Examination of Witnesses (Questions 80-91)
11 MAY 2004
Rt Hon Estelle Morris, and Mr David Fitzgerald
Q80 Mr Doran: You mentioned working with
other departments and some of the evidence that was presented
earlier mentioned specifically working in the youth justice field
and also in health. I would be interested to hear what progress
is being made in that area? In earlier questions I made some comments
about my own experience, that Home Office and Health are sometimes
harder nuts to crack, particularly when funding is involved. Can
you say a little about how you are addressing that problem?
Estelle Morris: I think you are
right. First of all, I am hugely persuaded by the impact of dance,
particularly in the field of health across all ages but I think
it is probably the physical activity that has got the highest
participation rates for the elderly members of our community.
I am wholly persuaded by that and perhaps, like you, I see the
examples where dance has re-engaged people, turned people's lives
around, particularly with young teenage boys so I agree with that.
What I find incredibly difficult is to find the evidence to show
that in the way that Government often needs or Treasury often
needs. In terms of what we have done, when I took on this job
just under a year ago I was particularly keen to enhance working
with those departments because I had seen from past experience
how working closely with the DfES actually worked and secured
more resources. The problem is evidence based, whenever we want
to say that we need resources because of what it can do with young
disaffected youngsters, the reply comes back "Where is the
evidence? Where is the value added?" One of the problems
the whole of my area of responsibility has is trying to measure
that evidence because it is not measurable in the same way that
other areas of human activity are. I cannot say half an hour of
dance actually means we get two less young men or women who go
back to the criminal justice system. I think we are struggling
for a language to describe the benefits and the biggest risk is
that what I feel sometimes is the Department of Health and the
Home Office do not think it is a bad thing, they have not got
anything against it but often it is not up there in lights as
one of the things they want to promote. The Department—and
you might want to say something about this David, I do not know—promoted
some IPPR research into the effects of arts in general including
dance and the impact it could have on socially excluded people
to include that area and it has just published a report so we
will wish to take that forward. That is why we have come a cropper
almost in not being able to describe the benefits in the way that
Government is used to having benefits described. Where I come
down on that is Government has to change and it has to learn to
use the language of the sector with which it is engaging in just
as much a way as the sector has to learn to use the language of
Government.
Q81 Mr Flook: Minister, that sounds a
little bit frightening in a way because elsewhere in Government
in your Department the Arts Council of England has had a very
large increase of 72% in real terms. Here we have one department
saying "Let's put money into the arts" a very small
increase by comparison—I stress that by comparison—for
dance at the moment and yet elsewhere in Government Health cannot
see the benefits from arts because you are saying you cannot find
the evidence and present it in front of them and say "This
is the benefit it is doing". Not wishing to broaden it too
much beyond dance, is that a great worry that there is one part
of Government increasing the amount of money going into the arts
and dance to some extent and yet Health and the Home Office do
not actually see it and want hard evidence, yet hard evidence
is not needed apparently to give huge increases elsewhere?
Estelle Morris: No because it
is our Department's core business to support the arts.
Q82 Mr Flook: I appreciate that but in
terms of joined up thinking.
Estelle Morris: Life is like that,
and we are making progress. Eight years ago there was no partnership
between DfES and DCMS, none at all. When Tessa Jowell and I gave
joint evidence with a joint paper—PSX—for the last
spending review, it was the first time two secretaries of state
had ever appeared before PSX together to argue for a joint agenda.
I am very glad I gave the money to the DCMS because I ended up
being there, I just wish I had given them more money; that is
the way life is. We have made progress. Where you are right, it
has got to be a worry, I would not call it a major worry, certainly
not frightening but I think that joined up government is one of
the most difficult things to do. I suppose I could just caricature
it, I am talking to Health or the Home Office about how I think
dance and the arts in general could contribute to their agenda.
What they have got on their desk when they go in are all the problems
and the challenges that we know the Home Office and the Department
for Health had. I think you have to push away at it and I think
it has to be strong, steady arguments. I have a whole tranche
of meetings now which are one to one meetings with Health and
Home Office and me separately where we invite them and where they
invite us. I sense what we are doing is trying to build an infrastructure
across Government so we can talk about this. I am—I am not
sure if I am hopeful or not—pushing a great deal for some
of the results of this Spending Review to be joint funding in
the arts and these areas in exactly the same way as we managed
to secure from the DfES last time. I think it is very, very important
but it does not take away from the fact that it is our responsibility
in DCMS to support dance primarily, we are their main advocates
in Government.
Q83 Mr Flook: We have heard from Mr Doran
that there are other nuts to crack and from your previous ministerial
incarnation you obviously have achieved something in helping DCMS
where you are now. Why are they so much more different in Health
and Home Office, do you think? What more do they want that you
could automatically see in Education that they do not seem to
be seeing in Health, let us pick on Health?
Estelle Morris: There is more
of a natural link so just in the same way that DCMS has a core
responsibility for the arts, Education has a core responsibility
for education. Part of the national curriculum is dance and the
arts so the links are more clearly there. What happened in Education
was if you think of an individual, DfES was looking at their arts
and their creative needs up to 16 and yet that could be 9 to 3.30,
outside of that they could be going to the urban centre or they
could be going to dance clubs or arts clubs and yet they had the
same chance. It was making those links. There was a more obvious
point of contact between DfES than there is between the arts.
