Arts and Creative Industries Strategy

Viscount Chandos Excerpts

Thursday 8th December 2022 Lords Chamber

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[Viscount Chandos]

That this House takes note of the case for an arts and creative industries strategy to maintain the United Kingdom’s global leadership within the sector and align the industries’ economic benefits with the Government’s levelling up agenda.

[Viscount Chandos (Lab)]

My Lords, a friend asked me, pleased as I was to have secured this debate, “Why is Parliament giving time to debate the arts while the country faces an economic crisis with the highest inflation for four decades, horrendous NHS waiting lists and a savage war resulting from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine?” I thought that in response I could invoke Sir Winston Churchill, who has been widely quoted as saying, when asked to cut funding for the arts to support the war effort, “Then what would we be fighting for?” Sadly, that quote does not pass the necessary fact-checking test, but in fact Churchill did say at the Royal Academy on 30 April 1938:

“The arts are essential to any complete national life. The state owes it to itself to sustain and encourage them.”


The brave Ukrainian people have perhaps asked the question, “What are we fighting for?”, even if Churchill did not. The National Opera of Ukraine in Kyiv reopened three months after its closure at the start of the war, on 22 May, and has been performing regularly ever since, with 11 performances during December alone. A Lieutenant Butkevych, who attended that first performance in May, said it was

“a symbol that Kyiv, which was surrounded … has reopened its cultural institutions.”

I hope to make the case for why this country should nurture, protect and grow its cultural institutions—first and foremost to complete our national life, but also because they can contribute to restoring the economic growth that is so vital to a prosperous society.

I should declare my interests as set out in the register. In particular, I am a trustee of the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, which has been a significant philanthropic funder of the arts for 60 years; a vice-chair of the world-leading drama school, LAMDA, and a past director of English National Opera. My wife is a trustee of Gainsborough’s House.

ENO has of course been the focus of huge attention over the past month, following the announcement by Arts Council England of its intention to remove it, at five months’ notice, from the list of national portfolio organisations receiving certain funding over the coming three-year period. I have deep personal attachment to ENO: I saw my first opera, aged 9, when it was still at its original base of Sadler’s Wells, and I was taken to its opening night at the Coliseum in 1968. But, more than that, I believe it has consistently and successfully served an audience drawn not just from London but, as visitors, from all over the country and the world—many of whom would not otherwise have access to opera at all, as Lilian Baylis, the founder, always envisaged. At the same time, it has been the most important platform for the career development of British singers, directors and conductors, as well as a vital employer of top orchestral players and technical crew.

There is no opera company in the world that has had a more profound impact on the world of opera, from bringing great composers of the past such as Handel and Janáček back into the mainstream repertoire, to commissioning or performing contemporary composers, from the premieres of Britten’s “Peter Grimes”, a month after the end of the Second World War—that’s what we fought for—and of Mark-Anthony Turnage’s “The Silver Tassie”, the first great opera of the new millennium. It has championed other contemporary composers such as Philip Glass, John Adams and Poul Ruders, whose opera based on Margaret Attwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, performed earlier this year, attracted a buzzing, young and diverse audience.

For a number of reasons, I do not intend to make the rest of my remarks focus unduly on ENO. The other place has held two short debates already, most recently one on Monday initiated by Sir Bob Neill, in which my right honourable friends Margaret Hodge and Harriet Harman spoke powerfully, as did Sir Bob. Only this morning, the Select Committee on DCMS took evidence from Darren Henley, the chief executive of Arts Council England, with ENO taking centre stage. Another reason is that not everybody likes opera. Plenty of classical music lovers and many devotees of theatre do not like it. I believe that the distinguished music critic of the Manchester Guardian and the Guardian, Philip Hope-Wallace, said:

“Opera is possibly the most sublime, certainly the most ridiculous of all art forms”.


