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.
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.
My Lords, it is a privilege to follow my noble friend’s speech, which was extraordinarily powerful and very moving. We are in his debt for securing this debate and for the case he made for creating a cultural strategy that can serve to lift the spirits as well as the economy. I agree with every word he said.
My noble friend’s argument was cast, rightly, against the background of the furore against the Arts Council settlement and, in particular, the decision to redistribute £50 million away from London and into other parts of the country. Of course, the context for this is pretty toxic in itself: a decade of funding cuts that have starved local as well as national culture, a pandemic that cut the arteries of culture and a period of political opportunism. Frankly, our cultural life has never felt more precarious or more precious.
Within this context I will focus on opera, not because it is a narrow aspect of the decision but because it illustrates the widest and broadest implications of what has happened and the decision in relation to English National Opera. I find it not just extraordinary and damaging on its own terms but symptomatic of a deep confusion in the Arts Council’s objectives and expectations. Culture succeeds best when it is embedded strategically and grown from seed, rather than imposed.
There is also a more recent contradiction, which thrives in the absence of a strategic plan for culture: the erosion of the boundaries between what government wants and what arm’s-length bodies—ALBs—are there to do. We are in a new landscape, and one of its features is that arts and heritage have taken on a new attraction for government as the light brigade of levelling up. I ought not to be against this—it could be an epiphany—because for years we have argued for the unique capacity of arts and heritage to make, remake and renew places, skills, resilience, jobs and identity, and this seems to have finally got through to government. On the other hand, this new use of patronage carries huge risks of loss of independence and integrity, and it is this conflicted nature that the Arts Council and other ALBs are well aware of.
My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Viscount on securing this debate and share very much his view on the importance to our national life and economy of the arts and the creative industries, on which I will concentrate. After all, their economic contribution alone is bigger than the oil, gas, aerospace, life sciences and automotive sectors combined.
I believe that any strategy to ensure that we sustain and build on successes to date must encompass many issues, from digital infrastructure and finance to intellectual property and skills. Your Lordships’ Communications and Digital Committee, on which I serve, is considering all these issues and will report early in the new year.
My fear is that there is complacency within the Government at the present time. In the Chancellor’s 17 November Statement, the creative industries were not one of the five areas for growth that he listed. Publication of the Government’s “sector vision” has been delayed, and there appears to be limited cross-departmental working to address the cross-cutting challenges faced by the sector. The DCMS alone cannot address all the challenges faced by the creative industries. For example, BEIS has oversight of the apprenticeship scheme, yet it is poorly designed for SMEs, which make up the majority of the creative sector; the DfE oversees careers advice in schools, which currently does little to promote the sector as offering exciting job opportunities; and the Home Office oversees an immigration process that hinders international collaboration and stopped the flow of talent from the EU previously used to help the sector.
Yet another department is responsible for local government. The LGA has just published its Cornerstones of Culture report, pointing out that councils are the biggest funders of culture nationally. They spend £2.4 billion a year in England alone on culture and related services, with benefits such as creating jobs, underpinning local economies, contributing to levelling up and supporting the creative industries. But local government funding is once more under threat.
My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Viscount for securing this debate. I am even more grateful to him—although I did not realise it at the time—for allowing me to say that it was in preparation for this debate that I found myself on Saturday night at the opera in Naples, where they take their opera very seriously. The performance of “Don Carlos” started at 7 pm and finished just before midnight. Opera does of course lift the soul—and at the moment one can do with that.
I take the opportunity to congratulate the extraordinary Wasfi Kani, who raised the money and built a new opera house, starting I think in 2017, for Grange Park. She had no public funding; she went knocking on doors and got the money. Through Pimlico Opera, she also takes opera into prisons, where it has an extraordinary effect on the inmates. I am not sure how musical they were when they started, but they are a lot better when they finish.
