Queen’s Speech

Earl of Clancarty Excerpts

Thursday 29th June 2017 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Clancarty (CB)]

My Lords, I shall talk about the arts, including arts education, and want to say a few words also about Europe.

Our debate in Grand Committee on 30 March on local arts services forcefully demonstrated that the day-to-day funding of arts organisations across the country is the most pressing concern. I wish to hear more about the new cultural development fund promised in the Conservative manifesto. If I read the intention correctly, I hope that it will be understood as a welcome addition to, but not a replacement for, local authority funding, which, when operated properly, is still the most efficient way to help the arts and cultural services, including libraries, at the local level.

The Arts Council is juggling well with less money in real terms than last year. Whenever historically the difference in funding between London and the regions has become an issue, it has always in the first instance been because of cuts overall. I would certainly add my voice to those who wish to see an immediate end to austerity. With local authorities, lack of funding is sadly not the only problem. In recent years, the Government have encouraged councils to act more like businesses, treating buildings and land solely as financial assets and not as public resources and neglecting the very thing they are there for: to support public services. This culture in which austerity has become a mindset, sometimes irrespective of how well-off a borough is, needs also to be reversed.

I am very glad that the Government are continuing with the policy of free entry to the national museums. I look forward to the exhibition next year in Newcastle and Gateshead celebrating art and design in the north.

It would be very helpful to have from the Minister an explanation of the thinking behind DCMS reorganisation. I have always preferred the umbrella term “arts and creative industries” because I have never felt entirely comfortable with one aspect being defined as part of the other. However, the apparent separation between the two is not quite realistic either: there is much crossover between them, and while digital is very important for the creative industries, it does not define them. The Government should not lose sight of the immense importance of the creative industries to this country, not least to its economy. I hope, too, that placing the arts alongside heritage and tourism is not a move away from recognition of the arts as a significant contemporary practice.

If education does not receive adequate funding, which must mean an increase in per-pupil funding, then arts education will continue to receive a double whammy, hit first by, among other things, an increasing shortage of specialist teachers and a lack of resources and secondly, by the continuing effect of the EBacc, which the Government are clearly ploughing on with regardless of the mounting evidence of its devastating effect on school education. In particular, we have the Ofqual figures published just this month showing for the last year alone a decline of more than 8% in take-up of arts GCSEs and more than 10% in design and technology, whose importance in the curriculum the noble Lord, Lord Storey, emphasised earlier. The Government must come to their senses and remove this destructive measure so that children have a rounded education that contains the widest range of opportunities.

I want to say a few words about the European Union. I am not someone who accepts the leave vote because it was the result of the referendum. To leave was wrong a year ago and it is equally wrong today. It is young British people’s citizenship rights that will be lost if Brexit happens—the rights not just of those who are in Europe now but of the many young people in the UK who have yet, perhaps, to travel abroad at all. Then, of course, there are the rights of future generations, such as the freedom to roam across our own continent and the right to travel, work and study abroad—if we leave, these rights will continue to be held by the great majority of European people except the British. Citizens on the continent hold these rights dear. The EU is not falling apart any time soon. Young people in Albania, for example, with its status as a candidate for EU membership, will have greater rights of free movement around Europe if we leave the EEA than young people in the UK will.

The phrase repeated by Ministers that most sends a chill through me—one we have heard in arts and creative industries debates—is, “We will be attracting the brightest and the best”. It is chilling because, as agreements are intended to be reciprocal, all hope that ordinary British citizens will continue to enjoy our current rights to work, study and travel abroad will be removed, as the well salaried and privileged will be the only people able to cross borders with any degree of the freedom of movement enjoyed by all other Europeans. If Brexit is to happen then the proposal by the European Parliament’s chief negotiator, Guy Verhofstadt, of associate citizenship of the EU for all UK citizens who wish to retain their EU citizenship should be part of the negotiations. This already has wide support in the European Parliament, and its feasibility has been further explored in a report by a Swansea University team of experts in international law led by Professor Volker Roeben, for Plaid Cymru MEP Jill Evans, which was launched at the European Parliament last week. A key finding of the report is that UK law in this area is in line with the principle that individuals should not be stripped of citizenship against their will. It might be that this is the only solution that would satisfy both individual leavers and individual remainers. The ball is very much in the UK’s court.