King’s Speech (4th Day)

Lord Berkeley of Knighton Excerpts

Monday 22nd July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley of Knighton (CB)]

“Ich fühle Luft von anderem Planeten”,

or “I feel air from another planet”. So begins the movement of the second Schoenberg string quartet, in which Schoenberg broke the mould by adding a soprano to the conventional four players and created music of radiant transcendence. The text is a poem by Stefan George. Listening to our debates over the last few days, I have felt a sense of optimism, of fresh air, not simply because of a sound start by the new Government but, importantly, by the reaction of most Members of the Opposition, as we have just heard. For instance, in the housing debate on Friday, there seemed to be a sense of relief that we will now get on with policies that had tended to stagnate.

What has unquestionably been allowed to stagnate is the arts, and music in particular. Creativity is a multi-billion-pound input to our economy but, more important still, an investment in our cultural identity, informing us of who we are and how we fit into today’s world, an investment in social cohesion no less. It is all too clear that in the last 13 years we have seen an appalling diminution of the arts, from education at primary level right through to university and onwards to arts institutions, festivals, theatres and opera houses—like Welsh National Opera, currently teetering on the brink of a “to be or not to be” conundrum. Will the musicians of WNO be rescued, even at this late hour?

I want to be fair. Covid was a hammer-blow to an already fragile economy, and Rishi Sunak as Chancellor did his very best to support the creative sector. Unfortunately, the people who slipped through the net were freelance musicians, and it is precisely they who have been most severely affected by the utter catastrophe that is Brexit. Is it not extraordinary that one of our best performing sectors should be hit by a series of own goals from our own negotiators? Do not take it from me; take it from the noble Lord, Lord Frost, who had the good grace to admit that the last Government had got these touring negotiations wrong, despite Boris Johnson’s promise that what happened would not happen.

I say in welcome to our new Ministers, particularly the noble Lord, Lord Vallance, on the Front Bench, that I understand that you cannot magic up great sums of money. However, there are things that you can do to change the sensibility of our times. Led by a flautist Prime Minister, you can invest in a sense of cultural well-being, cultural curiosity, a determination to allow everyone the chance to learn an instrument, not just the rich, as pointed out by my fellow composer, Errollyn Wallen, last week on “Desert Island Discs” and by Kadiatu Kanneh-Mason, mother of that extraordinary family of musicians, on “Private Passions”. She said that in our present state school system, her gifted children—including the cellist Sheku—would have floundered, as the tutoring they received then no longer exists. Is that not an appalling reflection of where we are and what has gone wrong?

Vast sums are not needed to engineer a rapprochement with the EU, with the Erasmus programme, with the exchange of ideas that are so crucial to artistic creativity. The easing of our relationship with our closest trading partner would mean that musicians, be they pop groups or our world class orchestras, would not be mired in expensive and time-consuming red tape and their transport would not be governed by lunatic cabotage rules which require endless changing of lorries between venues.

In his 1948 polemic, Philosophy of Modern Music, the German philosopher Adorno acknowledged that Schoenberg had forged in that string quartet a new aesthetic

“in the midst of expressionistic chaos”,

but he went on to explain how these innovations were the logical development of Beethoven and Brahms. We too must now get across a divide and go back to a vision of many years ago, to the Arts Minister, Jennie Lee, who wrote:

“In any civilised community the arts … must occupy a central place”.


Lisa Nandy, the Culture Secretary, faces a huge but exciting challenge. I and my colleagues are here to help her and her Front-Bench colleagues in your Lordships’ House in any way that we can. Let us all take a breath of fresh air.