I should declare an interest as the chairman of the Association of Leading Visitor Attractions. I want to interpret this debate in the widest possible way, because the arts and creative industries operate in a holistic manner—they all feed off each other. Even the remarkable success of our video games industry depends on having people who can soak up what goes on in music, the arts and the creative world generally.
Like the noble Lord, Lord Foster, I congratulate the Government on what they did with funds such as the Culture Recovery Fund, in looking after our arts and culture during the period of the pandemic. But the problems remain. According to the Society of Independent Theatres, theatre ticket sales this year will be £845 million lower than they were before the pandemic. That is a lot of money if you are trying to run a theatre on a proper basis.
Classical music, in particular, is the real victim because it would appear that the older audience, who tend to be the ones who go to classical concerts, simply have not come back after the pandemic. There is a genuine threat to some orchestras, particularly in London, where we are blessed to have several, but also in the regions. So, I beg the Minister to contemplate what might be done to help the classical music industry.
My Lords, I too must express my gratitude to my noble friend for allowing us to debate this very important issue. Mention has been made, lavish mention, of the opera as an art form and of lavish places where opera has been given to the people, even sometimes at marathon length. The night before last, I was present in Birmingham Town Hall to listen to some operatic singers. I am the patron of the Black British Classical Foundation, which seeks to find ways for artists of colour to enter the rarefied world of classical music. Five finalists in an awards evening were truly stunning in the range of material they sang, all ably supported by the phenomenal qualities of the Welsh National Opera orchestra. So, my recent experience has touched base with some of the things that have been said, but in a humbler and more demanding way for someone like myself, who is not naturally in tune with opera at all. I like the songs.
Like the noble Lord, Lord Foster—I call him my noble friend—I am a member of the Communications and Digital Select Committee, which is focusing on the creative industries aspect of this debate. It is said that this country is among the world leaders in the field of innovation and the technology that stands behind the creative industries, but one committee interviewee after another kept reminding us that we are in danger of losing our top spot because of developments in other countries and a fragmentation of support. That fragmentation is important to note. Lots of things happen, but in a very diverse and unconnected way. We have been promised throughout this calendar year, for example, the sector vision to which my noble friend referred. Again and again, and of course with a different Minister enunciating the delay each time, the sector vision has been put off. We are now promised that it will be issued early in 2023. Perhaps this debate should happen all over again when that sector vision report has been published; it will afford us material that we can look at in a co-ordinated way. All I hope is that when it is eventually published, it will meet the criterion set out in the original vision: to
My Lords, this is a timely and important debate. I congratulate the noble Viscount on obtaining it and on his powerful opening speech. Like many others, I shall focus on music.
A government strategy for the music sector might have been less necessary in the past, but it is much needed now. In 2019, the industry contributed £5.8 billion of gross value added to the UK economy, with exports worth £2.9 billion and 197,000 jobs supported. Of course, that is without taking any account of the industry’s incalculable value to health, quality of life, and the UK’s global reputation and soft power. All this was achieved without a specific strategy; it was driven by the skills, talent and entrepreneurship within the industry. Music is one of the UK’s great strengths, with world-class talent and expertise not just among musicians and performers but in all the technical supporting roles needed to support them.
Since 2019, the sector has been hit by a perfect storm of challenges, arising from Brexit, Covid and, most recently, rising energy and living costs. These not only reduce the industry’s economic contribution but make it harder to attract audiences when people are seeking to reduce spending. Ticket sales at music venues are down 28% since 2019. So there is a real need for government to be clear about its role in enabling the industry to return to its world-leading position as
“a true engine of growth in the UK”,
in the words of the Secretary of State for DCMS, Michelle Donelan, last October, and in ensuring that the talents and skills which underpin its success are not lost.
