Edinburgh Festivals: Cultural and Economic Contribution

Christine Jardine Excerpts

Tuesday 8th October 2024 Westminster Hall

[Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Efford. I also congratulate the hon. Member for Edinburgh East and Musselburgh on securing this debate. We cannot talk about the festival too often—I have loved it since I was a child. I learned the story of Rudolf Bing for the first time from Allan Little at the book festival that went ahead this summer. Rudolf Bing was an Austrian-born opera impresario, a Jewish refugee from the Nazis, who set up the Edinburgh festival in 1947 to heal, he said, the wounds of war through the arts. The very first performance was the Vienna Philharmonic orchestra, and they performed Mahler. Since then, it has become the massive event that it is today.

Growing up in Glasgow, we were slightly jealous because all those famous people were going to Edinburgh, and that city had all the publicity, but actually, we got to benefit, too. I went with my school to see “Hamlet” as part of our higher English. We saw Derek Jacobi, and my love of the theatre was born that night—I love Shakespeare. The festival provides a valuable educational tool for children throughout Scotland, and I have grown up with it. My husband, an Aberdonian, spent one August working on a show at the festival. My daughter, a Glaswegian, spent a summer working there, and I got to “headline” at the political festival this year. It is part of people’s lives.

In Edinburgh, we have a strange relationship with the festival. We love it—it is the world’s window on us and our chance to show off. However, there is also an underlying tension, which the hon. Member for Gosport (Dame Caroline Dinenage) referred to, between the influx of tourists every year—we have also seen that tension in Vienna and Barcelona—and the cost to the city, which has the most underfunded council in the country; the mess when we have strikes which coincide with it; the pressure on our public transport; and the cost of accommodation in Edinburgh, which is now outrageous. However, looking at what the festivals bring to the city, I do not think the tensions can be compared with the benefits. Think about where we would be without the £400 million that it brings to the city itself, and the other £300 million it brings to the rest of Scotland when it acts as a tourism gateway. It is a jewel in our cultural crown and we need to preserve it.

It suffered during the pandemic and lots of venues only just survived. We need to help it to extend the level of tax reliefs for small businesses, many of whom make a massive contribution to the festival, and to address the barriers to financial support that they face. We need to do more to support small venues, which do not have the massive events. Let us say, £1 on tickets for Murrayfield stadium would help—but do not tell Murrayfield I said that! It also provides a stage for new talent—the incubator that has been talked about. In any comedy programme on British television on any weekend of the year, there will be someone who learned their trade at the Edinburgh festival.

In short, over the past 75 years, it has enriched our city, its reputation across the globe and our national reputation, for music, theatre, comedy, books, television—you name it. It has enriched our reputation. I believe that we can say with some confidence that it has played a part, particularly this year, in fulfilling that original vision of fostering international understanding through the arts.

[Clive Efford (in the Chair)]

Order. We move on to the next speaker.