Some research—I do not know, David, whether you want to
come in—has been done, I think it was a chap from Oxford
who was part of the IPPR seminars that we looked at. What I have
to face up to is the evidence of the impact of the arts on health
is not cast iron, it is not cast iron; it is no good me pretending
it is. Anecdotally it is there and small scale studies have shown
that it is there but it is not as powerful an evidence base for
me to show with health as the powerful evidence base of us working
together in education. We are making change gradually and I am
a great optimist about it. I think we will make progress after
the next Spending Review but I really would like to see our Department
be more central in the thinking of places like the Home Office
and Health.
Q84 Chairman: Could I just come in on
this Adrian. Surely if one is not looking at it from other points
of view, it is utterly obvious—obvious to me at any rate—that
the promotion of dance could be a very important part of the campaign
against obesity.
Estelle Morris: Absolutely. That
is absolutely right, Chairman. I will ask you to speak about that
in a minute, David. What we have got—it is a perfect example
because healthy living and obesity has now become a Government
priority—is there is a group, it has got the push, it has
got the political leverage to get going. When you look in detail
at something like obesity, of course dance and the whole of our
area is absolutely key to that and that is happening. Mr Flook's
question was in everyday matters, in mental health, in working
with the elderly, working with crime reduction. What I have to
say is where we are at the moment there is not that political
unanimity or that political prioritisation across Government to
make sure that art has its say so. I think it should be and that
is my job to promote it but it is not there at the moment right
across the piece. It is there, you are absolutely right, in areas
which have received Government funding. Can I say another example
where it is there is in positive activities for young people.
When there was a political priority to reduce youth crime we got
a look in, to say it crudely. When you focus on it everybody can
see the contribution that it has made. We got a lot of money for
positive activities for young people, some of which would go to
dance. Whether it is seamless, whether it has seeped in to the
everyday Whitehall way of doing things, I think the answer is
no.
Q85 Mr Flook: If I can ask a joined up
question, taking an earlier evidence session, we keep on referring
to younger people but there are a large number of those who are
not quite elderly but inactive and, as you mentioned, Minister,
may well, therefore, be obese. In Taunton there is a very nice
lady who has lost five stone. She was lucky, when the doctor said
"You need to lose weight" she was sent to the gym, that
is because gyms exist as physical places. Now the question is
Miss Siddall and Miss Bull also made the reference to the fact
that dance loses out because it has not in so many more ways,
unlike a gym or attached to a sports centre or a theatre which
might be in the town, dance tends not to have those physical edifices
where evidentially somebody can say "You will go to a dance
class because it makes sense to get you out off your couch, get
you going, interacting with music which you will like because
it is the sort of music you like, we can arrange that" and
that sort of idea. I can see what you are saying, and I am not
blaming you, but we have a difficulty because they do not have
those physical buildings in the same way that we do in many other
aspects. Maybe they are thinking too much in a silo in health
that dance can be so much more powerful for helping a number of
their own objectives.
Estelle Morris: You do not want
the cold, dirty church hall that has not got a surface that you
can dance on, I think you are probably right about the infrastructure.
Perhaps I could ask Mr Fitzgerald just to say a bit about the
infrastructure that we are trying to build up. The increasing
investment that there has been in the arts and dance I think has
helped to build infrastructure, not just in the capital but outside
as well. There are a number of initiatives like Creative Partnerships
and Space for Sports and Arts which are putting in money so that
buildings can be made because I do not think you are wrong. It
goes right back to Mr Doran's first question really. I think that
not the dance sector itself but Government and the Sports Council
and all of those have come to dance late. I think it is lagging
behind the developments that we have seen elsewhere in the arts
and elsewhere in sports.
Mr Fitzgerald: I think dance is
still a relatively young art form and historically it has not
had the physical infrastructure that other are forms have had.
There was a theatre in every town, there was not necessarily a
dance space in every town. I think the Lottery is enabling us
to put some of that right. I think the Arts Council have been
investing strategically in the big showpiece venues like Sadler's
Well and the Birmingham Hippodrome but also a network of very
professional dance bases around the country in Ipswich, Darlington,
Oxford, Newcastle which are not just there to provide performance
base sites but also there for use by the community as well.
Q86 Mr Flook: Just as an example Taunton
finally has a new sports centre. It has got a very good dance
floor but some of the funding for that could in theory have come
from Health.
Estelle Morris: Yes, that is right.
Q87 Mr Flook: Therefore classes could
be held there. It is in not such a well off part of the town as
elsewhere, in fact the sports centre is there because it is in
the not well off part of town. A bit of thinking in advance could
perhaps have made it slightly better or more money could have
helped it immeasurably.
Estelle Morris: If my memory serves
me right—I am thinking back now—I think the healthy
living centres were a good example of that. I think they did have
Department of Health funding, it goes back to the late 1990s.
You are right, there is absolutely no reason why that cannot happen.
If one of the results of this inquiry is that does happen I will
be delighted.
