Arts

Lord Kinnock Excerpts

Thursday 1st February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kinnock (Lab)]

My Lords, I am very pleased to follow the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, who continues to delight us musically and in every other way.

We take the arts for granted. I therefore warmly thank my noble friend Lord Bragg, who has done more than just about anyone else to demystify and popularise the arts in our country. That certainly matters because he is giving us a timely prompt—a spur—to our awareness in order to overcome our collective complacency; I mean the whole nation, not just this House.

Creativity in the arts and sciences, often fused in technology, is the sustainable raw material of modern times. We now need exploration and innovation as the means of maintaining life itself. Of course, they need funding; philanthropy is therefore invaluable. But society—certainly civilised society—should not depend on charitable largesse, especially when public investment in the arts magnetises and enables private investment. It pulls in rather than crowding out.

Public funding for creativity is therefore essential for the human spirit and for community cohesion and pride. However, crucially, the arts are also an economic cornucopia. Using a definition of “the arts” that is narrower than that employed by DCMS, last November’s McKinsey report, Assessing the Direct Impact of the UK Arts Sector, showed that, in 2022, there were 139,000 arts enterprises and 63,000 voluntary arts organisations. Some 95% of those professional enterprises were sole traders or small businesses; the other 5% included the BBC, which is the biggest single employer of musicians in the UK. The arts employed 970,000 people, including 350,000 self-employed, and generated revenues of £140 billion, tax receipts of more than £50 billion and gross value added of £49 billion. Local authority provision is an essential and substantial component of those totals—it is a keystone in the cultural arch—but, as the House knows, with £20 billion-worth of cuts to central funding since 2010, councils everywhere have pared back all non-statutory provision.

The effects on creative activities have been severe and, in some cases, ruinous. Such cuts in central funding are gross, short-sighted and socially, educationally and economically counterproductive. They impoverish lives, communities and the future. They inhibit individual opportunity, stunt aspiration and diminish global Britain. Despite that, so many creative people still valiantly respond to the adversity of cuts as a challenge to fresh inventiveness, rather than a defeat; they give so much more than they take. I wish them well and I want them to know that, although they are certainly underfunded, they are valued and not forgotten. A creative compact with the arts will come with a Labour Government, and the sooner the better.