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2.9 pm
The Minister for the Arts (Mr. Alan Howarth): This has been a worthwhile debate. It enabled my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, in a magisterial speech, to tell the House how our pledges and commitments, made both in opposition and in government, are systematically being fulfilled.
I do not like to criticise the hon. Member for East Surrey (Mr. Ainsworth) in his absence, but I was disappointed that he chose to be so personally abusive in
his attacks. His speech seemed to have been dictated by Conservative central office propagandists and--how shall I put it?--lacked decorum.
The hon. Member for West Suffolk (Mr. Spring) never lacks decorum. He is altogether more fastidious. The difficulty is that he is against the people's opera: he appears to have some core reservation about what is going on at the Royal Opera house. He is also against the people's library network. I put it to him that we have said goodbye to the age in which a gilded elite was bankrolled by the taxpayer in its enjoyment of expensive cultural pleasures that were denied to those who paid for them through their taxes and the lottery. I am unashamedly committed to making culture accessible to the many, not the few, and I am surprised that the hon. Gentleman is so politically imprudent as to think it appropriate to pour cold water on that sort of ethic. The hon. Gentleman was also a little waspish about my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, but that did not really matter because the hon. Gentleman's performance was deeply unconvincing.
By contrast, the right hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Mr. Maclennan) gave an entirely admirable speech. He was generous, thoughtful and challenging. No one who knows him could subscribe to the view that he is a killjoy. He said that he had to leave the debate early to attend an engagement in Sunderland, but was too modest to explain that he was going there for two purposes: first, to give a lecture on education; and, secondly, to attend a performance by Scottish Opera of "A Friend of the People", for which the right hon. Gentleman himself wrote the libretto. He is seriously committed to improving the cultural life of this country. There was a dearth of Opposition speakers, but we are grateful to the hon. Members for Poole (Mr. Syms) and for Cotswold (Mr. Clifton-Brown) for chipping in.
I respect and admire the contributions made by my hon. Friends, including my hon. Friends the Members for Putney (Mr. Colman), for Brent, North (Mr. Gardiner) and for Morley and Rothwell (Mr. Gunnell). Their speeches contained litanies of declarations of interest and illustrated the range and depth of knowledge of the arts that is available on the Government Benches.
Being the Minister for the Arts is a tough job. It has been my duty to attend 295 cultural events in the 16 months since my appointment, and it is my pleasure to continue to do so. I have learned a great deal, not least to be immensely proud of the condition of the arts in this country. I do not for a moment suggest that the Government can take the credit for the flourishing arts in Britain, because that phenomenon has profound causes.
It is strange to hear old-fashioned lucubrations such as that offered by the hon. Member for East Surrey, who thought it opportune to refer to the shadow Arts Council. Sir Peter Hall has been making the same speech for 25 years: it is the longest running cultural phenomenon in London, apart, perhaps, from "The Mousetrap". He has become part of our heritage, as tourists come to hear him make his speech denouncing the Government of the day for the inadequacy of their support for the arts. He is like a performing bear, who performs rather clumsily and embarrassingly. He, like Opposition Front Benchers, is unaware of the extent of the improvement in the condition of the arts in this country.
That the arts flourish to such an extent is remarkable, considering the dismal story of funding for many years before the Labour Government entered office and the state to which our education system had been reduced. As my hon. Friends said, our Government had to mount an emergency operation to rescue music in schools. The determined action taken by my right hon. Friends the Secretaries of State for Education and Employment and for Culture, Media and Sport has already started to make an enormous difference by greatly increasing the money available to local education authorities through the standards fund and the operation of the National Foundation for Youth Music.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), in a most valuable contribution to the debate, opened our eyes to the exciting possibilities for education in music and the range of arts and crafts that funding from the new opportunities fund has created for after-school clubs. When Opposition Members go on about a raid on the lottery, they seem to suppose that lottery money, over and above the money that the Arts Council has to distribute, is not available for the arts. It palpably is, as my right hon. Friend explained vividly and unanswerably.
My hon. Friend the Member for Putney was kind enough to refer to our programme--developed jointly between my Department and the Department for Education and Employment--to create bursaries for students of arts and drama. It is good news that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Employment has this week been able to triple the amount of money in the hardship fund for students of dance and drama who attend further education institutions.
While on the subject of education, I wish to emphasise the great importance we attach to the issues raised in the report of Professor Ken Robinson's group. The importance of those issues cannot be overstated and we are reflecting deeply on how the Government might most appropriately respond. We have already asked the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority to address afresh the issue of how we can ensure that education for creativity flourishes in our schools.
This Government take support for the arts as a central and welcome part of their responsibility. We support the arts with money and through our policy, which goes far beyond the simple provision of money. It has been the melancholy experience of successive Ministers for the Arts over the years to go to the Treasury to secure more--sadly sometimes less--money for the arts and, whatever the outcome of their mission to Great George street, to be assailed for not securing enough.