That might avoid the kind of deeply unsatisfactory situation resulting from the recent Arts Council England proposed future funding allocations, which other noble Lords have mentioned. They remove all funding from the English National Opera and severely cut funds for other major, highly regarded and successful opera and music organisations, including the Welsh National Opera, the Glyndebourne touring opera and the Royal Opera House. These are all organisations with a national remit, providing top-quality music and opera to diverse audiences and in many cases touring to cities and regions that otherwise could not enjoy large-scale musical performance. This evening I shall go to a performance of Britten’s “Gloriana” at the ENO, the cast of which includes my godson, Charles Rice, in whose developing career the ENO has played a key part, as it has for so many other young artists. I am clearly far from alone in seeing the Arts Council allocations as the exact opposite of “levelling up”. The cuts seem arbitrary and lack any discernible consistency or direction—in other words, they lack a strategy.
12:59 pm
Lord Howarth of Newport (Lab) (V)
My Lords, Arts Council England has a strategy, and a very good one, in its plan for 2020 to 2030, Let’s Create. It charts progress towards
“a country in which the creativity of each of us is valued and given the chance to flourish, and where every one of us has access to a remarkable range of high-quality cultural experiences.”
Earlier this year, ACE also published Creative Health & Wellbeing, an excellent plan for how it will work within health and social care and encourage collaboration between the creative and health sectors.
The Government’s strategy, or lack of it, is a different matter. Everyone wants to see the historic imbalance between London and the regions redressed, but to do this without it being disruptive and upsetting needed a substantial increase in funding for the arts and culture. If provision were made for funding for London-based artistic endeavour to be held steady in real terms, and growth in the culture budget channelled into the regions, the correction could be achieved over a period without damage. Fiscal austerity for the arts is not needed to salvage our economy. The DCMS budget for the arts and culture is indiscernible in the national accounts.
Ministers should recognise that they cannot default and expect philanthropists and the lottery—let alone financially starved local government—to take the strain. It is hard for arts bodies in the poorer areas of the country to raise money from private sources. Lottery players are predominantly people on relatively low incomes facing the cost of living crisis. It would be both foolish and immoral for Ministers to assume that lottery players will bail out the arts economy. It is crucial to sustain it, and that is inescapably the responsibility of Ministers.
The rate of growth of the creative industries has far exceeded the anaemic growth rate of the overall economy over the last 20 years, but the Government should not take for granted that that will continue. They should actively back the creative industries with support in relation, for example, to availability of capital, digital infrastructure, rents and training. The Chancellor has identified five growth sectors that he proposes to support. Any rational industrial strategy must include the creative industries but, as the noble Lord, Lord Foster, observed, he has not done so.
No. 10 and the Home Office should abandon their belligerent attitudes to the European Union and, in a civilised and courteous way, negotiate a visa regime that supports creative individuals to move to and fro and creative organisations not to be hampered in working on the continent of Europe. Brexit absolutely should not mean cultural isolation.
My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Viscount for initiating this debate. I cannot help but feel that we are in a strange situation when it appears that everyone agrees that art and creativity are both beneficial for our society and so important to our economy. There are wonderful studies proving their positive impact on mental health, with the World Health Organization finding that arts positively influence human well-being and mental health.
Creative industries are also commonly recognised as one of the driving forces of British soft power, which is especially important in today’s globalised world. In schools, it has been found that taking creative courses makes it easier for pupils to learn other subjects. Our public service broadcasters, one of the crown jewels of our democracy, were able to rise to prominence only thanks to the hard work of countless creative, artistic people. Even in strict economic terms, the creative industries are just so important to us. As the Library brief shows, in 2021 that sector alone contributed close to £109 billion to the UK economy. In other words, whichever aspect of the creative industries one chooses to look at, its importance and positive impact are immediately visible. The Government themselves acknowledge the significance of arts and creativity, as exemplified by the many speeches delivered by the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, in this very Chamber.