“Everyone Needs Opera” was a possibly ill-judged strapline adopted by ENO 30 years ago, guaranteed to annoy the half of the population—or whatever percentage—who agreed that it was a ridiculous art form but not a sublime one.

The arts, though, are a web of interlocking art forms which nourish each other. David Hockney designed some of opera’s greatest sets for Glyndebourne; Sam Mendes made his name as a theatre director, notably at the Donmar, and went on to direct the Oscar-winning “American Beauty” and two James Bond movies; Nicholas Hytner made his name substantially by directing operas for Kent Opera and with his ground-breaking “Xerxes” and “Magic Flute” for ENO.

A friend and colleague, forcing me to admit that I had not been watching much of the World Cup, said “Well, you don’t like football”—not exactly true—“but I don’t like opera. On the other hand”, she went on, “my favourite band is Queen, and Freddie Mercury said that going to the opera for the first time changed his life. He went on to make a recording with the legendary soprano Montserrat Caballé”. This leads down two paths: the importance of access and, as I have already touched on, the interconnection of the arts with the broader creative industries, which represent over £100 billion of gross value added in our economy and at least 2.3 million—around 7%—of the total number of jobs.

This sector, in which the UK can genuinely be described as a world leader, is also one of the fastest growing in the economy. At its roots are the creativity and skills and the people who have in many cases, but not all, developed and honed those skills in the subsidised arts sector. The economic benefits of the wider creative industries and their essential role in fostering tourism are a hugely important and welcome consequence of investing in the arts, but we should never let go of the primary purpose of the arts: to enrich the lives of people and complete our national life.

That should be true for everyone, of every age and background and in every part of the country. Not everybody needs opera, but everyone should have the chance to experience opera, theatre, dance, visual arts, heritage and music, and then be able to enjoy and participate in those art forms they enjoy. This is what lies at the heart of the Arts Council’s mission and that of the DCMS.

This brings me back to the recently announced awards by Arts Council England to the national portfolio organisations and the choices that lie behind them. The nature of the arts and of all the creative industries is dynamic change. It is important to be open to that change but, at the same time, established organisations can have such deeply embedded knowledge, skills and value to their audiences and to the infrastructure and ecology of their art form.

A very careful balance needs to be struck between dynamic change and the preservation and enhancement of what is good and excellent. Within that, a balance has to be struck between accelerating the provision of arts in underserved parts of the country, both on a broad regional basis and in terms of individual areas within these regions, and the protection and enhancement of the UK’s world-leading position in the creative industries. The bewilderment and anger felt by many at the NPO awards raise the question of whether the balance has been fairly and wisely struck.

It is not just the ENO decision, behind which there are exceptionally complex and long-running issues dating back 30 years. There have been many other contradictory or incomprehensible decisions. A world-leading orchestra outside London, the Britten Sinfonia, has had 100% of its funding cut. WNO, which tours England from its base in Cardiff, has lost a third of its funding. Hampstead Theatre and the Donmar have both lost all their grants. These theatres are at the heart of new British writing, with innovative, excellent productions. Glyndebourne Tour, a long-standing partnership with the unsubsidised Glyndebourne festival to bring its work to audiences around the country, has seen its support halved.

Choices will always have to be made and balances struck, whatever the total resources available are, but there is no doubt that the task of striking the balance between cultural levelling up and the promotion of the UK’s world-leading position is massively harder against the background of the 40% real-terms cut in Arts Council England’s grant in aid since the start of Conservative or Conservative-led Governments since 2010, unchanged levels of lottery funding in nominal terms and 40% real-terms reductions in local authorities’ spending on the arts over the same period. Meeting both objectives would clearly be easier with a larger pie to divide. I look to a future Labour Government, still within strong public spending financial discipline, to creatively and innovatively increase spending on the arts—starting by avoiding questionable political vanity projects such as Unboxed.

