Regional Arts and Culture

Helen Goodman Excerpts

Tuesday 4th February 2014 Westminster Hall

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Caton. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) on securing this very important debate, which has been attended by 16 Labour Members.

One of the pleasures of holding the arts portfolio is being reminded of the excellent quality of the arts across the country. My right hon. Friends the Members for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw), for Newcastle upon Tyne East (Mr Brown) and for Dulwich and West Norwood (Dame Tessa Jowell) and my hon. Friends the Members for Plymouth, Moor View (Alison Seabeck), for Blackpool South (Mr Marsden), for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham) and for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) have all attested to that fact. Nobody can doubt the quality of regional arts, the audience for regional arts or the talent that comes from regional arts, so we need to ask why there is such a funding disparity.

Much has been made of the independent report “Rebalancing Our Cultural Capital”, which found that Londoners get nearly £70 a head and the rest of the country gets £4.60 a head, a ratio of 14:1. The report’s figures do not include the spend on the Cultural Olympiad or the millennium dome, but they have been questioned this afternoon. Obviously one would expect more money to be spent on national institutions, which tend to be in capital cities. The National Gallery is bound to cost the taxpayer more than the Walker art gallery. Equally, it is true that some of the work undertaken by the national institutions directly benefits the regions, such as the National Theatre’s streaming of “Richard II” to cinemas across the country and the British Museum’s portable antiquities scheme. Given the questions, though, it is disappointing that, three months down the track, we have not had a clear analysis from Arts Council England showing the proportion of the benefits of spending that falls in London and the proportion that falls elsewhere, which would inform the discussion.

Even on the analysis that Arts Council England has provided, the picture shows a serious problem. Over the five years between 2010 and 2015, some £2 billion of public money will be spent on cultural institutions in London, excluding the British Library. The direct spend of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport is £447 million, of which 90% is in London. In a series of parliamentary answers to me, the Minister has not justified the rationale for that support. It is an accident of history that the Liverpool museums and the Geffrye museum are nationally supported while the Laing art gallery in Newcastle and the Dulwich picture gallery are not. When people learn that Arts Council England supports 77 performing arts organisations in London but only seven in the north-east, it is clear that the imbalance is not just about a handful of elite institutions.

Arts Council England says that grant in aid funding is £22 a head in London and £8 a head elsewhere. As hon. Members have said, how can it be right that people in the east midlands and the east of England get only a fifth of what Londoners get and that the east midlands, a region of 6 million people, has no major partner museum? The lottery spend under Arts Council England’s control tells a similar story: £12 per person in London compared with £2.99 per person in the west midlands and £2.78 per person in the north-west—in other words, less than a quarter.

Arts Council England seems to think that it is some sort of triumph that just 31% of the lottery funding that it distributes was awarded to London’s institutions. That seems less commendable when one discovers that London accounts for only 10% of lottery ticket sales, whereas people in the north-east get 3.6% of the spend but pay for 7.6% of lottery tickets. The authors of “Rebalancing Our Cultural Capital” suggest that the rebalancing should begin with the lottery money. We need a proper audit of what is going on, taking account of DCMS support, Arts Council England grants, Arts Council England-distributed lottery funding and the Heritage Lottery Fund.

It is notable that HLF’s distribution matches the population far more closely than Arts Council England-distributed lottery funding. London, with 15% of the population, gets 19% of the spend. The east of England, with 11% of the population, gets 10% of the spend. Yorkshire and Humber’s 10% of the population is perfectly matched with 10% of the spend. That proves that it can be done and suggests that there is a relationship with the institutional structures of the organisation. The Heritage Lottery Fund has a far more rooted, regional approach to decision making.

One thing I find worrying is this statement in the Arts Council briefing:

“The Arts Council cannot make up the shortfall and we want to work with local authorities who continue to value and invest in arts and culture”.

At first blush that seems reasonable, but then one takes account of the disparate and unfair funding settlements meted out by the Government to local authorities. Liverpool and Hackney, which are among the 10 most deprived local authorities, are seeing 27% reductions in spending power, while local authorities in Surrey, which has some of the 10 least deprived, are seeing 1% increases in spending power. In the real world, cash does not equate to commitment, whereas on the Arts Council model, despite having seven museums, a major orchestra and being the home of the Beatles and Daniel Defoe, Liverpool’s funding might fall and Surrey would become the most cultivated county in England.

Furthermore, the Arts Council proposed to take local authority investment into account in Manchester and Middlesbrough, but not in Kensington and Chelsea, which puts no money into the V and A, or in Westminster, home to the National Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery, which has just axed its entire arts budget, despite all the cultural and economic benefits that flow to local communities from being home to those magnificent institutions.

Normally, public subsidy goes where the market fails, but that cannot be said for the arts. London has the largest population of the well-heeled middle classes, the most tourists and the most philanthropists. I am delighted that the Minister, in partnership with the Wolfson Foundation, has spread money across the regions, and I am not cynical enough to think that the Bowes Museum in my constituency has had a particularly large grant because it is the seat of the shadow Minister—it is obviously because it has the best collection of European paintings between London and Edinburgh—but will the £4 million make up for the discrepancy in the philanthropic spend per head? I doubt it. In London, the spend per head was nearly £60, but in the midlands it was only £1.83.

I end with one simple question for the Minister. He cannot continue to hide behind the Arts Council’s skirts. He has totally failed to persuade the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government of the need to take account of the value of the arts in local authority settlements. Can the Minister persuade the Arts Council to take radical steps to reverse that trend? If he does not, we will see an existential crisis outside the M25. In Somerset, the Brewhouse closed; in Darlington, the arts centre closed; and, in Richmond, the Georgian theatre is at risk. The losses will be felt not only now, but for many years ahead as young people across the country lose the stimulation and opportunities provided by the arts.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Vaizey]

I feel that I did give him a direct answer. I explained that the chair of Arts Council England had said that things were going well, but could always do better, that the message has been heard loud and clear and that judgment should be made in two years’ time.

I will not support the recommendation from Patrick Diamond, the former adviser to the previous Labour Prime Minister, to close the British Museum and move it outside London, probably costing several billion pounds. I will also not support Labour’s proposals to stop funding the big five. [Interruption.] The shadow culture spokesperson is going to rule that out.

[Helen Goodman]

I certainly am going rule out that we are going to end all funding to what the Minister calls the “big five”. I have not said it and I do not think it.

[Mr Vaizey]

That is good to hear. I am glad that that rumour has been put to bed, but I remain in the dark on the hon. Lady’s regional policy. Labour has initiated a second review of the creative industries, so we will wait to hear its conclusions.