It beggars belief that this consensus on the importance of arts does not extend to the teaching of creative subjects, which forms the talent pipeline that sustains the creative industries. This is most clearly exemplified by the Government’s intention to see 90% of pupils studying the EBacc subject combination by 2025, which explicitly excludes any and all creative subjects. The results of this policy are already visible. For art and design, compared with 2021, the 2022 entries decreased by 1.8%; for drama, by 5.4%; for music, by 3.6%; for media, film and TV studies, by 3.3%; and for performing and expressive arts, by 6.1%. Previous years had already seen declining figures.
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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.
There is no argument to be had against redistribution outside London or against closing the cultural deficit. There is every argument to be had about how this is done, and the perverse consequences which may follow. Goodness knows, in this House it is our special subject—perverse consequences. We are for ever telling the other place to think again, to make sure that it does not go down that road, but within this settlement is a set of perverse consequences.
Welsh National Opera has had the second largest cut of any organisation in the portfolio, of 35%, at £2.2 million, after a glowing assessment. It now has to reduce its touring weeks in cities in England—and, of course, ironically, Liverpool, where it has an enormous and loyal following. This is a real threat to the company. Glyndebourne has already been mentioned; the touring company is the one approach to opera which makes people who think that Glyndebourne is simply for the rich understand that it is there for them as well. Most people in Liverpool will not care whose decision this was. They will know only that the WNO has been taken away.
This is not levelling up—it is damage by design, and, like a clock which strikes 13, it questions the credibility of the Arts Council policy of cultural democracy. This is where the decision on ENO fits in; a decision which will drive this extraordinary opera company, with a unique social mission, to a cliff edge next March, with no future in London and an unviable and potentially unwelcome future in Manchester. I say unwelcome because, just as ENO had no warning, so Manchester has had no warning that this is being done. Manchester has its own plans and its own loyalties. I am inclined to think that Gilbert and Sullivan could have set all this to music.
One of the most baffling things to me is that the Arts Council, after so many years of thinking about this, seems to have lost confidence in its own instincts. Who can forget the powerful case that Darren Henley himself made in 2016 for the arts dividend? Cultural placemaking relies on two things: resilient and trusted local and national partnerships, and community engagement at a depth that is genuinely challenging. It takes years to break down the emotional and financial barriers of people who have never walked up the steps of a great museum or into a crowded foyer full of shouty people. That takes time and investment in schools, young people, families and community action. I know that, because I have done it with the support of the Welsh Government in Wales, over many years, through the Fusion programmes.
That levelling up is what ENO had achieved deliberately in London—a city of staggering inequality, with the highest rates of poverty in the UK and the lowest rates of cultural participation—growing a young audience for opera in ways in which could only be the envy of other opera companies. Such other companies have not given away 6,000 free tickets since September; have not grown a young audience, 50% of which is now under 30; and have not set up a highly innovative programme to help people suffering from Covid to breathe. What a waste, if that is all lost—to say nothing of a precious cargo of 350 skilled jobs and a loss of £6 million from cancelled shows. Where is the economics in that, let alone the ethics?
Many noble Lords, I am sure, will talk about the poverty of the process, the lack of transparency and the discourtesy, and the shock of being assured how well you are doing, only to be told how much you will be cut. I do not expect this from the Arts Council leadership. It creates in me a deep anxiety that this was perhaps not just a decision by the Arts Council. I have enormous respect for the Minister in question, but am I wrong to have suspicions that there was more than a ministerial eye on this decision?
My second question for the Minister is the one put by WNO and ENO. What did they do wrong, and when, and why were they not told? My third question is: how can trust and the future be salvaged for these opera companies now? Would the Minister agree with me that random and disproportionate cuts to opera are indefensible in the absence of a strategy for opera which seeks to optimise its benefits? I refer to all the benefits that we have heard about, and the many that I would love to talk about but do not have time. Will the Minister use his influence to secure with the Arts Council a strategic review of opera which looks at how best it can be supported so that it can thrive as an art form which belongs to everyone? Will he work with the Arts Council to give ENO space and time to develop a new model along the lines of the RSC, with a London base and a thriving base outside London?
