Examination of Witnesses (Questions 146-159)
SOLT, TMA
1 FEBRUARY 2005
Chairman: Gentlemen, welcome. You must
be feeling very pleased with yourselves in the light of the latest
statistics which have been published.
Q146 Mr Hawkins: As the
Chairman has said, it has been a couple of days of really quite
positive publicity for the West End which I am sure we all celebrate.
One of the points that you make to us, which is repeatedly made,
is the contribution of West End theatre to the UK's tourism earnings,
particularly London's and the south-east's tourism earnings, but,
nevertheless, there is clearly a need for the refurbishment of
a lot of West End theatres and the issue is where that money is
going to come from. To what extent do you feel that there might
be some scope for some of the money to come from sources other
than the taxpayer, as it were, in terms of the companies that
operate hotels and that kind of thing? What thoughts do you have
to give us in terms of the priority that West End theatre should
have for this money as against other parts of the arts and heritage
estate, as it were?
Sir Stephen Waley-Cohen: I think
that we think that the West End should have a reasonably high
priority, recognising that the subsidised sector has already received
substantial sums through the Lottery schemes of the last several
years. We have not explored, because we feel it would be totally
unproductive, the prospects of other commercial enterprises, such
as hotels and restaurants, actually contributing to the modernisation
of these great, old buildings. Can I take the opportunity with
this question to correct what was said several times in the earlier
questioning, that the cost estimated by the Theatres Trust of
fixing the West End, bringing it into the 21st Century, is £250
million. At no stage has anyone suggested that public sources
should provide the whole of that. I think that our hope is that
it may be found possible that half of that would come from a variety
of public sources.
Mr Pulford: Perhaps I could just
add also that it is not our intention, although of course if anybody
were to make an offer it would be very agreeable, that it should
come from Exchequer funds.
Q147 Mr Hawkins: That is helpful. In
terms of the scope for self-help in this regard in following the
example that Cameron Macintosh has given, what do you say about
that—more scope for self-help?
Sir Stephen Waley-Cohen: Well,
we are expecting self-help to provide at least half. I think it
is fair to say that already the industry is spending a small number
of millions every year in modernisation improvements as opposed
to just maintenance. We do expect the industry to have to provide
more from its own pockets theatre by theatre and theatre-owning
group by theatre-owning group, but we are also expecting the theatre
industry as a whole to have to devise schemes, which we are quite
far down the road with really, to find over 15 years, because
it is a long-term plan, the half of the money that we are not
looking for from public and non-Exchequer sources. We think it
is going to be multi-layering, multi-sourcing, quite complex in
a sense, gathering that money and then distributing it in ways
which achieve the objective.
Q148 Chris Bryant: You said "not
the Exchequer". I presume that you mean by that, therefore,
the Lottery?
Mr Pulford: We are talking to
the Arts Council about that and Lottery funding, we are also talking
to HLF, the Heritage Lottery Fund, and also having discussions
with the London Development Agency. Those are the three bodies
that we are particularly talking to.
Q149 Chris Bryant: Well, this Committee
has fought quite hard on the issue of how Lottery funding gets
used. For the ordinary person who buys their Lottery ticket in
Wigan or Glasgow or wherever, what are they going to get out of
the fact that £125 million of their money which they thought
was going to a good cause is going to go to a commercial theatre?
Sir Stephen Waley-Cohen: I think
that they would say, if they were asked and if they were in possession
of all the arguments and all the facts, that the West End theatre
is a remarkable, historic collection of buildings which you could
not recreate today and if you lose them, you could not recreate
them at all, that they provide very substantial economic benefits,
quite apart from their arts and theatre benefits, both to London
and to the country as a whole, as figures produced by both The
Wyndham Report and a more recent Arts Council report show. They
would, if they studied the report prepared by the Theatres Trust,
recognise that the industry simply does not have the financial
resources to bring these buildings into the modern era without
support, and I believe they would recognise, as many commentators
from a wide variety of places have done, that this would be a
justifiable use of Lottery and other resources.
Chris Bryant: Having read the report,
and we referred to it quite a lot in last week's hearings, it
seems as if actually the best thing to do would be to have more
regular fires in theatres because then they would automatically
get done up! You talk about the economic benefits. I can see on
the basis of the economic benefits that there is a strong argument
for saying that the Exchequer should pay because this is about
London's economy, this is about bringing tourists into the country.
An extraordinarily high percentage of, in particular, American
tourists coming to the UK—
Chairman: And Japanese.
