Regional Arts and Culture

Nicholas Brown Excerpts

Tuesday 4th February 2014 Westminster Hall

[Mr Nicholas Brown (Newcastle upon Tyne East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham) in the debate. Let me quickly put a word for opera houses in London, of which I am very fond.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Caton. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) on the way he introduced this well attended debate, which has struck a chord with hon. Members from all parties. It is striking that every hon. Member who has taken part has made the good point, which I endorse, that this debate should not be about London versus the regions.

I was not surprised by the findings of the report, “Rebalancing our Cultural Capital”. It is right and proper that particular funding is provided to important institutions of national and international standing and it is logical that those will be located in the capital, but that point only goes so far. I was genuinely surprised by the extent of the funding and the ratio of £69 per head spent on the arts from all sources in London, compared to the £4.60 for the rest of the country, a ratio of 15:1, or 14:1, as my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Alison Seabeck) said.

I welcome the Select Committee inquiry. If these figures are contested by the Mayor of London or the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), or whoever, it is right that the facts are established, but I suspect that this report will not be far off the mark. Its authors have reflected carefully on the implications of their finding and have come up with a number of modest, sensible, workmanlike proposals. I hope that the Minister agrees at least to consider them and see if they are workable. The report recommends that, of the different funding streams administered by the Arts Council—the money from the Department, the Arts Council and the national lottery—the national lottery segment is hypothecated, at least in part, to a specific fund dedicated to the non-London part of England; in other words, to regional arts.

When one takes into account the private sector funding, 82% of which is spent in London, with the remaining 18% spent in the rest of the country, the thrust of the expenditure pattern is all too clear. The proposal in the report is modest and is all the more justified when we look at who is contributing into the lottery. Some 56% of households in the north-east region play the lottery. In London, the region with the lowest participation in percentage terms, 32% of households play the lottery. So it is possible to win the lottery without playing it: all you have to do is move to London. If the figures in the report are right, it is fair to find some way of altering the balance.

Let me make a plea for the north-east. We were able to get the Sage, one of the most wonderful concert halls—similar to the symphony hall that the people of Birmingham have—which is acoustically accurate and designed for the performance of great music, but it costs money to bring orchestras of worldwide distinction to venues of this kind and to the north-east of England. If we could have a little fund that would make up the difference between the amount of money that one can reasonably get from the sale of tickets and the cost of providing the orchestral concerts, that would go an enormous way to bringing the Sage building back to its original intended purpose and would boost the arts in the north-east of England.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Vaizey]

The hon. Lady is not being facetious in the slightest, but it is important to understand that Arts Council England is based on the arm’s length principle. The shadow culture Minister said that I cannot hide behind the Arts Council’s skirts, but what is her position? Will there be a fundamental change of policy by the Labour party? There have been rumours that Labour would cancel all funding for the big five, the Royal Opera House and the Royal Shakespeare Company and redistribute that money around the regions. Is that what Labour would do? It is all right to moan, but she really must come up with an alternative policy. Is it her position to direct Arts Council funding or to direct funding per head in the regions? What is the Labour party’s position? It is about to be explained.

[Mr Nicholas Brown]

It is. The Labour party’s position is most certainly not as set out by the Minister. I am enjoying his speech, but it is unfair to the hon. Member for Warrington South (David Mowat) not to give him the direct answer that he was hoping for.

[Mr Vaizey]

I feel that I did give him a direct answer. I explained that the chair of Arts Council England had said that things were going well, but could always do better, that the message has been heard loud and clear and that judgment should be made in two years’ time.

I will not support the recommendation from Patrick Diamond, the former adviser to the previous Labour Prime Minister, to close the British Museum and move it outside London, probably costing several billion pounds. I will also not support Labour’s proposals to stop funding the big five. [Interruption.] The shadow culture spokesperson is going to rule that out.