The Treasury too has a crucial role. Current tax incentives for film, high-end TV, children’s TV and video games are of course welcome, supporting some parts of the creative industries, but no such fiscal incentive exists for the music industry—an omission that I hope will be rectified. The Treasury could do more. The creative industries rely heavily on freelancers, so the Treasury should amend the tax and benefit system to support them and widen the definition of R&D to include the sector.
Any sector vision or strategy must be the product of cross-departmental working. Can the Minister tell us what exactly is being done to improve cross-departmental working? How much discussion, for example, is his department having with the DfE about skills shortages within the sector and the way in which the school system is exacerbating those shortages? The 40% decline in GCSE entries in creative subjects over the past decade certainly does not help. That decline can be attributed to the way in which the Government undervalue such subjects, as demonstrated by their absence from the EBacc.
Last year, one of your Lordships’ committees concluded that the national curriculum, and the EBacc in particular, was
“too narrowly focused to ensure that it prepares all young people for the modern labour market and the essential, technical and creative skills it requires”.
Mr Robert Halfon is the new Minister of State in the DfE. In his previous role as chair of the Education Committee, he said that
“New Ministers have inherited an education system that is at odds with the demands of our modern economy.”
Now, as poacher turned gamekeeper, he says that there are no plans to change the EBacc. Will the Minister seek to change his mind?
The Minister’s own department also has many ways to support the creative industries. For example, it has responsibility for our public service broadcasters. Recent reports show just how important the PSBs are to the creative industries and to the levelling-up agenda, not least through the Creative Industries Clusters Programme. I hope that, in the light of the damage that it would do to all that, the Government will drop their plans to privatise Channel 4 and call off the dogs in their seeming desire to cut the BBC down to size. I certainly agree with Tim Davie, the BBC’s director-general, who said only yesterday that
“The BBC is one of the most powerful and well recognised brands on the planet and we should be backing it.”
The lifeblood of the creative industries is intellectual property, and here too DCMS has responsibilities. The UK is rightly seen internationally as having a gold standard IP framework, which has enabled the UK’s creative industries to thrive. We weaken our IP laws at our peril—but we are in danger of taking just such a step. Following Brexit, the Government consulted on the future of the so-called IP exhaustion regime. Many of our creative industry exporters, fearing significant losses in income, expressed deep concern about making changes to the current arrangements. They breathed a sigh of relief when the Government concluded that there was insufficient data to make a decision and determined to maintain the status quo, at least for the time being. The resulting uncertainty does not help. Does the Minister agree that any final decision must deliver stability, and that the best way to achieve that is to make the interim decision permanent?
The Government also reviewed the text and data mining copyright exception and made an initial decision to widen it significantly. That would mean that businesses could scrape text and content created by others, repurpose it commercially without payment to the original creator, and, ironically, receive copyright protection for that new work. The creative industries reacted with universal dismay and the Government agreed to reconsider. During a recent Select Committee hearing, I asked the DCMS Minister Julia Lopez whether that reconsideration would lead to dropping the proposed change. She replied:
“I am fairly confident, in so far as I can say publicly, that this is not going to proceed.”
Will the Minister go one step further and give categorical assurance that no changes will be made to the exception?
During the pandemic, the then Government did much to support the creative industries and should be congratulated on that. My fear is that there is now a real danger that complacency is setting in and there will be a loss of focus on supporting a critical part of our economy, with different government departments leaving it to others to address the needs of the creative industries. I hope that I am proved wrong.
That takes me on to the first of two specific points that I wish to raise. Classical music needs to have a new audience all the time, and that depends on music education. The noble Lord, Lord Foster, spoke about the need for education to include far more emphasis on the arts generally, and I echo that. Who knows a toddler who is not keen to draw all the time, often where they are not supposed to, or to make music? They love to, yet when they get to school, these two traits are not fostered. I commend the work of the noble Baroness, Lady Fleet, who is working hard to get more classical music, and music generally, into schools. But even though the Government have now adopted a strategy, it is measly—an hour of music a week in schools, and it is not part of the curriculum. It should be.
