Arts and Culture

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Monday 9th July 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack]

My Lords, I am delighted to add my thanks to the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, for introducing this debate, and to add my welcome to my noble friend Lord Younger, as he assumes his ministerial responsibility.

It has been a wide-ranging, although brief, debate at a gallop. I would just say to my noble friend who will respond that we desperately need a coherent strategy for the arts, heritage and cultural affairs in this country. The noble Lord, Lord Smith of Finsbury, was right in giving his list of criteria, and I commend them to my noble friend, but I want to make two points.

In 1974, I helped the late Andrew Faulds to found the All-Party Parliamentary Arts and Heritage Group, which has become over the subsequent 38 years the largest group of its kind in Parliament—and I like to think that we have achieved something. We have lobbied Ministers constantly to try to give two things that those involved in the arts need above all others. First, there is the recognition that a little goes a long way in this field; we are not talking vast sums in the context of the national Budget. The other thing is that arts and heritage organisations need a degree of continuity and to be able to plan with some certainty for the future.

A couple of weeks ago we had an excellent debate, which I was privileged to introduce, on the future of English cathedrals. In that debate I called for an endowment fund for English cathedrals, and I commend that suggestion to my noble friend. In all fields of the built visual arts, that sort of endowment fund would produce returns far in excess of the investment. Tourists and visitors to this country are drawn as by a magnet to our arts and our great historic buildings.

In conclusion, I am privileged to chair an organisation called the William Morris Craft Fellowship. We need to encourage in our young in our schools the belief that to do things with the hands is every bit as worthy as to do other things. Indeed, I would say that a degree in media studies does not begin to compare in importance or satisfaction with the creation of a fine piece of sculpture or repairing a great historic building. We need to encourage more of our young people to take up careers in the crafts. I hope that my noble friend, with his manifold responsibilities, will talk to his colleagues in government and say that that ought to be a priority. If we truly believe in apprenticeships, there are no more worthy ones than craft apprenticeships.