In the here and now, the division of the pie, however inadequate, is the crux of the matter, and the evidence suggests that it has been done unwisely, unprofessionally and chaotically by Arts Council England, however much the directions from the previous Secretary of State may have been unrealistic and contradictory. Does the Minister have confidence in Arts Council England’s ability to play its role in the light not just of the underlying decisions it has made but of the abysmal level of planning and communications with both affected organisations and the world at large? Will he use every effort to ensure that, at the very least, adequate transitional arrangements are put in place for ENO and all the organisations suffering severe proposed cuts? If necessary, will the Government vary the policy and directions relating to lottery funding to enable it to be used to supplement the grant in aid for core funding? There is no point adhering blindly to the principle of additionality if the heart of arts provision is failing.

It is not clear to me—I held this view even before recent events—that the central Arts Council contributes much, if anything, to the effective distribution of funding. I hope that the future Labour Government will re-examine the case for moving the major national organisations under the responsibility of the department, as has always been the case for major museums, while devolving everything else to reconstituted and empowered regional arts boards, working more closely with metropolitan and regional mayors and local authorities, along the lines of the approach advocated by my right honourable friend Gordon Brown in his report this week.

I look forward to hearing the contribution of other noble Lords speaking today. With their knowledge and eloquence, I believe that the case for the state sustaining and encouraging the arts, as Churchill advocated, will resound not just through Westminster but throughout the country.

--- Later in debate ---

[Viscount Chandos (Lab)]

I thank all noble Lords who have spoken in this debate and the Minister for summing up. I endorse the comments of many noble Lords who welcomed his return to the Front Bench with this portfolio. The richness and breadth of the contributions from the 20 or so speakers are a symbol of the richness and breadth of the creative industries and the arts and culture sector. I have certainly learned a great deal and been challenged to think in a new way about many things.

I mentioned that there had been 20-odd speakers, but my noble friend Lady McIntosh and the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, probably represent the experience of about six people between them, whether as performers, producers or academics.

The Minister picked me up on implying or suggesting that levelling up was in conflict with maintaining our world-leading position. I had meant to make it clearer in my opening remarks that, at least in the medium and long term, I think that they are not in conflict—but in what we are seeing in the clumsy and ill-planned implementation, at the very least, in the short term, there is that danger.

I also wanted to make it clear that this is not about us metropolitan Londoners going out, educating and bringing culture to the north or any other part of the country. As has been mentioned, there are wonderful and long-established institutions all over the country. The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, talked about Sage Gateshead, which is one of the great cultural achievements of the past 25 years, and was very much the initiative of the local community. Indeed, it is two-way traffic; the wonderful Kings Place office building with its two concert halls was the result of a Newcastle property developer, Peter Millican.

I welcome the Minister’s indication that the Secretary of State is pushing—if I understood him correctly—to make the transitional payments available widely to affected organisations and to make them larger and longer, although anything that is transitional rather than ongoing will clearly still be only some small consolation.

The noble Lord, Lord Foster, was I think the first of several noble Lords to mention the absence of the creative industries from the five sectors prioritised in the Autumn Statement. I found that depressing and a bit ominous. This month’s Chancellor was the Secretary of State at the beginning of the coalition Government for what is now DCMS. His ruthless pruning of the departmental budget may have aided his ascent up the slippery pole of his political career, but it did nothing for the sector. That is when so much of the damage was done, whatever modest adjustments there have been to funding more recently.

At the heart of many noble Lords’ concerns is the question of the arm’s-length nature of the Arts Council’s position, and whether it has been dented or breached. I have a different view from my noble friend Lady McIntosh, but I guess I am a bit defeatist, and the reality may be that the arm’s length is not being and will not be maintained, so it is better to acknowledge it by bringing more direct into the department.

I will wind up with one last comment. My noble friend Lord Leong, my newest colleague, said that he sometimes wondered whether he had found himself in Hogwarts. This is my 40th or 41st year in the House, and the only difference is that I know that it is Hogwarts.

Motion agreed.