Arts, Culture and Heritage: Support Package

Debate between Jo Stevens and Caroline Dinenage

Tuesday 7th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Jo Stevens (Cardiff Central) (Lab) [V]]

(Urgent Question):To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, if he will make a statement on the Government’s support package for our arts, culture and heritage industries.

[The Minister for Digital and Culture (Caroline Dinenage)]

The UK’s arts and cultural heritage are not just beloved in the UK, but are the envy of the rest of the world. Our theatres, live music venues, museums and galleries are incredibly valuable to our economy, bringing in £32.3 billion in 2018 and employing approximately 680,000 people. However, they are much more than that: they are the lynchpins of their local communities, entertaining, enlightening and educating us, and bringing us together through shared experiences.

The coronavirus pandemic dealt those sectors a body blow, forcing thousands of institutions to close their doors. The Government have already provided substantial financial assistance to see them through the crisis, including loans, business rate holidays and the self-employed and furloughing schemes. Together, those schemes have provided hundreds of millions of pounds of support, saving livelihoods, beloved organisations and institutions. Of course, we have been working extremely closely with the sector and medical experts to try to get things back up and running as soon as it is safe to do so.

Our battle against coronavirus is not over. With social distancing still in place and crowded venues not possible for the foreseeable future, it was clear that the cultural sector desperately needed help to weather the ongoing storm. The Government have provided it this week, with an unprecedented £1.57 billion rescue package for museums, galleries, theatres, independent cinemas, heritage sites and music venues across the country in the form of emergency grants and loans. It is the single largest one-off investment in UK culture and proof of our commitment to protecting the sectors that do so much to enrich all our lives. It has widely been recognised as exceeding expectations and DDCMS Ministers would like to put on record our thanks to the many people who have worked so incredibly hard on this behind the scenes over the weeks.

The funding will support the country’s long-standing and rightly famous cultural institutions such as the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Ironbridge Gorge Museum, the Mary Rose Trust, which I visited yesterday, and the National Theatre, but it will also support lesser known but equally cherished cultural and heritage institutions and organisations in regions up and down the country—places that have been cultural anchors for their communities for years. That will include theatres, live music venues and museums, but it will not just be about cultural spaces, as it will include dance companies, orchestras and touring arts groups that do not have their own venues but that still play a key role in our cultural life and, of course, still need support. By protecting these organisations as well, the funding will help to support those working across the cultural sector.

The package will also see £120 million invested in rebuilding, upgrading and starting new construction work across our cultural infrastructure as part of our wider effort to build, build, build after coronavirus. This will help to revitalise historic buildings across the country, creating jobs and protecting livelihoods all across our regions. Another £100 million will be allocated to arm’s length bodies such as the British Library, the British Museum and the British Film Institute. An extra £188 million will be given to the devolved Administrations in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, as the Government support our whole Union; our cultural strength is stronger as a family of four.

The broader package comes on top of the announcement made last week by the Arts Council to reopen its project grants competition and make an additional £39 million of funding available to support creativity—in particular from freelancers, creative practitioners and independent organisations.

We all want to see full audiences back in our venues and institutions, enjoying the very best of British culture as soon as possible. We will keep our foot very firmly on the pedal, and are finalising guidance for a phased return of the performing arts sectors as we speak. This package allows us to protect some of our precious cultural assets during an uncertain time ahead. It will help thousands of organisations to make it through this crisis and out the other side for future generations to enjoy. I ask the House to join the arts sector in welcoming this massive rescue package. It is a lifeline to help the sector weather this storm and bounce back even stronger.

[Jo Stevens [V]]

I am grateful for the granting of this urgent question.

We welcome this much-needed injection of cash for the arts and culture sector, but I have to ask: what took the Government so long? We have already seen venues going under and mounting job losses, and warnings from the Opposition and across the sector were ignored for weeks on end. Urgently getting the money to where it is needed now is critical, but according to the Department’s own briefing, funds will not arrive until the autumn. Less than half the £160 million announced in March is with the organisations that need it, and we are now four months on.

It is vital that this money does not just get hoovered up by the biggest venues with the loudest voices. As well as protecting the jewels in the crown, every town and city lucky enough to have a theatre that is a precious part of the local economy must keep it. We were disappointed that yesterday there was yet again no mention of freelancers, who make up 70% of the workforce in theatre alone. These are highly specialist, creative people—musicians, performers and other professionals—who have been excluded from the Treasury schemes since the start of this crisis. I am concerned that the Department does not understand the nature of the work in this sector, which is why we have continually warned against a one-size-fits-all approach.

As has been the case with the Government throughout this crisis, within hours of the announcement yesterday, the package—which was described as “world-leading”—was already starting to unravel.

I have some specific questions for the Secretary of State, therefore, that I hope his Minister can answer.

Is there provision in this package to reverse job cuts, such as those announced at the Royal Exchange in Manchester, and theatre closures, such as the Nuffield Southampton? Yesterday, the Secretary of State refused to confirm that live performance venues would reopen by Christmas. Can the Minister confirm what date the Government are working towards that has allowed them to calculate that this package will secure the future of these industries, as they have said it will do? If venues cannot open for at least six months, has the Secretary of State secured agreement from the Chancellor that the Treasury schemes will be extended for this sector until the Government give the go-ahead for it to reopen?

Will the Minister commit to publishing the health and scientific evidence that says the public can sit in an aeroplane for hours on end but not in a theatre for two hours? Lastly, I want the Government to focus on the people who have made this sector admired around the world and the specialist and highly skilled jobs they do, because once those are lost, they will be almost impossible to recover.

[Caroline Dinenage]

That was a disappointingly churlish if not unexpected response to what is the largest single financial investment in our culture sector and the biggest package of support for heritage, arts and culture—[Interruption.]