HC Deb 31 July 1958 vol 592 cc1707-22

9.8 p.m.

Dame Irene Ward (Tynemouth)

I wish to set my hon. and learned Friend's mind at rest immediately by saying that I do not propose to ask for the subsidising of the arts to be taken over by the Treasury. I know that that would not be in line with the approach of my hon. and learned Friend to this matter. Certainly I should not want to recommend it, but I think that the position which has recently arisen calls for a public inquiry into whether the present method of subsidising the arts through the Arts Council is the best way to deal with this very important matter.

I am asking for an inquiry perhaps on a more limited scale than that afforded by a Royal Commission, although my hon. and learned Friend might think a Royal Commission suitable. That idea has received a great deal of support from the Press. The Daily Telegraph was in favour of a Royal Commission and there has been support in The Times for an inquiry. There has also been a great deal of support in the Sunday Times for an investigation. I think the time has come, bearing in mind recent circumstances and the controversy between the Carl Rosa Trust and the Arts Council, when we should examine the whole question to see whether the present means of subsidising the arts is right and proper.

Let me say straight away that I am a firm believer in support for the arts. Though I do not suppose that my views would be acceptable to my hon. and learned Friend, I think that we should contribute more than we do to the arts, but I will not pursue that matter tonight. I do not want to be violent in what I have to say. I realise that it is far better to try to examine this problem objectively and without heat, though I am bound to say that some of the things which have happened have caused the greatest anxiety to me and to those serving with me on the Carl Rosa Trust.

I wish to divide what I have to say into two parts. First, I wish to speak of the controversy which has arisen between the Carl Rosa Trust and the Arts Council and then to say something about the general administration of the Arts Council. The artistic director, a very distinguished man, a professor from Manchester University who has great support in his own sphere resigned from the Trust with the chairman, Sir Donald Wolfit, and three other members. I wish to ask my hon. Friend this question. If a board is set up after public money has been spent on acquiring an opera company, is it his idea that, with the exception of the artistic director and the chairman, the Trust should be absolutely dumb? I realise that in the old days, when there were distinguished patrons of the arts, the decisions of artistic directors were probably much clearer and much less subject to criticism than today, when public money is involved.

Let me put it in this way: Professor Proctor-Gregg, as artistic director, arranged a spring tour for the Carl Rosa Opera Company. Under his direction the provinces have had less opera, the companies have had less work and the costs have mounted to such an extent that over the tour the estimate has been exceeded by £5,000. Every week that the company has been on tour the estimate has been exceeded by £350 a week. That is the position. The overdraft, which was limited in accordance with the policy of my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer, has been exceeded. Under the direction of the chairman and the artistic director, a donation which came into the Carl Rosa Trust, to be spent, as we understand it, on a new production, was inadvertently put into the general account at the bank and has been used for the reduction of the overdraft and the holding down of the overdraft to very nearly the figure which the bank had set. I do not consider that that is either honourable or proper finance.

In addition to that, as I see it, if one is a member of a trust or a board dealing with public money which is being expended on employing people, the trust has at any rate some right to have some consideration for what happens to the people in its employment, and to the guarantee and the protection that those people have to have. I found it very disturbing that the appropriate trade unions, that is to say, the Musicians' Union and Equity, representing the musicians and the artists, had protested at the dismissals which had been made by Professor Proctor-Gregg and that the chairman had written a letter, as he very often did in his own hand, to the appropriate trade unions saying that those dismissals had the full support of the Trust when, in fact, the Trust had never been informed at all. This only came out subsequently when the representatives of the Musicians' Union met the present Trust and pointed out that the Union had made the representation and had received a letter from the chairman saying that the dismissals had the full support of the Trust.

In spending public money, my hon. and learned Friend the Financial Secretary, who represents that section of the Treasury which deals with the subsidising of the arts, would not expect a body of responsible people to sit as a Trust and merely say to an artistic director, "You have carte blanche. You can do what you like. We wash our hands of the whole affair. What happens is no affair of ours." When the controversy became pretty heated we passed a resolution which instructed Professor Proctor-Gregg—not that we wanted to dictate what he did—that in future when matters of this kind were involved, that is, the spending of public money and the treatment of the people for whom we held some responsibility as we believed for the Government, we should be informed. The artistic director and the chairman took the view that this was a gross interference with the rights of the artistic director. They promptly resigned and have had the support of the Arts Council.