Q150 Chris Bryant: Yes, Japanese, as
the Chairman interjects, tourists cite it as one of their reasons
for coming to Britain, but that seems an argument for the Exchequer,
not the Lottery.
Mr Pulford: If I could make an
observation, it seems to me that, as we have indicated in our
evidence, the West End's reach is an awful lot wider than some
people think. I was talking the other day to a man called John
Stalker who runs the festival theatres in Edinburgh and I asked
him the simple question, "If you had no West End product
available in Edinburgh, what would happen to your theatre?",
and he said it would shut, so the reach of the West End goes far
beyond the physical confines of the geographical district.
Q151 Chris Bryant: Well, that is an even
stronger argument for it being the Exchequer rather than the Lottery.
Mr Pulford: Well, it is not up
to us to say whether the Lottery should have a capital fund or
not. That is not a reasonable thing for us, I think, to take a
view about. The Lottery is there, there is a capital fund. I was
for a time on the Board of the Royal Court Theatre when it was
undergoing its rebuilding and the cost of rebuilding the Royal
Court was in fact £50,000 a seat. We are looking in the West
End at a cost very, very, very much lower than that and what we
are saying is that if that was reasonable, and we would not for
a moment dispute that it was an appropriate way to spend money,
then we feel there is a reasonable case in all the circumstances
for giving London's commercial theatres some element of that kind
of support, not to put it into commercial pockets, let me say,
because we are proposing that the money should be spent through
a charity so that if ever they ceased to be used for theatre purposes,
that money would go back, so it would be protected.
Q152 Chris Bryant: Incidentally, Nick
Hawkins referred earlier to the figures that came out in the last
couple of days of theatre attendances, but we have not put them
on the record, so perhaps you would just like to tell us how wrong
last year's newspapers were when they kept on predicting dire
figures.
Sir Stephen Waley-Cohen: Last
year was the second best year ever for attendance in the West
End at just below 12 million and it was the highest year ever
for sales of tickets in the West End at just over £300 million.
Mr Pulford: Just over £340
million.
Sir Stephen Waley-Cohen: And for
the first time the VAT on tickets, including the figure we heard
from the National just now, exceeded £50 million, so there
might be an argument for the Exchequer giving something back,
but our guidance from within government, which I suppose is principally
from within DCMS, is that it is more realistic to approach the
three sources that Richard Pulford has mentioned.
Q153 Chris Bryant: Can I ask then about
booking fees. You were sitting behind when I was asking questions
of the National Theatre. Explain the process whereby somebody
buys a ticket which is advertised as being £40 or whatever
and then on top of that they have to pay a booking fee which often
seems quite substantial.
Sir Stephen Waley-Cohen: I think
you have to divide ticket-selling into two groups, which indeed
the OFT report of a week or two ago did, what they called "primary"
and "secondary". I would like to leave aside the secondary
sources which are the people who have bought the ticket and are
reselling it at a profit for themselves, people with no direct
connection to the event for which they are buying the ticket,
and the vast majority of complaints and grumbles did in fact relate
to those secondary sources. The primary sources again divide into
two. One is the venues themselves and the other is the ticket
agent network of distribution. You can, even for every West End
event, buy a ticket without a charge of any kind extra on the
ticket if you go to the box office yourself. At some theatres,
if you telephone the box office, there is no extra charge. At
some theatres—
Chris Bryant: Which? I am sorry, that
is an unfair question in a way, but I would be amazed to know
that.
Q154 Chairman: I was about to ask you,
consequent on what Chris Bryant has been questioning you about,
what is the additional cost of processing a booking by phone than
by somebody presenting themselves at the box office? In many ways,
the time consumed is less because if you telephone, your chances
of actually choosing the seat you want to sit in are a great deal
less than if you present yourself at the window of the box office.
However, if you are telling Chris Bryant and, therefore, the Committee
that some theatres actually charge a booking fee to people presenting
themselves at the box office, in that case those theatres are
telling a lie, are they not, about the price of the ticket? The
price of the ticket is really what is on the ticket plus the booking
fee and that is the price of the ticket. Frankly, it is a rip-off,
is it not, an absolute rip-off?
Sir Stephen Waley-Cohen: If there
is no way of buying the ticket at the price advertised, clearly
that is wrong. I am not aware in the theatre industry of anywhere
where it is impossible to buy the ticket at the price advertised.
