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Arts

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, with whose argument I entirely agree, and a privilege to take part in this debate so beautifully begun by my noble friend Lord Bragg. I should begin by declaring a number of interests, as director of Clore Leadership Programme, chairman of the Wordsworth Trust, chairman of the Donmar Warehouse theatre, member of the board of the National Theatre, a trustee of the Poetry Archive, and chairman of the London Cultural Consortium. On 26 October 1963, less than a month before his assassination, President John F Kennedy gave a speech at Amherst in which he said:"““I look forward to an America which will reward achievement in the arts as we reward achievement in business or statecraft. I look forward to an America which will steadily raise the standards of artistic accomplishment and which will steadily enlarge cultural opportunities for all of our citizens. And I look forward to an America which commands respect throughout the world not only for its strength but for its civilisation as well””." Those were fine words, which are applicable not only in America but here in Britain. Excellence in, and engagement with, the arts is one of the central pillars of a civilised society. The arts haunt the imagination; they solace the heart; they tell stories; they explain where we have come from and where we are; they speak to our minds, our hopes, our joys and sorrows, and to our souls. No further case needs to be made for investment in the arts by government. But it can and should be, because as well as doing all that, the arts happen to be able to play a hugely important role in the education of our children, in ensuring that they can fulfil their true potential. The arts happen to be able to play a role in ensuring the health and well-being of people who are struggling against illness. The arts happen to play a hugely important role in the development of our economy. They feed through into the creative sector of the economy, about which my noble friend spoke so highly in opening the debate. It behoves a civilised government to invest properly in the arts. The present Government have a proud record in this respect. From 1999 to 2005, the increasing investment in the arts, year by year, was one of the most important things which this Government were able to achieve. But—I am afraid that it is a big ““but””—this year and next year, that progress will grind to a halt. The funding in cash terms for the Arts Council has been frozen for this two-year period. The Arts Council has managed to do some juggling to keep the show on the road, but that is a temporary solution to the problem. I very much hope that, when the Chancellor comes to think about the spending review next year, the forward progress in funding for the arts will once again be resumed, because cuts in, or freezing of, funding for further years beyond next year will be a disaster for the cultural and creative life of this country. The arts have shown that they can step up to the plate. When I was Secretary of State, one of the serious issues that came to my attention was the parlous condition of regional theatre in this country. Theatre after theatre was at risk of bankruptcy. They were dark for substantial periods of the year. They were forced to put on plays with the smallest possible number of actors and with the least possible artistic integrity. So I managed—I do not quite know how I succeeded—to obtain £25 million from the Chancellor specifically to enhance what regional theatre was able to do. That money was distributed properly and sensibly by the Arts Council, which conducted a thorough review of the needs of each theatre and put the money in. That investment in regional theatre has paid huge dividends. The life of regional theatre is now vibrant. In town after town across the country, civic pride in what their theatre is doing and able to do has increased beyond measure. The feeding-through of the actors, technicians, stage hands and lighting engineers who learn their trade in regional theatre to major national institutions and then into the creative industrial sector in film and television has once again begun. So the arts have shown that it is possible, with a sensible and well judged flow of investment—tiny sums of money in the great compass of government spending—to transform what is possible. Let us learn from that lesson; let us say to the Chancellor and to the Government that, as we look to the future and the next spending review period, the arts need to have not huge sums of money but regular increases in funding to ensure that they can continue to enlighten and enliven our lives and that that civilisation about which John Kennedy so brilliantly spoke can be a tribute to our nation in the way that it has been the past.