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Arts

My Lords, we should all be grateful to my noble friend Lord Bragg for introducing this important and, if anything, somewhat overdue debate. In the few minutes available, I should like to focus at least in part on the arts from an economic viewpoint, as well as from the perspective of their contribution to the long-term survival and even possibly success of our society. In the arts as much as elsewhere, we are living through a time of enormous change. I emphasise that because I believe sincerely that we are entering an era in which access to the arts in all their richness and diversity could be even further transformed, if only we had the vision, as it were, to seize the moment. Much of this transformation is being driven by the extraordinary power of digital technology, which has the capacity to enable the enormous wealth of publicly owned cultural material, particularly that which is locked up in our national moving image and sound archives, to be digitised and made freely available across the internet to any citizen who seeks access to it. The Creative Licence Archive Group, which involves the BBC, the British Film Institute, Channel 4, the Open University, the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council and Teachers TV, is seeking to make publicly owned material available for educational purposes in exactly this way. Such access will enable young people in particular to far better understand and appreciate the richness of our—and their—cultural heritage in ways that were quite unimaginable even a decade ago. There is a generation of young men and women, many of whom, as the noble Baroness, Lady Greenfield, reminded us in a debate in this Chamber recently, rely ever more heavily on the electronic media to connect with the world around them. We may or may not welcome and approve of these developments, but the fact remains that the digitised world is here to stay. We would be mad, quite literally mad, not to draw on its vast potential to enhance understanding and enjoyment of, among other things, the arts. That is not in any way to dispute the importance of experiencing the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra perform Elgar at its home in Symphony Hall, or of viewing contemporary British art at the Baltic, or of enjoying a retrospective of John Grierson’s documentaries at the National Film Theatre. But if we really want to maximise the contribution made by the arts to the well-being of society, we have to recognise and promote changes in the way people can access and learn about them. In many cases, by reason of geographic distance or economic circumstance, people might not be able to afford a trip to the Symphony Hall, the Baltic, or even the NFT. As has been said more than once, this Government have every reason to be proud of their record in enhancing access. I am thinking most particularly of the decision in which my noble friend Lord Smith of Finsbury played a critical role: to abolish admission charges to English national museums and galleries. As noble Lords have heard, since the policy was introduced in 2001, visits to those museums and galleries have increased by over 70 per cent I trust that, in his reply, the Minister will be able to reassure us that we can rely on this bold and inclusive initiative remaining in place. I do not think I would be alone in finding it difficult to understand, let alone to sympathise, with the rationale of any administration—most of all the present one—should they consider reversing this hugely successful policy in the cause of seeking candle-end savings to what used to be termed the ““arts allocation””. Far from retreating from success, I would argue that we need to take similarly bold and radical steps in relation to the digital opportunity I have just referred to. But there is yet another enormous debt that we owe to my noble friend Lord Smith, and that lies in his early recognition that the arts are making an increasing contribution to our economy. In promoting the creative industries as a crucial driver of public policy during his time as Secretary of State, he helped to secure a new and important role for the arts in an economic environment in which value was increasingly becoming realised through the exploitation of imagination as much as through the manufacture of physical goods. The very concept of the creative industries recognises that the arts, whether in the form of design, music, cinema or any number of other cultural forms, generate intellectual property in the shape of copyrights, patents and trademarks which, at their core, have substantial and ongoing economic value. By now the hard facts are reasonably well known, but are none the less well worth repeating: here in the UK the creative industries represent around 8 per cent of GDP and employ some 1.3 million people, over half a million of whom are here in London. They create skilled and highly desirable jobs. They give rise to the dissemination of innovative ideas and knowledge, along with an understanding of concepts which can find their application in a great number of other spheres, many of which—such as computing and engineering—have historically seemed somewhat divorced from even the notion of being cultural activities. The creative industries are also one of the few areas of the economy that have shown pretty consistent growth over the past 10 years. The developments and successes of the recent past should give us the energy and confidence to aggressively promote the arts and the creative industries as the most likely drivers of productivity, skills and—who knows?—even happiness in the global economy of the early 21st century. As I think we have possibly all come to realise, at their best the arts can provide each of us with that increasingly rare emotion, a sense of wonder, along with a far fuller and richer understanding of the complexity of the world that surrounds us. The arts help us to understand and respect difference. Equally, they can prove invaluable in helping to unite us through the illumination of our common experiences of birth, death, love and any number of other aspects of our daily lives. In conclusion, if we have learnt nothing else, surely what we have come to understand over the past 10 years is that, through their ability to exercise our imagination, as my noble friend Lord Bragg set out so eloquently when introducing the debate, the arts provide the key that allows us to unlock value, however we wish to articulate it, in an era in which creativity and innovation will be required to stimulate just about every conceivable form of human development.