Q88 Derek Wyatt: I am sorry I was late,
please forgive me. People have heard this already, I will try
not to make this a speech, I will try and make it a question.
Again to use my West Coast of America analogy, Stanford is a private
university, Berkeley is not but together they have decided that
they should own the hinterland of where they are and the physical
poverty of where they are so they have a plan to help the poorest
schools, can you imagine Oxford or Cambridge saying they own the
hinterland of Swindon or parts of Stowmarket? My question really
is, is it the silo of Government that is fundamentally wrong because
we cannot get change so quickly? When we started in 1997 we came
in and we said "Well, it is part of that", we then went
with the drugs tsar in the Home Office, we went with an e.envoy
in the DTI. Is there a way, do you think, where you have to try
and squeeze the Home Office and then the Health, is there a role
for I will not say an obesity tsar but a way of saying "Look,
what we really need is a development director who is going to
act and police this and get it together" otherwise it seems
as though because you are the weakest department in Whitehall,
or perceived to be the weakest department, not much policy change
is going to happen because you are dependent on funding elsewhere?
Estelle Morris: I think I would
take objection to that last paragraph. I think quite bluntly,
you can have a tsar and nothing might change. You can work quietly
in the communities, spend the money and get in there and you bring
about change, it does not make a headline but it is a real change.
As an example of that, could I just take Creative Partnerships
which are targeted on the neighbourhood renewal areas, the most
deprived areas in our country, £70 million managed by the
Arts Council on behalf of DCMS. When you go and see what has been
happening there, if I just talk about my own constituency in Birmingham,
the Royal Ballet at the Hippodrome, their performers worked for
a year or 18 months on choreographing ballet and working with
children from inner city Birmingham and the outer ring of Birmingham
for a performance nobody has headlined in any paper except the
Birmingham Evening Mail and the Birmingham Post
but it is making a real difference. Increasingly—I know
this with some passion—as I visit communities and schools
in our inner city areas, I think a lot of these initiatives are
coming to fruition. I do not know whether we have got to the tipping
point yet, where people realise it and talk about transformation,
but I think if you reflect initiatives, whether it be specialist
schools, whether it be Creative Partnerships, whether it be all
the Sports England, whether it is the PESSCL initiatives, they
have all been prioritised on inner city areas and I believe they
are making a difference without a tsar.
Q89 Derek Wyatt: Sure. With the Creative
Partnerships, under another set of different criteria, I am one
of the first to have a SureStart because we are the sixteenth
poorest ward in the South East of England in Sheerness, we have
no Creative Partnership that I am aware of in the Gateway?
Estelle Morris: You will not because
it has only been running a year.
Q90 Derek Wyatt: If you get a SureStart,
should it not be the same criteria that you get a greater partnership
deal?
Estelle Morris: You do but it
is timing. We do what we can with the money we have got and £70
million at the last spending review for Creative Partnerships
I think was good stuff. We could have always spent more but that
was good stuff and it enabled us to start with 20—
Mr Fitzgerald: We started with
16.
Estelle Morris: We started with
16 Creative Partnerships. The other thing that is important, I
think it is crucial that Government does pilot things properly.
Creative Partnerships is an example. I desperately want to roll
out Creative Partnerships to be a national programme now, so this
is a national entitlement to that sort of creativity. I cannot
do it with the existing Creative Partnerships model, it is not
right for that. I think we have done that right. We have funded
more than 16 now because we are in phase two.
Mr Fitzgerald: We are moving towards
36 around the country. I think we are coming to your neck of the
woods within the next couple of years.
Estelle Morris: I think if we
had done all that together that would not have been right. The
difference is that SureStart was started in 1997 and Creative
Partnerships was started in 2001. By 2010 we will have changed
the world but we cannot do it all in one year.
Q91 Derek Wyatt: No, no, I accept that.
You should pilot it, I agree with that. Can I come back to the
dilemma I said to the others. I have a very good secondary school
that has dance and theatre and art but it cannot reach the standards
demanded by the Department for Education to get the specialist
school that they need in art and yet it is exactly right that
they go for the arts because it is exactly the right educational
programme for less able children. It is an absolute dilemma for
them because they can raise the money but they cannot get the
specialist school. If they get the specialist school I am absolutely
certain standards will go up but I just cannot convince the Education
Department of this. It is a real dilemma for us.
Estelle Morris: It just has to
reach the standard—full stop—and it can reach the
standard. There are examples of specialist schools, in the urban
areas where there are specialist arts colleges which serve the
most deprived and disadvantaged areas. It is tough but they ought
not to think that because of the nature of the catchment area
they serve that they cannot reach the standard. I think now I
am very pleased that within the Specialist Schools Trust there
is a special unit with an arts officer who is supporting schools
in the bidding process and, with the other schools, has contacted
that person but I believe they can reach the standard. I think
the key question is, is the support there to enable them to do
that? I would very much hope that they have managed to contact
the person in the Specialist Schools Trust who looks after our
schools' application.
Chairman: Thank you, Derek. Thank you
very much indeed. I think we have had an extremely good morning
and I am grateful to everybody who has participated.
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