Arts: Funding

Lord Puttnam Excerpts

Thursday 3rd February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Puttnam]

My Lords, it happily falls to me to warmly congratulate my noble friend Lady Bakewell on a wonderful maiden speech. The fact that it was knowledgeable and eloquent was no surprise at all, but it was a tremendous bonus that she allowed us into the background to her achievement. It speaks volumes for your Lordships’ House that in their time both the noble Baroness and my noble friend Lord Bragg, who I am happy to see is in his place, have respectively and respectfully been described as the “thinking person’s crumpet”—no Andy Gray moment for me. I was reminded of that last week when, during her introduction, I glanced across at a packed Bishops’ Bench to see what I can only describe as a group of men glowing with anticipation at her arrival. I am sure that the rest of us felt similarly and I hope that we will hear from her much more and at much greater length over the coming years.

I, too, am extremely grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, for securing this timely debate. I should begin by declaring an interest as chair of the altogether excellent Sage Gateshead and as president of the Film Distributors’ Association.

Aneurin Bevan, when drawing attention to the capacity of Governments to pursue counterproductive policies in moments of crisis, famously observed in 1945:

“This island is made mainly of coal and surrounded by fish. Only an organising genius could produce a shortage of coal and fish at the same time”.

Today, at a time when this island is in desperate need of every scrap of creative energy and imagination, it would require a very particular genius to fail to support and nurture both. The fulcrum around which originality leading to the development of intellectual property is based—the coal and iron of the 21st century—is access to and enjoyment of the arts; that is to say, all of the arts and for all of the people.

On 18 March 1998, I had the privilege of introducing a debate in this House to call attention to the importance of the arts in the life of the nation. During that debate, I suggested:

“The arts are an essential element of the cultural and creative lifeblood of any nation. They sustain the conscience and vitality of a society. One measure of any community wishing to regard itself as truly civilised is the quality and depth of its artistic achievement … Even in the most enlightened state, there will never be enough funding for the arts”.—[Official Report, 18/3/98; cols. 717-19.]

That was the challenge that I set out for the then newly minted Labour Government. Despite the enormous changes that we have witnessed in the world of art and culture since that debate, some things have not changed. I continue to stand by my assertion in that debate that, if we want the arts, we find a way of paying for them. For a society such as ours to consider itself civilised, there is, to echo one of the coalition’s favourite phrases, simply no alternative.

During the past 20 years, successive and extremely engaged Secretaries of State consistently sought to expand access to and participation in all forms of the arts, to the benefit of audiences and creators in every discipline right across the UK. At the same time, these policies sought to bring together the arts with education in new and innovative ways. As they did so, it became generally accepted that the type of skills fostered by engagement with the arts—among them, self-confidence, empathy and teamwork—have a value both for the individual’s self-development and for nurturing our sense of connection to others.

This sea change was made possible by combining a sufficiency of funding with a series of strategic interventions designed to maximise the value of that funding and connect it with the widest possible range of audiences and creators, while all the time seeking to raise the bar for artistic and cultural excellence.

Free admission to our wealth of museums and galleries was just one way in which the then Government sought to achieve this. So popular and successful has that policy proved that even the coalition has come to the reluctant conclusion that it dare not touch it. According to the National Museum Directors’ Conference, in 2008-09 24 million people visited just our national museums; that is, a 70 per cent increase in 10 years.

The enhanced popularity of our museums has also had a very positive impact on tourism, now accounting for eight out of the top 10 visitor attractions here in the UK. At the same time, there was also an early recognition of the power of digital technologies massively to increase access to the arts and to allow people to create, share and re-use artistic ideas in ways that were previously quite undreamt of.

A year ago, when it came to the arts, we had a very great deal to be proud of, but, in the space of barely nine months, I am afraid that the coalition has managed to undo or at least put in jeopardy many of the most effective achievements of the past decade. I regret that time does not permit one to list the full extent of them.

Of course, we all recognise the financial challenges that the nation faces, even if many of us on these Benches reject the coalition’s rather broad-brush and cynically inaccurate explanation of how we came to find ourselves in our present position. Self-evidently, the arts and culture more generally are not and cannot stay immune from the financial pressures that are being brought to bear, most particularly on the public sector. But what I find truly egregious is the arbitrary and ill thought through way in which many of the cuts are being implemented, seemingly devoid of any meaningful attempt to assess their likely impact or, indeed, the value of individual initiatives, the roots of which are being hacked away at. I fear for the arts. I fear for the ill considered impact of cuts on UK tourism, on UK jobs, on UK education, on this country’s sense of self-confidence and on the sustainability of its future as a culturally vibrant nation.