The Gulbenkian Foundation produced a report 40 years ago extolling the virtues of what the arts, and music in particular, could do for children, and thus for the economy in general. It was included in the first national curriculum in 1988. We have gone backwards, not forwards, and given that our creative industries are renowned and world-beating, we need to foster the talent that will feed them in the future. In particular, we need to foster a love of classical music, so that the audience will be there to continue to allow our orchestras to thrive.
My second point is about tourism, because we know that it is the arts and culture that bring tourists to this country. Overwhelmingly, when they are asked what they are here for, it is not the weather, the beaches or the sewage; it is the arts and the culture. But what are we doing to encourage tourism? Not nearly enough to encourage creative tourism. The OECD produced a report, several years ago now, in which it talked about the instant effect that concentrating on creative tourism could have:
“Integrating creative content with tourism experiences can add value by reaching new target groups, improving destination image and competitiveness, and supporting the growth of creative industries and creative exports … Developing creative tourism has implications for national tourism administration, regional tourism authorities and destination marketing.”
I absolutely agree, but we need our tourism organisations to actually start being creative and making the most of the creative industries. There are so many packages that could be offered to people interested in coming here, and they would support our creative industries.
Finally, I beg the Minister, as others have done on other occasions, to get the Government to reconsider their position on VAT for tourists. It is mad to deter people from coming here and to send them to Paris or Milan. Retailers have already been saying this, and my members in ALVA know their visitor numbers are down because tourists are being deflected because of VAT. In that brief moment when Kwasi Kwarteng was Chancellor, the VAT holiday for tourists was coming back; sadly, it vanished again. If the Minister could put in a plea, it would be really useful.
“set out a vision for high-growth sectors and technologies where we are well-placed to develop a globally competitive advantage.”
That was said in March 2021, three Prime Ministers ago.
We have mentioned already the relationship between our education system and its formation of young people, and the skills shortage in the creative industries. Again and again, witnesses we spoke to at the Select Committee reminded us that the need for skills was paramount for the development of the sector. It is important, therefore, that there should be a co-ordinated effort between the world of education and meeting the needs of the workplace in the creative industries. That needs to be thought through in much greater depth, and I hope to see more evidence of that when the sector vision report eventually comes before us.
In 2018, the Arts and Humanities Research Council launched its creative industries clusters programme, which linked universities and businesses together to drive innovation. Witnesses have spoken to us of the huge success of this initiative; the committee was left scratching its collective head as to why the project, granted its evidential success, will last just five years and be wound up in 2023. Those operating and taking advantage of the clustering idea do not know how to set their budgets beyond that date. That uncertainty undermines their activity in general.
A few of us on the committee paid a visit some time ago to Cambridge. We went around the start-up companies and high-tech people there, who are doing fantastic things. I suppose that Cambridge is the nearest we have to Silicon Valley in this country; certainly, the energy, inputs and outputs were terrific. However, we were told in one place we visited that the normal critical path for a start-up is to bring the activity to a head at a point when it can be sold on to whoever will buy it—that is, to invest in the part of development that yields the possibility of success, but then to let someone else reap that success. We should be protecting those industries and allowing them to grow.
I am a great devotee of Professor Ha-Joon Chang, late of Cambridge University, who showed how South Korea and other countries like it grew their phenomenal industrial base because of government protection through the critical phases of growth. Once an industry can take off under its own steam, it must fend for itself. The Government need to pay more attention to the fact that some of the brilliant work being done in Cambridge and other places should be protected rather further and that the clustering idea should be extended beyond 2023.
One key element of a strategy should address the skills needed to maintain the value of the UK music sector. Many of these skills are in high demand from employers across numerous sectors, not just the arts. They include creativity, entrepreneurship, communication skills, teamwork and resilience. They are often termed “soft skills”, but they are far from soft for the businesses that need them.