I know that you are seeing representatives of the principal theatre
owners and we are here as the society, the trade association and
I am sure you will press them on these points and on such issues
as what the actual cost is, as you have just asked.
Q155 Michael Fabricant: Just to follow
on from that, you made the distinction between primary and secondary
sales, but let's call a spade a spade. The secondary sales are
the ticket touts who buy these tickets and then sell them on,
as you say, remote from the actual theatre themselves and make
their profit. Why can the theatres not have a rule that they do
not sell large numbers of tickets to individuals who turn up either
at the ticket office or telephone or however they get them because
if you only sold, I do not know, three or four tickets, whatever
a family group would be, the ticket tout business surely would
collapse, or am I naive?
Sir Stephen Waley-Cohen: I am
afraid you are naive. When we have a hit show, they give people
a bundle of cash to go and buy four tickets because we do try
and impose those kinds of controls to prevent tickets getting
into the hands of touts, but it is impossible.
Michael Fabricant: Let me now get to
the meat of what I really wanted to ask you about which is back
again to the funding issue, and thank you very much for clarifying
that we are talking more about £120 million rather than £250
million. It is an interesting coincidence, by the way, because
of course the Lottery gave £120 million to the Wembley Stadium,
very much based in London, and it turns out that there are fewer
seats for ordinary punters than we were all led to believe, but
that is another story.
Chairman: In addition to which, no dual
use, the basis of which the £125 million was awarded.
Q156 Michael Fabricant: Absolutely right.
If you were to receive £120 million, what conditions would
you be prepared to accept and what could you offer those people
in Wigan and all the other places that Chris Bryant mentioned,
even Lichfield, in the form of a sort of payback, not just in
that which will benefit London, but that which will benefit outlying
areas? For example, could there be some sort of outreach programme?
Sir Stephen Waley-Cohen: The most
important condition which has been already mentioned is that in
the event that the theatre ever stopped being a theatre, then
the money would have to be paid back because that money will be
to modernise theatres and make them better able to meet modern
expectations of today's audiences. Bigger seats, better sightlines,
better heating and cooling comfort, better lavatory provision,
including female lavatory provision—
Q157 Ms Shipley: Good! I tell you, the
females of the country will be so pleased!
Sir Stephen Waley-Cohen: All of
those things actually mean fewer seats and fewer seats mean that
on those happy occasions when you have a really big hit which
is when a theatre can make good profits, you will not do as well
because there are fewer seats. It will mean that when people come
from Wigan or elsewhere outside London, they will benefit.
Q158 Michael Fabricant: I perfectly accept
the case that the seats are uncomfortable at times. I have lost
over a stone, I sometimes think, just sitting in one production
through the sheer volume of sweat that has exuded because of the
heat in the theatre! When you have a very popular production,
like, for example, The Producers, which I have singularly
been unable to get tickets for so far, do you think people actually
worry about issues like the seats or whatever? If you go off Broadway
or even on Broadway, you end up with maybe three toilets for men
and women for an entire theatre.
Mr Pulford: I think there are
some people who do not worry, that is absolutely right, but what
we are about is maximising audiences for the future and we need
to get to those people who do worry about those things. We are
in a competitive position, I am sorry to express it this way,
in relation to institutions like the National Theatre which has
infinitely better facilities than most West End theatres have
been able to offer. It is the imbalance that we need to redress
so that we can be confident of continuing to attract audiences
and those for whom the fact that it is swelteringly hot in the
auditorium actually makes their experience less appealing.
Michael Fabricant: We have talked about
the obligation as in the provision of outreach, but what about
the obligation of the sort of production that is put on in the
commercial theatre? There are very, very few sort of straight
plays at the moment in the West End.
Q159 Chairman: And very few certainly
straight, new plays.
Sir Stephen Waley-Cohen: I do
not really accept that. There are 30 maybe, I have not counted
in the last week or two, plays in the commercial West End of which
a number are certainly brand new. Some of them unfortunately do
not succeed. One of the facts is that it is very difficult to
put on a new play commercially and have a success with it and
that makes producers nervous of doing it. It is one of the reasons
why they try to attach to such plays megastars wherever from.
I think that to attach a condition of the kind of product that
should be presented would be extremely difficult. I think if you
were to say to a theatre, "You must never do musicals",
you would, for example, then certainly not have the likes of the
small musical that is in what used to be called the Whitehall
Theatre because you would certainly have said to that theatre,
"You've got to do plays", so I think that any suggestion
of controlling what is presented would be a great pity.
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