Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the finding in the report The State of the Arts, published by Campaign for the Arts and the University of Warwick on 22 July, that the UK has one of the lowest levels of government spending on arts and culture among European countries; and whether they intend to increase funding to local councils for local arts programmes.

The Arts in the UK are funded by a mixture of direct national and local public funding, arm’s length funding, charitable giving, commercial income and tax reliefs but we recognise that all of these income streams have been under extreme pressure in recent years.

For instance, net expenditure on cultural services by local authorities - the largest funder of culture across England - has fallen by 42% in real terms between 2009-10 and 2022-23. Likewise, Arts Council England spent over £700 million in 2023/24 on supporting arts and culture, through a mix of grant-in-aid funding from government and proceeds from the National Lottery. But this was significantly less than in 2010.

We are grateful to the Campaign for the Arts for their work and are carefully examining the report. It is encouraging to read that 91% of adults in England engaged with the arts in person between October 2022 and December 2023, and 77% attended events, but concerning to read the report’s analysis that between 2018 and 2023 there was a 23% fall in the number of music, theatre, dance and comedy events in the UK.

The government will work with arm’s-length bodies and the cultural sector at large to understand their needs and the pressures on culture and creativity in the UK - and work to put them on a more sustainable footing.