Despite the Government’s good work in many aspects of education, the number of students taking formal music education has plummeted over the past decade, with declines of 31% in A-level music entries and of 17% for GCSEs. The alarming gap between independent and state schools is widening: 50% of privately educated children get sustained music tuition, but only 15% of state school pupils. It is surely time to rethink the focus on the EBacc and Progress 8 measures, which have had such a damaging impact on music education.
UK conservatoires are recognised world leaders. They play an essential role in maintaining the pipeline of talent and skills, and ensuring that they can continue to do so and attract top talent from abroad, both students and teachers, should be central to a strategy. The new national plan for music education is welcome, but the funding currently available will not be enough to implement its ambitions and there is insufficient emphasis on ensuring the availability of the music education workforce needed to deliver it—perhaps through restoring bursaries for training music teachers. Of course, one important way for young musicians to hone their skills and broaden their experience has traditionally been through touring and performing overseas, above all in Europe, so the sooner exchanges of this sort can be restored, the better.
I hope the Minister will say something about whether he expects public funding for the arts to remain at current levels. If not, there is surely a need for the Government to think about other ways of boosting funding, whether from fiscal incentives, as in other cultural sectors such as film and TV, as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Foster, or by encouraging more individual giving. The Charities Aid Foundation’s latest UK Giving Report found that:
“Fewer people are giving—and those who do continue to give on a regular basis tend to be older.”
So there appears to be considerable scope for improvements in encouraging individual giving. What consideration are the Government giving to providing greater tax or other incentives for individuals to make donations to good causes, including the arts?
For all the reasons I have stated and more, an arts and creative sector strategy, including the music sector, is urgently needed to give clear guidance about the resources the Government expect to be able to commit to these sectors and their priorities in deciding how to allocate them. A proper strategy would play an important part in enabling the arts and cultural sector to rebuild the leading contribution to our economy and culture which it has shown it can deliver. It would also give the Arts Council a clear strategic framework in which to make decisions—the experience of the English National Opera and other bodies that have suffered arbitrary funding cuts shows just how not to go about this. I hope the Minister will confirm the Government’s intention to produce such a strategy with cross-departmental coverage, as demanded by the noble Lord, Lord Foster, and with a much shorter timescale than “in due course”.
We should value the arts for their emotional and spiritual significance but also for their benefits for health, community and economic progress. The arts and culture can be a driver for levelling up, as I have seen in chairing a current inquiry by the National Centre for Creative Health and the APPG on Arts, Health and Wellbeing. Our round table on the benefits of creativity for mental health and well-being focused on young people. The Horsfall, part of 42nd Street—a mental health charity in Manchester—is a creative space and gallery for people aged between 13 and 25. One young woman described how, in this non-medicalised environment, “the help comes really naturally”. Working with ceramics had provided the means to express herself in her own way. She said it had provided her with agency and the confidence to pursue other creative projects. Another said about coming to the Horsfall: “It was a life-changing moment”.
At our round table on creative health and health inequalities, David, a homeless man, told us: “For me it saved my life. Arts gave me that access to see the world differently and for the world to see me differently.” With the pandemic having exacerbated health inequalities, and with the cost of living crisis damaging health and well-being for so many, our witnesses emphasised the power of creativity to release individuals and communities into fruitful self-expression, confidence and achievement, and the power of communities to be creative and organise themselves.
In East Marsh, a deprived area of Grimsby, the community group East Marsh United has run a grass-roots arts project including a choir, a writing group, a library, a recording studio and a community garden created on wasteland, as well as music, theatre and storytelling events. Kelly told us about joining the creative writing group: “After battling with systems and getting let down for nine years, this amazing creative writing group gave me my voice back. Creativity helped me be part of a community, helped me to be heard.” Their work on creativity has energised and empowered the East Marsh community also to address issues of housing, crime, education and training. Our witnesses insisted—as many noble Lords have today—on the need to revive the arts in the school curriculum. Music lessons and drama clubs, they said, should be core and not a luxury.