I want to make quite plain what in fact the Arts Council has done. It has established, and given reasons for so doing, what it calls Touring Opera, 1958 Limited. It has announced the balance of the grant which has been allocated by the Arts Council to the Carl Rosa Trust of £40,000. It has made no provision for the reduction of the overdraft, which was an obligation of the Trust before the chairman and the artistic director resigned. It has left the Trust with an expensive office, with commitments, with bills, with liabilities, and has merely cleared out. The Arts Council has not communicated with the Trust as to what we are supposed to do in the matter of meeting our obligations, which, I am sure my hon. and learned Friend will agree, are the obligations of an honourable board.

The Council has merely said, "You go ahead with the overdraft, which is in the nature of £11,000"—in fact it is £16,000 without the £5,000 which had no right to be put into that account—"We are making no provision for that overdraft. We shall spend the whole of the £40,000". That is all we have heard about it. I do not consider that that is honourable finance. I am bold enough, on behalf of other members of the Trust and myself, to say that we consider we are people of integrity. We do not consider we are entitled to that treatment by the Arts Council, or from a body which itself is drawing public money.

I should like to know from my hon. and learned Friend whether he thinks that in the spending of public money, if a Trust is properly created, the members of the Trust should make no observations, ask no questions, but merely rubber stamp decisions taken by a chairman and artistic director. There are one or two legal matters which arise out of the decision of the Arts Council to create Touring Opera, 1958. I do not want the House to be under any misapprehension. The members of the Trust are very glad to know that the artistes and the company, for whom they have great regard and who have a great responsibility, are to get a season, short though it may be. That, at any rate, is something.

Before I discuss the matter in a little more detail, I want to point out that the three independent members of the Trust—those members of the Carl Rosa Trust who have never required any support from the Arts Council, in the shape of patronage, the Treasury or the Ministry of Education, or any direct grant from the Treasury for the Royal Schools of Music, still remain members of the Trust. Also on the Trust we still have the only two people who have any experience of touring opera.

There is one point about the legal question which has arisen from the Arts Council's decision. I have here a letter from which I will quote because it illustrates, in my view, the incompetence of the Arts Council in creating this situation without due regard for the facts of its legal position when deciding to throw over the Carl Rosa Trust. Curiously enough, this letter was sent to the hon. Gentleman the Member for Goole (Mr. G. Jeger), who happens to be interested in this matter. There is a reference in the letter to the secretary of Touring Opera, 1958, who also resigned, though, of course, he was a paid servant of the Trust and has now become the administrative officer of Touring Opera, 1958. The letter was written by some theatrical agents Renee Stepham Ltd. to Mr. Jeger of the Whitehall Theatre, and this is what it said:

"Re: Carl Rosa. I have just received a call from Mr. Bohn"—

this was our late secretary—

"the reinstated secretary of the above company, who has asked me to inquire whether you will accept the Carl Rosa under its new title Touring Opera 1958, the reason being that the Carl Rosa will not receive any fund from the Arts Council and cannot, therefore, put the company on the road. The funds, however, will be administered for exactly the same company, same repertoire, artistes, etc., but under the new title. No doubt a certain amount of publicity will be put out in the press to this effect, which should mean that all opera fans will realise that Touring Opera 1958 is, in fact, the Carl Rosa. Please advise.

Yours sincerely,

For and on behalf of Renee Stepham Limited.

(sgd) Renee Stepham."

The point about that letter is this. When the Carl Rosa Trust was established by the Arts Council, it alone, under its articles of association, was allowed to use the title "Carl Rosa". Those concerned are, of course, legally entitled to set up their new Touring Opera, 1958 which I regret their having done, but they are not entitled to use the Carl Rosa name. The lawyers for the Trust have written to the Arts Council pointing this out, but, until this moment, we have had no news from the Arts Council about how it proposes to deal with this very difficult and critical legal situation.

