Funding for the Arts

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Tuesday 13th September 2016 Westminster Hall

[Mr Edward Vaizey (Wantage) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to appear under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. In fact, it is the first time in six years that I have appeared in order to propose a motion in Westminster Hall, so you can put that on your already extremely distinguished CV. It is also a great pleasure to talk about the arts, which has been a passion of mine all my life and has been—

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

Order. The right hon. Gentleman actually has to move the motion.

[Mr Vaizey]

I am already moved, but I will move the actual motion. I beg to move,

That this House has considered funding for the arts.

Thank you for pointing that out, Mr Hollobone, and emphasising how out of touch and rusty I am at speaking from the Back Benches.

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[Mr Vaizey]

One of the things we wanted to do in the culture White Paper, which I published before I left the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, was to take forward a partnership with local councils showing how the arts and heritage play a huge role in place-making and how different funding streams—not just the core funding stream from Department for Communities and Local Government or via the Arts Council—could help to support arts organisations. There is a lot we can do. Things like the UK capital of culture programme, for example, are great ways of galvanizing local authorities into taking their arts and heritage more seriously, but there are still bad news stories. For example, I was depressed to learn this week that Walsall is thinking of closing the New Art Gallery Walsall, which I regard as a great cultural institution.

I do not want to be a backseat driver. I wanted to use this debate to praise our arts and heritage sectors and what they have achieved, and to look briefly forward at what can be achieved in the future. Last week the Minister announced the museums review. That is a great opportunity to put our national museums, and some of our key regional museums, on a secure footing and to make absolutely clear what the relationship is between central Government and our national and regional museums and also what central Government are prepared to fund as core support and what they would expect national and regional museums to raise for themselves. Similarly, with the review of the Arts Council and other organisations that may take place shortly, I hope the Minister will think deeply about the core level of funding that the arts and heritage should receive.

A new Government, with fresh Ministers and renewed energy, have a chance to put arts and heritage funding on a secure and core footing. I am not asking for the earth. I am not asking for a 100% increase in core arts and heritage funding. A small and modest increase would not only make a significant difference to the arts and heritage; perhaps more importantly, it would stand, as the words of the then Chancellor showed in last year’s autumn statement, as an extraordinary vote of confidence in some of the greatest organisations we will find anywhere in the world, and that vote of confidence would be repaid many times over.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

This is an hour-long debate, so we are due to finish at 5.30 pm. The guidelines are that the SNP Front Bench is allowed five minutes, Her Majesty’s Opposition are allowed five minutes, the Minister is allowed 10 minutes and then Ed Vaizey is allowed three minutes to sum up the debate at the end. Therefore, I want to call the Front-Bench speakers no later than seven minutes past 5 and there are three Members seeking to speak, so I am going to impose a time limit of six minutes, which will ensure that everyone gets in.

The first speaker is going to be Deidre Brock. I have had a nice note from the SNP Whips Office, and I think she is dangerously over-qualified to speak because it says that she

“was formerly the Deputy Provost responsible for Arts and Tourism on the City of Edinburgh Council, and is a former actor.”

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[Thangam Debbonaire]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for reminding me of the figures. The Labour Government made arts and arts investment a real priority.

I will give a few examples of where arts investment goes and what it does in my constituency. Ujima is a community radio station with extraordinary reach. It touches the subjects that other radio stations go nowhere near. It has some public funding, but also generates a lot of its own income and does its own work. On Saturday, it was given a fantastic and well-deserved award by the Community Media Association.

Many people in Bristol know the Watershed as somewhere to go for coffee or to see a film. They may not realise that behind the doors is the Pervasive Media Studio, where artists go to collaborate, create something new and discover together. Very often, although not always, that collaboration turns into something commercial. Sometimes, it leads to a piece of theatre that needs more public investment, but sometimes it leads to something that can actually make money. I was privileged to visit the Pervasive Media Studio and to literally get my hands on one of its new inventions, which looks like a football with many sides, but is actually a musical instrument that DJs can use in nightclubs—something that I know nothing about. Apparently I got the hang of it really quickly, or maybe they were just flattering me.

Public investment helps the commercial sector. I always fall back on the “Skyfall” example. A colleague in the National Theatre pointed out to me a while ago that, although that is a commercial film, the lead characters and the director—Sam Mendes, Judi Dench and Daniel Craig—started out in publicly invested theatre. Sam Mendes did not just wake up one morning and decide to make “Skyfall”. He had been doing lots of other things, thanks to public investment.

I need to mention—the right hon. Member for Wantage knows that I will—the consequences of no public funding. He and other hon. Members have mentioned local authorities that have made huge cuts, but local councillors talk to me about dealing with the impact of cuts to central Government grants. When many local authorities serving deprived communities are faced with a difficult decision between the arts and the high cost of child protection, housing needs or other needs, they will cut the arts.

Now, I do not like that, the right hon. Member for Wantage does not like that and I am pretty sure that the Minister will not like it, but we need to face reality and accept the fact that local government and central Government grants have an impact. The right hon. Member for Wantage argued against ring-fenced funding. I get that argument, but there is a consequence when we cut Department for Communities and Local Government funding.

The Centre for Economics and Business Research has evaluated the impact of arts and culture on the economy, and it is massive. The arts and culture industries are so often more productive than other industries and, as well as generating economic value, they generate joy. I can testify to something that other hon. Members have mentioned—the value of arts in health and wellbeing. When I was being treated at Southmead hospital last year, I was privileged to see the cathedral to health that has been created there, and how much art and culture was built into the fabric of the building. There are works of art, changing exhibitions and a grand piano at which a variety of musicians play all sorts of wonderful music, which uplifted me in moments when otherwise I felt very down.

The public investment that we put into the arts more than earns its keep economically, through social aspects and wellbeing, and through regeneration of deprived areas, which is something that I have not mentioned, but for which there is a great deal of evidence. It is important that we take notice of workers’ terms and conditions, and recognise that public funding for the arts should be seen as an investment that has huge commercial opportunities when properly supported. We need to stop thinking about art as a subsidy.

Art, for my money, should truly be for everybody. As Jennie Lee said in her first arts White Paper way back in the ’60s—and I am pretty sure that the right hon. Member for Wantage said something similar in his White Paper—art, and our support for it as public citizens, should truly be for everybody. It enriches us, lifts us up and helps us to make something better out of the world we live in.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

We now come to the first of the Front-Bench spokesmen. The guideline is five minutes for the Scottish National party, five minutes for Her Majesty’s Opposition, and the remaining time for the Minister, with three minutes for Ed Vaizey at the end.