Of course, the needs of the arts are almost infinite and the appetite of the arts is certainly insatiable. However, I am proud that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, supported by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer and--most importantly--my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, has made a commitment to an enhanced level of funding for the arts so that we are seeing in real terms, contrary to the allegations made by Opposition Front Benchers in this debate, a higher level of grant in aid than ever seen before. It is higher even than in the golden age of Jennie Lee.
The contention advanced by some hon. Members today, including the right hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross, that arts funding has fallen as a percentage of gross domestic product requires closer scrutiny by those who did so. This year there has been a 16 per cent. increase in grant in aid for the Arts Council, with commitments to a 4.6 per cent. increase next year and a 6.5 per cent. increase in the following year, so my right hon. Friend the Chancellor must be being even more spectacularly successful in his conduct of the economy than even I had supposed. Right hon. and hon. Members should reconsider their figures.
Mr. Howarth:
I am sorry that I cannot give way, but I have so little time.
Several contributors to the debate, including my hon. Friend the Member for Brent, North made the point that local authorities need to commit themselves to funding support for culture. Of course, some do so magnificently already, such as Birmingham, Gateshead, Bolton and Huddersfield. I ask my hon. Friends who made that point to consider whether, if there were to be a standard spending assessment for culture, there might be a risk that those local authorities which are good in that area would come under heavy pressure to spend down to SSA. We need to be careful for that reason, and I know that the Local Government Association has reservations about that remedy.
My hon. Friend the Member for Brent, North also asked that a statutory obligation be placed on local authorities to support the arts. I am tremendously tempted by that suggestion, but I put it to my hon. Friend that local authorities have been under a statutory obligation to support their libraries since 1964. That has not meant that life for our libraries has been without difficulties. My hon. Friend's suggestion would not be a solution, but I see its attraction.
We seek to achieve a coherence in the use of funding. That funding may be derived from grant in aid or be provided by our partners in local government. It may come from the lottery--and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State's reforms of the lottery have very far-reaching beneficial significance for the arts. It may also derive from European sources, or come from the box office or from private donors. Finally, as the hon. Member for West Suffolk mentioned, funding may come from charitable tax reliefs.
The challenge for policy makers--at national, regional and local levels--is to achieve a confluence between those flows of funding such that we achieve the best value for money and open up the possibilities that we all want to be realised. That is a difficult challenge, but the funding agreements that we are putting in place and the progress towards regional and now local authority cultural strategies mean that we have an instrument that will give us a much better chance of success.
I said that the Government's policy was not simply about securing as much money as possible. Although more money is always useful, we have a responsibility for the stewardship of publicly provided resources. I make no apology for the fact that we have set up Quest, which,
although it reports to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, is independent of the Department. That agency will be available to assist publicly funded organisations to ensure that quality, efficiency and standards are as high as they ought to be.
I do not apologise either about the funding agreements that we have put in place. The hon. Member for East Surrey was very patronising about the Arts Council and suggested that it had degenerated to the point that it was now no more than an agent of Government. Mr. Gerry Robinson may have views on that, but I do not accept that the Arts Council is so passive or pusillanimous--far from it.
The Arts Council is the Government's partner. With it, we negotiate funding agreements that provide a framework that is agreed and not imposed. The specific decisions on the uses of the funding that the Government provide on behalf of the taxpayer and of the lottery player are determined by the bodies that receive the funding.
A modernised version of the arm's-length principle is alive and well and, unlike the right hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross, I am a strong believer in its virtue. Although it might be tempting for me, as Minister for the Arts, to have the power to decide what productions, exhibitions or concerts should receive funding, that would not be a good idea. I would also be a little nervous if, in any future incarnation, the hon. Member for West Suffolk were to exercise that power. The Government believe in the arm's-length principle, and we have refreshed and modernised it.
I am grateful to those hon. Members who have commented on the quadruple commitment in the Government's policy to supporting excellence, access, the role of education in relation to the arts and the arts' contribution to the flourishing of the creative economy. I emphasise that we support excellence not only in traditional high art, but in all those forms of cultural expression that many people particularly cherish.
We have also forged a new relationship between the Crafts Council and the Arts Council. That has allowed more money to be available for the crafts, but it has also permitted them to take their place in the policy development of the Arts Council. It will therefore prove very positive for the crafts in this country. That the lottery is providing money for brass bands, on a scale which I hope will be enhanced, is important.
My hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley (Judy Mallaber) talked of a brass band event that she had attended in her constituency. Brass bands are among the proudest cultural expressions of community in this country. One of my great privileges as Minister for the Arts was to attend the recent national finals of the brass band championship at the Albert hall and to present the prizes. It was an exciting and magnificent occasion.
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