Funding for the Arts

John Nicolson Excerpts

Tuesday 13th September 2016 Westminster Hall

[Mr Vaizey]

I am already moved, but I will move the actual motion. I beg to move,

That this House has considered funding for the arts.

Thank you for pointing that out, Mr Hollobone, and emphasising how out of touch and rusty I am at speaking from the Back Benches.

[John Nicolson (East Dunbartonshire) (SNP)]

Hear, hear.

[Mr Vaizey]

I am glad to have the support of the Scottish National party on that issue, as I do on so many others. It is worth pointing out, with the very distinguished spokesman for the SNP, the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (John Nicolson), here, that broadly speaking I will be talking about funding in England. No doubt the SNP spokesman can talk about funding in Scotland and he will tell a great tale that the Minister will rightly treat with some scepticism; he will point out that the Scottish story is not as great as the SNP would make out.

Anyway, back to England. I was lucky enough to serve as the Minister responsible for the arts for six years, until I left the Government in July. I warmly welcome the new Minister to his position and want to tell him that he need have no worry about my being a backseat driver. I am not planning to leave Parliament to give him the space that he needs to develop his position, but I am certainly not planning to second-guess what he does in his new role. I know already how talented he is, but those of us who leave Government perhaps not of our own accord do not have the chance to make a resignation speech, so perhaps I can treat this motion as a review of some of the things that I did as an Arts Minister and explain why I think there is an opportunity to increase Government funding for the arts.

The arts in England in particular, but also in the UK as a whole, have always relied on what is known as the mixed economy. We are relatively unique and very lucky, in that our arts organisations depend not just on straight Government funding but also, obviously, on their income and on philanthropy. In the last six years, we as a Government worked hard to encourage philanthropy, and arts and heritage organisations responded in kind and raised a great deal of money. Schemes such as Catalyst, which introduced match funding, enabled them to raise additional money from private donors.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Nicolson (East Dunbartonshire) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Wantage (Mr Vaizey), who is an old friend, on applying for the debate. His passion for the arts and his many years of success as an arts Minister are universally recognised.

All of us in this room have in common a passion for the arts; that is why we are here in such great numbers arguing the case for them. It is fascinating what diverse talents are on our Benches. We have heard from an actress and from a cellist. I am a harpsichordist—something that I have in common, obviously, with the majority of Scottish National party Members of Parliament. I am sure it will not be long before we have our own baroque ensemble. We will see.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

Good—a bit of Scarlatti would go down well.

[John Nicolson]

Yes, it would certainly be a challenge. Earlier this summer, I was delighted that my colleagues on the Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport were able to visit Glasgow to sample some of the city’s best known and much loved cultural assets. As they told me, during their visits to places such as the Glasgow School of Art, which is currently being rebuilt after the devastating fire, and the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, they realised that there is a deep commitment and attachment to the arts in Scotland. Indeed, it is to the great credit of our predecessors in Glasgow that wisdom was shown in the purchasing policy for Kelvingrove.

My mum remembers, as a wee girl, the debate in the post-war austerity years in Glasgow about whether to buy Salvador Dali’s “Christ of Saint John of the Cross”—that amazing portrait where the viewer looks up at Christ from underneath. The city fathers, despite the great financial pressures that they were under, decided that Glasgow deserved to have the picture. Of course, the picture has, many times, outsold the original purchase price through the rights the city has to it—the postcards sold and the films made about it.

Scotland is a diverse society with creativity and innovation at its heart. In our city, we believe that everyone in our society should be able to experience and access culture. Now, why should that be? First and foremost, the arts improve people’s lives. There is a direct link between access to a cultural place or event, and health. Those who participate in culture are almost 60% more likely to report good health compared with those who do not.

Glasgow has also made some terrible mistakes. When the beautiful city centre was destroyed under the crazy assumption that we could devastate the inner city, remove its beautiful buildings and decant people to outlying ring towns leaving an architectural desert in much of the city, the worst mistake made was to think that people who had grown up going to see movies—Glasgow had more cinemas than any other city in the western world with the sole exception of New York—and going to the theatre and the local swimming baths, would be happy living in outlying housing schemes with no access to arts of any kind. It is no wonder that crime, which everyone imagined would drop dramatically, rose dramatically. It was a tragedy.

Arts and culture improve people’s attainment across many aspects of the school curriculum; in other words, access to the arts aids social mobility. Of course, there is also an economic benefit. In 2015, the number of jobs supported by the Scottish creative industries rose to more than 70,000, an increase of 5.1% on the previous year—the sector’s third consecutive annual increase in employment.

For every £1 of public investment, we see £3 in economic benefit. I, like other hon. Members, think it is enormously important that we stop talking about subsidies and start talking about investment. There is a well of good will in the House for the arts and creative industries and I was pleased to hear the right hon. Member for Wantage say that he felt that the Government had cut to the core, because we cannot cut further. On that, I hope, we are all agreed.