I want to say something about the formation of the Trust as it is today, with the resigned members of the Trust. The Arts Council sent out a memorandum, which it published in the Press, drawing attention to the fact, in not very polite terms, that there had been disturbances in the Carl Rosa Trust resulting in the resignation of twelve members during the last three and a half years. That is perfectly true, of course, but there is one point to be made about it, The Carl Rosa was bought from Mrs. Phillips, who had been the owner of the company for many years and who has a great and distinguished reputation in running the company. It is fair to say that the Carl Rosa Opera Company was our only touring opera company, with its roots deep in the provinces and well loved and admired by the people of the provinces.

When the Carl Rosa Trust was established, Mrs. Phillips appointed five nominees to the Trust and the Arts Council appointed five. When the Arts Council made its appointments it put on the board three members of Sadler's Wells. Of course, I am not in the artistic world, and therefore I am not in a position to comment on it, but I am in a position to say from my own knowledge of ordinary business that when a board is established one does not put one's competitors on it.

It is very well known in the opera sphere that the Carl Rosa produces a quite different form of presentation of opera from other opera companies. The Carl Rosa has always been known for a robust type of presentation as opposed to the rather anaemic type of Covent Garden and Sadler's Wells. The general public, however, can take its choice. It is a free world and people can listen to whatever type of opera they like; but the fact remains that when the Carl Rosa Trust was established and when the Carl Rosa Opera Company was bought from Mrs. Phillips, it was written into the agreement that the tradition of the Carl Rosa should be retained under the Carl Rosa name.

I think that it was a great error of judgment on the part of the Arts Council immediately to place on the board of the Carl Rosa Trust three members of Sadler's Wells. I cannot go into the whole history of the merger, but Mr. Norman Tucker made it plain that Sadler's Wells and Mr. Tucker himself, who was appointed to the Carl Rosa board, had a great contempt for Carl Rosa. Therefore, I consider that it was a great error of judgment on the part of the Arts Council to make up the board with competitors in the same field. I only mention that in passing.

I want to finish what I have been saying about the members of the Trust who are left. The Arts Council in a rather nasty memorandum points out that two members of the Trust are due to retire at the annual meeting which will be held in September of this year. I think that I shall be one of the retiring members, and I have no doubt that the Arts Council will be very pleased to see the back of me. It has already told us that it will be very careful in scrutinising the people who are elected to serve on the Trust in place of the two retiring members. Therefore, I am delighted to be able to tell the Arts Council that the hon. Member for Goole, who has very great experience in the theatre world, has very kindly agreed to serve on the Trust. Therefore, if I retire the Parliamentary link will be retained, which, I say at once, is not at all acceptable to the Arts Council. In addition, we have invited Mr. Martin Holmes of the London Museum—who, like his father, is very well known—to serve on the board.

I should like to read, so that it can be put on the record, what Mr. Martin Holmes wrote about the old Carl Rosa under Mrs. Phillips and its recent performance under the retired artistic director. The whole argument on a great many fronts has been as to whether the standards of Carl Rosa, which has had to do everything on a shoestring, are acceptable to the general public. This is what Mr. Holmes wrote on 5th July: Dear Dame Irene Ward, Please allow me to express my warm personal appreciation of your recent letter to the Press about the Carl Rosa Opera Company. Whatever has been happening within the Company over the last few months, I cannot consider that the change of management"— that is a reference to Professor Procter-Gregg— has been anything but disastrous, if the last Sadler's Wells season is anything to go by. For the first time for several years the repertory was completely unenterprising; its only item of real interest was a production which had been the highlight of the last season of Mrs. Phillips's management, and for which a conductor from that management had to be engaged, as the new dispensation had not produced anyone who was prepared to cope with it, let alone competent to do so. Sir Donald Wolfit, I see, has been telling the Press that the last Sadler's Wells season was an advance on those of the last three years, but I rather think it was less successful financially"— that, of course, is quite true— and I am sure it was so artistically. If I can be of any help in supplying information, either from my research on stage history in general or my personal recollections of Carl Rosa productions for nearly forty years, I hope you will have no hesitation in calling on me for it. The Carl Rosa Company has a character of its own, and that character is partly formed by, and particularly suited to, the nature of its work as a sound touring opera company, so it is well worth preserving"—

Mr. Speaker

I am very sorry to interrupt the hon. Lady. She gave notice that she was going to talk on the Arts Council as a suitable medium for dispensing such moneys as the State could offer for the encouragement of the arts. She now appears to be talking about the Carl Rosa Company, which is a quite different organisation, as I understand. I think she should stick to the Arts Council.

