Arts: Funding

Lord Black of Brentwood Excerpts

Thursday 3rd February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Black of Brentwood]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a member of the Council of the Royal College of Music and as a trustee of both the mayor’s fund for young musicians and the Imperial War Museum.

I want to talk about the vital role of our music conservatoires to the artistic life of our country and the importance of maintaining a crucial element of public funding for them. Our country is fortunate to have a remarkable musical heritage and educational infrastructure that makes us a beacon of international music excellence and London the world’s most vibrant cultural hub. Our major orchestras, the opera, music theatre, dance companies and our chamber ensembles all contribute to a rich cultural life which is not just centred in London but lives in every community. Britain is also home to an astonishing culture of amateur and semi-professional music making—from church choirs to village bands—that enlivens the whole country and is part of the cultural big society in action.

However, none of this comes about by accident. Our national musical life depends on a steady stream of highly trained professional music graduates from our conservatoires. These conservatoires have been the backbone of British music since the mid-19th century. From them, the greatest British composers—Parry, Vaughan Williams, Howells and Britten—have emerged, and over many generations they have acted as teaching magnets for the world’s most celebrated musicians. Even more important, their talented graduates, who in recent years have benefited from a much broader curriculum, populate the orchestras, ensembles and opera companies that are the foundation of the UK’s musical life. More than 90 per cent of conservatoire graduates work exclusively in music, often doing two or three different musical jobs. They are music’s future, and without their throughput of expertise it is no exaggeration to say that our musical life would wither.

These conservatoires are therefore vital national institutions of tangible public value and international renown. They need to be nourished, particularly at a time not just when, as we have heard, there is pressure on corporate philanthropic giving but when we will be looking to their graduates to play a key cultural role in the big society through outreach activities to widen access to music teaching, such as the successful RCM sparks programme.

However, there is an issue that we need to acknowledge. Training professional musicians takes time and is expensive because it relies on one-to-one tuition in a high-quality environment. The conservatoires require concert halls with broadcast facilities, recital halls, opera theatres, high-quality keyboard instruments, sound-protected rehearsal rooms and, above all, the best possible teaching from dedicated professors.

I studied history at university and all I needed was a library, a lecture hall and a teacher; the training of musicians requires a significant and expensive infrastructure, just as do engineering and medicine. Over the years, these high costs have been recognised by the Higher Education Funding Council—most recently in a review in 2008—which has provided a modest amount of exceptional funding on top of its normal teaching grant to allow these institutions to fulfil their specialist function. That is less than £15 million across our four English music conservatoires—a tiny amount in comparison with the huge, catalytic contribution that they make to our cultural life.

I know that the conservatoires accept the need to make savings, which are already being implemented, and they already have well-developed fundraising operations. However, the core issue of the exceptional funding, which cannot be met by these means, is central to their future. If that funding is withdrawn, there is no way that it could be recouped from higher tuition fees, as the quantum involved would be impractical. While the normal teaching grant can be replaced through higher fees, the exceptional funding cannot because fees would need to rise well beyond the new government cap. To date, HEFCE has not clarified whether this exceptional funding will continue to be recognised in the future financial landscape, but it is vital that the funding continue. I know that my noble friend will not be able to give us any commitments today, but I ask her to take note of this issue and to talk about it to her colleagues across a range of government departments while decisions are being made that will reverberate down the generations.

Confucius said,

“Music produces a kind of pleasure which human nature cannot do without”.

I recognise the power of those words, for throughout my life music has been a constant companion and the source of my emotional nourishment—a wonderful word used by the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, in her fantastic maiden speech—consoling, coaxing and civilising in a way that no other art form can. I believe that the Government also recognise the power that music has to raise aspirations, as the Secretary of State for Education made clear in his welcome comments on the Henley review of music education.

All of us in this House have over the years been lucky and privileged enough to have our lives enriched by a remarkable musical heritage built on the back of the conservatoires. We have a duty now to safeguard them for those who will come after us.