Royal Albert Hall Bill [HL]

Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie Excerpts

Thursday 19th October 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie (Con)]

My Lords, I approach this Bill from two angles: the first is from my experience of charity law, as I am the chief executive of a charity and was on the board of OSCR, which is the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator; and the second is my experience in, and love of, the arts. When I worked at English National Ballet, we staged wonderful in-the-round performances at the Royal Albert Hall. I am delighted to see that these productions are still being staged; the very first one, Derek Deane’s “Swan Lake”, which I was involved in when it was first produced in 1997, is coming back in June 2024. It is an unforgettable experience, and I urge noble Lords to book a ticket if they can get one.

Arts and heritage is a tough sector to operate in, particularly in the current climate. It is also an incredibly tough time for charities and, as other noble Lords have said, the Corporation of the Hall of Arts and Sciences, known as the Royal Albert Hall, is a charity and it has chosen to be a charity. In the latest annual report and accounts it declares that its purpose—and I always go back to a charity’s purpose—is to:

“promote the Arts and Sciences as well as to maintain our Grade I listed building, held in trust for the nation”.

I recognise that its royal charter and the various subsequent Royal Albert Hall Acts mean that it is not like other charities, but it is still a charity.

Public benefit is what makes charities different from any other organisation, so surely we should judge any Bill pertaining to the Royal Albert Hall through the lens of whether or not it supports public benefit and enables the corporation to fulfil its purpose to promote the arts and sciences and preserve its building for the nation. Given that, I believe the Royal Albert Hall does need a Bill; I just do not believe that it needs this one.

At the heart of the governance of the hall, as other noble Lords have said, there are huge and unresolved conflicts of interest. As matters currently stand, I do not see that the council, as the noble and learned Lord pointed out, is bound under the current constitution to always act in the interests of the charity, and nor do I see that it properly recognises and manages its conflicts of interest. Both of these are legal requirements for any trustee in any other charitable organisation. I acknowledge, as my noble friend Lady Stowell mentioned, that the council has a conflict of interest policy that is regularly updated—it was last updated in December 2022—and there is a conflicts committee, but in terms of good governance, and on the urging of the Charity Commission, this still reads as though it is marking its own homework.

I also pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Hodgson for his work in trying to resolve these matters, but this Bill seems to be another missed opportunity. We have already mentioned the membership of the council and how those who are not seat-holders will always be outvoted. That constitution has come about because of a historical anomaly, and the scale of influence of seat-holders on decision-making relating to their own private interests is out of step with modern standards of any other charity’s governance.

When the hall was first conceived and built, the model of seat-holders’ contributions was perfectly good. As the hall has developed over the years, it should be congratulated on offering many more performances and hugely expanding its programme. As my noble friend Lord Hodgson mentioned, the 1966 Act recognised the threats posed by ticket touts and banned the sale of tickets within the environs of the hall, but the world has changed since 1871 and since 1966. No one then could have conceived of online ticket sites such as viagogo and there is no way the original seat-holders could have set up a ticket resale site such as hoorahtickets.com or a Facebook group, with over 50,000 members, to maximise profit on their investment.

I have also been checking ticket sites; everybody is obviously having a go at the moment. Apparently, the Last Night of the Proms is indeed going for over £1,000 each. Last week, I could have got a ticket to Ed Sheeran for 650 quid, which sounds like a bargain when there is a report in today’s Telegraph saying that they are going for almost £6,000. These are tickets with a face value of £125 or £200.

People are reselling their tickets in this way when there is a perfectly good official mechanism in place: the ticket-holder return scheme was launched in 1983 to provide a means for seat-holders to resell their tickets back to the hall and give the public the best possible access.

Who does this benefit? The public have to pay more than the face value of the ticket; the organisation loses out on a booking fee and, more concerningly, control of the data of who is in the hall and who they can market to in the future; or the seat-holders, some of whom—not all—seek to maximise financial return for private profit and their right to sell a commercially popular show. As far as I am aware, and I am happy to be corrected, no seat-holder loses money in any year. They receive more from the payment the hall makes to them than the annual contribution they make for the maintenance and enhancement of the hall. Owning the right to use a seat is therefore a very sound financial investment.

I agree with my noble friend Lady Stowell: I am not looking for a Bill that deprives seat-holders of their rights. I have no objection to seat-holders being members of the council or making a profit from their investment, but trustees who have a personal financial interest in the running of any organisation should not be allowed majority sway over that organisation to the extent that we see here, where, I believe, public benefit is compromised. I am not saying that it has been, but its charitable purpose and the maintenance of the building could be neglected.

My issue with the Bill is that, instead of tackling these issues, it just muddies the waters further. It exposes the corporation to significant future risk. I am sorry for going into detail, but I hope your Lordships will forgive me, since we will not have a Committee stage as other Bills do. Specifically, Clause 3 sets the seat-holders’ annual contribution and Clause 4 enables a resolution to be proposed by

“the council; or … not less than twenty members”.

If there is more than one resolution, Clause 4 allows for just

“the resolution with the highest number of votes in favour”

to be valid. For me, this Bill not only fails to deal with issues of conflict of interest but enables greater influence for the seat-holders of the organisation.

As my noble friend mentioned, Clause 5 seeks to increase members’ numbers, with powers to add seats to the boxes. This adds to my impression—which may not be backed up by evidence, but in charity governance the impression given is what is important—that the seat-holders are manipulating the legislation for their own benefit, not necessarily that of the hall or the public.

As for most other arts organisations, the financial reserves of the organisation have already been used up and are in deficit thanks to Covid and higher maintenance bills. The members, while an important source of income, do not keep the hall running on their own: the corporation relies on fundraising from major donors, trust foundations, corporates and individuals, just like any other charity. I accept that it receives no regular public subsidy, but, as others have mentioned, it received a £20 million Covid loan through the culture recovery fund, and its accounts show that it receives other grants from time to time. I do not know how the executive can confidently plan for and run an organisation for public benefit when a minority of members can change the rules at any point to suit their own financial interests.

Finally, I hope that your Lordships will look at amendments to the Bill to address some of these issues. It does no good for public trust and confidence in the charity sector, nor for the authority of the Charity Commission, for these issues to remain unaddressed. But I am aware of the little time we have left in this Session. I am also chilled by the comments that I read by the president of the council, who has written to members to state that the charity would

“resist changes that we think would be detrimental to the”

private “interests of members”, and that the charity could withdraw the Bill

“if its terms become unacceptable to us”.

I add my thanks to my noble friend Lord Harrington of Watford, not only for the time that he has given to all us gadflies, as I think we are now termed, but for his service on the board of the hall. However, I hope that he and the Minister will agree that it would not be to the benefit of the public—nor, I believe, true to the original vision of the founders of the hall—if the Bill were to pass as it stands and we were to miss yet another opportunity to deal with the conflicts of interest arising out of the current governance arrangements of the hall.