The arts and culture can open the way to transformational improvement of health and well-being in deprived communities. Whether that happens on a larger scale will depend on two policy shifts. One will be a full recognition by the NHS that the new integrated care boards must form effective partnerships with local government and the voluntary and community sector, including arts and cultural organisations. Northumberland County Council sees investment in the arts and culture as crucial to improving health and prosperity. It is funding an “arts for well-being” co-ordinator post within the NHS integrated care system, with a view to embedding arts and cultural provision in health and social care.
The second policy shift will be radical decentralisation of power, as the Labour Party is promising. Devolution to Greater Manchester has already enabled the launch of its creative health strategy to harness the power of creativity, culture and heritage in addressing health inequalities. There must also be real devolution to local authorities, and they in their turn must devolve power to ward level, supporting local leaders to mobilise their communities in new hope, energy and achievement. If, as was once the case in our history, local authorities and mayors have power and resources to develop their own cultural strategies, we could see new cultural, social and economic flourishing in places that are now sadly depressed.
There is a real concern that the Government’s approach will result in creative subjects falling victim to a vicious circle, which would see the already alarming situation worsening further still, with fewer entries resulting in fewer students going on to FE and HE, and with fewer talented young people therefore entering the sector. According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, funding per student has decreased by 9% over the last decade. This alarming figure, coupled with skyrocketing energy bills, is likely to force schools to sacrifice many of their artistic courses, prioritising the EBacc subjects on which they are evaluated. That is not merely a theoretical worst-case scenario but a very real process which, according to the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, is already under way.
It has been a common practice for the Government to dismiss any such warnings by referring the concerned party to the provisions made for music education. It is true that music is compulsory in all maintained schools between ages five and 14, and the recently published The Power of Music to Change Lives policy paper recommends that schools provide at least one hour of music lessons a week to every pupil and produce a music development plan. This, in combination with the reformed music hubs, is a welcome development, but it is far from enough. In practice, many academies and maintained schools struggle to provide quality music education, and some may be forced to resort to the bare minimum required to satisfy legal requirements. In March the noble Lord, Lord Lingfield, pointed out in this Chamber that only 12% of state schools have orchestras—I emphasise that figure—and I do not believe that this figure has drastically improved since. The number of music teachers in state schools is decreasing, while subjects such as drama and dance, which are not covered by similar legal requirements, are being given up altogether.
This means that, in practice, pupils from state-funded schools will find it increasingly difficult to develop their artistic abilities and creativity, resulting in an even greater chasm between state and independent schools, and, in consequence, between the privileged and the underprivileged. That discrepancy is already astronomical: the Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre found that while only 7% of the English population was educated in the private sector, 38% of the wealthiest individuals in TV, film, and music, and 44% of our newspaper columnists attended such schools. Similar ratios can be found throughout the creative industry; the policy and evidence centre reports that out of 400,000 new jobs created in this sector between 2014 and 2020, less than 100 000—about 22%—went to people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. In fact, the creative industry has been found to be among the most elitist, being dominated by the privileged to a similar extent as doctors and lawyers.
I do not see any possibility for levelling up without the Government addressing this crisis at the educational level by providing all pupils—regardless of their parents’ social status—with access to good-quality creative subjects which can let them express themselves, develop their artistic abilities, and improve their mental health and well-being. We must ensure that art and creativity do not become one of the luxuries available only to the rich, not only for the sake of those less privileged but for the good of our society. Art should be created by people from all backgrounds. Coming from Liverpool, I will remind your Lordships of four working-class lads who in the 1960s gave us some of the best music that this country and the world have known.
I realise that times are difficult and we all must make some concessions, but let me emphasise this once again: art and creative education is not something we can afford to neglect as a nation.