Contemporary Cultural Boycotts

Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay Excerpts

Thursday 9th July 2026 Grand Committee

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, on securing this debate and thank her and Freedom in the Arts for the work that they have done in highlighting these problems. Above all, as others have done, I thank those individual artists who have come forward to share their experiences. The experience of being marginalised, sidelined and silenced can be lonely and frightening, and I hope they feel a bit less lonely and frightened after today’s debate.

This has been a good debate—rational, articulate and well-informed. We do not all agree on everything, but we have all agreed very strongly about the importance of hearing diverse perspectives and differing opinions. We do so enjoying parliamentary privilege, which allows us to speak freely here. Lots of our arts and cultural organisations do not have the protections of Parliament or the legislative protections that higher education institutions have to preserve free speech, so it is right that we are vigilant in how they are applying their duties.

The noble Lord, Lord Addington, was right about making sure that people are well informed on their legal responsibilities and their founding charters, as well as ensuring that trustees and others take those duties very seriously. Arts organisations have a duty to challenge, provoke and inform us, not to hector, censor or boycott.

The noble Baroness, Lady Dacres of Lewisham, was right to say that, at their best, the arts enable us to see things through others’ eyes. That is why we enjoy them so much and what enriches us when we encounter them. This is particularly important when approaching contested or highly charged issues. For instance, going to a museum or a gallery would give us a different perspective, separated from time and geography, on the question of how other societies have viewed gender roles, and would remind us that conflict in the Holy Land is not a feature of this century alone.

My noble friend Lady Spielman is right to worry about whether the generation coming through the education system and coming to work in the arts will take an illiberal and censorious approach. We are, I think, past what felt like the high watermark of sensitivity readers and authors and others being objected to in writing about things of which they did not have lived experience, but we must remain vigilant on all of this because, if the closing of those minds and those discussions is a loss for us all, it is a particular loss for the generation that is coming through, which needs to be well equipped with critical and inquisitive minds in an age of mis- and disinformation online. They need to see things that challenge them and make them feel uncomfortable.

The noble Lord, Lord Doyle, was right to highlight the pressure on sponsors. I have mentioned previously in Grand Committee that, regrettably, we have seen parliamentarians in both Houses among those boycotting things such as the Hay Festival. We all regret the disappearance of sponsors such as Baillie Gifford. It means fewer, smaller, narrower literary festivals and fewer thoughts for us all.

Noble Lords were right to highlight the silent and sometimes insidious nature of these boycotts, which threaten the enlightenment values that underpin us. My noble friends Lady Meyer and Lady Spielman were right to highlight the importance of dissident and unorthodox voices, which add to our understanding.

Above all, people are right to point to the growing evidence of antisemitism that we see in the arts, as through our whole society. My noble friend Lord Polak was right to say that it is completely wrong to treat all Jewish people as the same or to make them all accountable for the actions of any particular Government of Israel. The powerful Nova Exhibition in Shoreditch, like the extremely powerful museum at Yad Vashem and the Holocaust galleries at the Imperial War Museum, is a way in which the arts can help us understand the terrible atrocities to which this attitude can lead.

As my noble friend Lady Jenkin of Kennington said, freedom in the arts is not a luxury; it is essential to our free society. I am glad that we have been able to highlight these problems today.