Arts

Viscount Chandos Excerpts

Thursday 1st February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Chandos (Lab)]

My Lords, I join noble Lords in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Bragg, for securing this debate, his powerful introduction and, as so well expressed by my noble friend Lady McIntosh, his exceptional contribution to this country’s cultural and artistic life.

I had the privilege of introducing a debate on a similar subject a year or so ago. Depressingly but unsurprisingly, little has changed for the better since. The real reduction in public funding for the arts has continued to squeeze all institutions while the Arts Council stumbles on in its attempt to distribute that inadequate funding in the context of admittedly incoherent directions from the Government. All the while and against the odds, artists of all disciplines in this country daily create miracles of inspired excellence. So, are we wasting our breath today? I was encouraged last night when talking to the chair of one of the most important artistic institutions in the country, from outside London. He welcomed our debate, saying that: “Nobody else advocate for the arts—least of all the Arts Council”.

I declare my interest in the register as a vice-chair of LAMDA. I strongly endorse the arguments made by the noble Lord, Lord Bragg, and every other speaker about the vital importance of the arts, directly and indirectly, to our lives. I will make two brief points.

The noble Lord, Lord Bragg, highlighted the huge divergence in the teaching of music and the performing arts in the state and independent school sectors. I see this vividly through the more than 120,000 drama exams conducted by LAMDA worldwide every year. While LAMDA, as a world-leading drama school, already draws its students from a broadly representative cross-section of society and works hard to improve that further, its exams are overwhelmingly taken by students from independent schools—a vivid but depressing illustration of the rundown of arts teaching in state schools. My right honourable friend Sir Keir Starmer’s commitment to the Labour Party promoting oracy through state schools is a light at the not-too-distant end of the tunnel.

I hope that the Minister will not again insult the intelligence of your Lordships in winding up by presenting small nominal increases in funding for the arts and shrugging off the savage inflationary cost increases suffered by all arts institutions. Since the start of the Conservative and Conservative-led Governments, public funding has been cut by over 30% in real terms.

A year ago, I suggested that the additionality required for funding from the lottery might be relaxed and that the doubling of distributions to good causes promised by the new lottery franchisee could be used to compensate in part for the real-terms reduction in the Arts Council grant in aid. By coincidence, today is the first day of the new lottery franchise, yet the new franchisee has already talked about struggling to match previous years’ distribution and a delay in any increase. Does the Minister agree that the award of the franchise to Allwyn by the Gambling Commission appears to have been based on a false prospectus? If, as is now predicted, lottery funding for the arts and other good causes does not meet the original projections on which the franchise was awarded, will the Government make up the difference through an increase in the grant in aid?