Dame Irene Ward

I certainly will, but I thought I would be a little more conciliatory before coming to the real point of my story. I think, Mr. Speaker, you were not present when I opened my statement on the Arts Council. I pointed out that the Arts Council was responsible for finding the money for the Carl Rosa. In fact it acquired Carl Rosa, and—

Mr. Speaker

I hope the hon. Lady will not drift too far from Ministerial responsibility in this matter.

Dame Irene Ward

No. I certainly will not. I think the letter has spoken fairly enough for itself.

I just want to make one other point, which I am sure you will allow me to do, Mr. Speaker, and then I will deal with the Arts Council and why I want an inquiry or a Royal Commission. I am very grateful to you, Mr. Speaker, for having let me go as far as I have, but I think that if one is to be a little unduly unpleasant it is just as well to start by being a little more friendly.

The last point is this. This is a statement which was made to the Press by the Arts Council, and to which I take very great exception. I am not going into detail on that, but when Sir Donald Wolfit and Professor Procter-Gregg and other members of the Trust resigned it was important from the point of view of the Arts Council that they should get a majority of the members to resign. I am glad to say they were not successful, but Sir Donald Wolfit did endeavour to persuade the deputy-chairman of the Trust, a very distinguished and delightful conductor, Mr. Aylmer Buesst, to resign, too. Mr. Buesst first of all did resign and then decided it was not right to do so, for he is a man of great honour and integrity. When the Arts Council announced it was going to make a statement in the Press it did a thing which I thought does not come very well from a distinguished body drawing a large sum of public money, for in its announcement about the question of the grant it ended the statement by saying, and this was in the announcement, that 11 trustees had resigned: One other changed his mind after announcing his resignation. I thought that that was a pretty poor thing for the Arts Council.

Mr. Speaker

It may be as the hon. Lady says, but I do not see what it has to do with the Treasury.

Dame Irene Ward

Quite a lot, because the Treasury, of course, finds the money. I will come straight to the point. Perhaps you would like me to be very outspoken. I will say this quite straightly from the shoulder.

I am not criticising the members of the Arts Council. They are a very distinguished body of people of great integrity and they do a very great service in trying to administer fairly the grants which come from the Treasury. But what has happened and what I have observed is that too much power sometimes goes to people's heads. I am not saying this about individual members of the Arts Council. It is for them to try to control the methods of those whom they employ, but I regret to say that it has become the practice of the Arts Council that when it wants to create a friend it finds the necessary patronage, which comes, after all, from public money for which Parliament is responsible.

I can give two illustrations. We, the Carl Rosa Trust, were given a grant on the understanding that after the unfortunate death of our chairman, we appointed Mr. Cundell, who was a member of the Covent Garden Trust. I have nothing to say against him at all. He is a very well known and distinguished person, but he was a member of the Covent Garden Trust and, as it has been the whole object of the Arts Council, if possible, to try to have a general control of opera, that was one of the methods which it used. I do not think that it was a very creditable one.

Sir Donald Wolfit has received a grant from the Arts Council, which is money found by the Treasury and therefore is the responsibility of Parliament. He was a very great critic of the Arts Council. I want to make it perfectly plain that I am a great admirer of Sir Donald Wolfit. I think that he has done a great deal for the theatre. My complaint against the Arts Council is about its selection of recipients of Treasury patronage, which I think is very often unsuitable. A great many people who are entitled to Arts Council patronage do not receive it.

