Regional Support for the Arts

Susan Elan Jones Excerpts

Wednesday 15th July 2015 Westminster Hall

[Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Rosindell. I thank the hon. Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick) for securing what has been an excellent debate. He made the point that although it is not a question of London versus the rest, there are important issues about how the arts are funded outside London and the metropolitan areas. He spoke with passion about the need for a provincial revival in the arts, and mentioned the great new Labour innovation of free access to museums. He even mentioned Jennie Lee, which of course was music to many people’s ears. It was a very good speech.

I congratulate my very musical hon. Friend the Member for Workington (Sue Hayman). There are not too many Members who walk through the Division Lobbies with copies of “Zadok the Priest” and suchlike. She spoke interestingly about the dedication of volunteers and about the Carnegie theatre in her constituency. A number of us will have examples of Carnegie-type philanthropy in our constituencies, and that is an interesting model for the encouragement of more philanthropy outside metropolitan areas. My hon. Friend’s speech was excellent, with many great ideas for west Cumbria.

The hon. Member for Kensington (Victoria Borwick) made a strong speech in support of the museums in her constituency and understandably put the case for London. We should of course have arts for all, not just the few. We are all proud of our outstanding London institutions, but the debate has highlighted the need for proper funding for the regions, too—the simple principle that everyone in the United Kingdom should be able to experience and participate in excellent cultural and artistic activities. We can all think of examples, and I would not want to forget the Rhos male voice choir’s tremendous victory on Saturday in the Llangollen international musical eisteddfod in my constituency, coming as it did on the back of three national eisteddfod victories. Incidentally, those victories were all secured while I was their Member of Parliament, although I suspect that that had nothing to do with it.

Sometimes we may feel that not only have the Government ignored and neglected the arts community; they have done nothing for the arts in regions that have suffered from Arts Council budget cuts and from the sustained squeeze on local authority funding. The Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport, which the Culture Secretary chaired, recognised:

“London has long received a disproportionate share of arts funding”.

Arts Council budgets and direct spending from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport go disproportionately to London, so arts outside the capital, in the regions and nations of the UK, need more support. The challenge is to rebalance without damaging the cultural super-cluster of London. Our vibrant arts institutions in London must thrive, but more needs to be done to improve provision across the country.

What are the sources, then, of arts funding? The biggest subsidisers of art are the artists themselves, who often work for little or nothing, for love of the art. Apart from that, the sources are national and local government, sales and philanthropy. The figure for giving to the arts by individual philanthropists that goes to London-based organisations is variously quoted as around 82% to 90%. When the Government started cutting arts budgets, they set up the Catalyst Arts programme to strengthen the sector’s fundraising experience. The rather forlorn hope was that increased private giving would compensate for the cuts. I think we all know that it has not. Unfortunately for the regions, funding from that programme has gone disproportionately to London.

I want to talk now about national funding. In October 2013, a group of regional arts professionals produced a report called “Rebalancing Our Cultural Capital”, which detailed the distribution of DCMS, Arts Council England and lottery money between London and the rest of the country. It said that Londoners got £70 per head each year in funding from DCMS and through Arts Council England, and the rest of the country got only £4.60 per head. That is a ratio of 14:1. Arts Council England announced its funding distribution for the period 2015 to 2018, and the balance for funded organisations—national portfolio organisations—will be 53% outside London and 47% in London. That is only a 2% shift since the period 2012 to 2015.

Lottery funding for the arts is spent 70% outside London and 30% in London. In his first speech, Darren Henley, the chief executive of Arts Council England, announced that he aimed to increase the 70% figure to 75% by the end of 2018. That is all welcome, but it feels like small beer. Nevertheless, the Arts Council has woken up to the problem and is slowly changing. It should be congratulated on doing so in the face of what could be considered neglect and a little forgetfulness, to say the least—if not ignorance—on the part of the current Government.

As to the lottery, there should be more transparency about where its tickets are bought. I know that some people feel that tickets bought in poor areas are subsidising arts in rich areas. In reality, that suspicion will be dispelled only by the disinfectant of sunlight. We need more transparency, without treading on commercial sensitivity and harming business. It is perfectly possible to do that, and it is the right thing to do.

Direct funding from the DCMS often goes disproportionately to institutions in London. The National Gallery, the British Museum, the Tate and so on are hugely important to our country, and they are one of the things that make London the great cultural super-cluster that it is today. The city attracts millions of tourists, and those places are fantastic and preserve the cultural inheritance of our wider country. Thanks to Labour’s introduction of free entry to museums in 2001, that inheritance is open to everyone. Visitor numbers at some museums have rocketed up by more than 250%. We are justifiably proud of that as a nation. Nevertheless, the money goes disproportionately to London. That can even lead to the absurd situation of Conservative councils in the capital spending nothing—literally nothing —on the arts, while enjoying museums and galleries paid for by the nation.

All that means that in many areas of the country the only public funding for the arts comes from local authorities. The junior Minister present is often very polite in what he says, but even he sometimes blames the neglect of regional arts on local councils. Why does he not talk to his colleagues in the Department for Communities and Local Government, let alone the councils themselves? Why has he not offered help to local councils making these difficult decisions? Why have Government cuts to local government fallen so disproportionately on the most deprived in our country? I know he will have a lot to say about that in his summing up.

I am sure that the Minister will talk about a few million pounds for pet projects here or there. In fact, we have grown used to the cultural baubles that get thrown into the autumn statements and Budgets. The problem is that the Chancellor sometimes likes to give with one hand while taking far more with the other. He likes to give money for cherry-picked projects while cutting local authority and Arts Council funding. Sometimes he likes to choose who gets the arts funding and who does not, sidelining the Arts Council and local people. That is clearly a problem.

We know that the junior Minister does his best—he gets to a fair number of gallery openings and other events —but sometimes one wonders whether he is ignored by the rest of his Government, with the Education Secretary notoriously warning that for children to study arts subjects could

“hold them back for the rest of their lives”.

She is giving a speech at the Creative Industries Federation event tomorrow morning, and I suspect that she has a bit to apologise for. Indeed, we wondered whether she was scared in some way of her Government’s record. There is currently no formal requirement for arts and culture education in schools, which is deeply concerning. A number of schemes introduced by the Labour Government to improve access have been cut, which has led to the number of primary school children taking part in music, for example, dropping from 55% in 2010 to 36% in 2013.

If we go back in history, we remember the story—it is one of my favourites—of the young George Frideric Handel going into his attic to learn to play the clavichord, because his father did not want him to become a musician. The young Handel managed to learn and do rather well—it came, I suppose, from being a musical prodigy—but most of us are not musical prodigies. Children need to experience and participate in culture and creativity to foster the next generation of creatives, audiences and citizens. However, the Conservatives’ narrowing of the curriculum has led to state school pupils taking fewer art and design subjects. We need Government action, because the alternative is to presume that everyone is a Handel-style prodigy.

This ripples up the rest of the chain, harming the whole of the workforce and the economy. There were only 1,000 apprenticeship starts in the creative industries in 2013-14—the lowest of all sectors, despite it being one of the fastest growing in our economy. For this Government do not govern in the interests of the whole nation; they are not really “one nation”. What many of us fear is a society where some people have access to culture and others do not—that is deeply damaging—and where some areas have world-class museums while contributing little or nothing and others have nothing but the Chancellor’s whim. That is not only unfair; it is holding us back. It is holding back the fastest growing part of our economy, limiting the well-paid, rewarding jobs of the future and diminishing our voice on the world stage. I urge this Minister and the Government of which he is a part to live up to the rhetoric and do more to provide regional support for the arts.