar Warehouse, have lost 100% of their funding. What is the rationale behind this?

[Barbara Keeley]

Indeed. It is important to focus on that principle. The arm’s length principle has been in operation since public subsidy for the arts began in the aftermath of the second world war. At the inception of the original Arts Council, Keynes wrote that:

“It should be a permanent body, independent in constitution…but financed by the Treasury”.

However, as we have heard, the former Culture Secretary, the right hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Ms Dorries), issued a clear instruction to Arts Council England last year and ordered it to move money outside the capital through a reduction in the London budget. Even the places at which the additional investment would be targeted were decided with input from DCMS, with removals and changes to the “Let’s Create” priority places, which had been originally identified in Arts Council England’s 2020 strategy.

As we heard earlier, the former Culture Secretary has now criticised the decisions made by Arts Council England for their “undue political bias”, and accused the leadership of pulling a “stunt” to try to reverse levelling up. We have heard a variety of ways of describing the very strange decision making, but we have to see that it was this directive that led Arts Council England to the decision to make cuts to the English National Opera, the Welsh National Opera, Glyndebourne’s touring and other organisations, such as the Britten Sinfonia, the Oldham Coliseum and the Donmar Warehouse. The comments made show that Ministers and Arts Council England had not thought through the implications of the directive, both on art forms such as opera and on the other arts organisations I mentioned.