Writing to Mrs. Phillips, Sir Donald Wolfit said: Now what I am going to say is very confidential and you had better destroy this letter when you have read it. He went on to say, I spend hours a week and considerable time doing a voluntary job … all for the aggrandisement of the Arts Council who have just played me a dirty shameful trick and who never liked me. I think that is absolutely true. It is true because Sir Donald Wolfit, quite wrongly in my opinion, never received any support from the Arts Council until he became chairman of the Carl Rosa Trust. He is quite right in saying that the Council did not like him. It does a great deal of its work on the basis of its likes and dislikes. But when he became chairman of the Carl Rosa Trust, as will be seen from the annual report of the Arts Council for 1956–57, he was suddenly given a grant of £500. From that moment—as is very natural and I do not blame him in the least—he became a friend of the Arts Council, quite prepared to do anything it wanted. I am making this allegation because it is extremely difficult to find an opportunity for getting at the bottom of some of the difficulties and problems which arise in the world of the arts.

Now I want to make another point. I have a great admiration and affection for Lord Waverley, who has rendered distinguished service to this country. He was a great friend of mine and he told me himself one day that he had accepted the chairmanship of the Covent Garden Trust to please his wife. I am sure that the Covent Garden Trust was lucky to got the services of Lord Waverley but, although he was a very distinguished man, he was not quite a match for Mr. David Webster, who is the general administrator of Covent Garden. But let that go by the way.

Then, Mr. Speaker, as I said before you came in, the Arts Council has found £40,000 without any strings for the new Touring Opera, 1958, and has left the Carl Rosa Trust with this very substantial and heavy overdraft. Some of my colleagues on the Trust think they will have to meet the overdraft, but I have told them that they have the protection of Parliament and will not have to worry about that because I shall see to it, as long as I keep my seat, that this money will not have to be found by members of the Trust.

I do not want to go on with this sad story, Mr. Speaker, but it is very regrettable, in my opinion, that we cannot find a better way of subsidising the arts, which we all want to serve and which we all feel are necessary to our civilisation. We have a great heritage in this country, whether in our art, our museums, or our music—though we could do a great deal more for music. At the same time, when we have a body administering public funds, it is essential that it should be above reproach.

These things are very difficult to say. People get carried away with their enthusiasms. Naturally they think they are right. I sometimes think I am right myself when undoubtedly I am wrong, but I am always prepared to admit it. I have not liked what I have seen of the Arts Council administration. I think it is time to look at what is going on. I have sent my hon. and learned Friend the Financial Secretary some other documents which he has examined. I shall not bring them to the notice of the House tonight because I do not think it would be appropriate for me to do so.

I have listened with great interest to the debates on the Privileges of Members of Parliament and I believe that there are occasions when rather difficult matters have to be made proceedings in Parliament in order to get the necessary protections. It is regrettable that the system of a grant-in-aid is very difficult to criticise, very difficult to discuss, and very difficult to raise in the House of Commons, Mr. Speaker, with your eagle eye over us. It is most important, therefore, that from time to time these matters should be subject to Parliamentary criticism and that they should be raised in the House of Commons.

The Arts Council has made it plain that it does not like Members of Parliament. I do not blame the Council but neither do I like it. I certainly think the time has come to look at the whole question. I hope that I shall be able to urge my hon. and learned Friend in this direction. I am a great believer in the plan that has been brought forward by Lord Bridges. I should like to see the responsibilities of the Arts Council broken down, because if a pressure comes from opera or from art or from orchestras, which are subsidised with public money, it is unfortunate, as is the case when the Arts Council has to play one off against the other.

If one can bring sufficient pressure to bear on the Arts Council, we may find opera overthrown for the benefit of the drama or the drama overthrown for the benefit of our great orchestras. I think that to channel all the money to one body, as we do under the present system, is not serving the best interests of our national expenditure on the Arts as a whole.

I think that Lord Bridges's idea of taking opera away from the Arts Council is a good one, and I would apply that to every section and break up the Arts Council. I have had enough of it. I should like to see an administrator of great experience and integrity given direct from the Treasury what the Treasury thinks it can spare for opera or drama or whatever it may be, and then I should like those who want support to make their case I do not want a State monopoly of the arts, and I think that most people would agree that to try putting the arts into a monopoly system of organisation would be fatal. I should like to see each organisation, whether it concerns an orchestra or an opera company, going to this administrator and making its case, so that everybody over a very wide field could feel that they could make their own case to the administrator, and would not be, so to speak, in competition inside the Arts Council one against the other.

I think that the only way of dealing with the whole future of the arts is to learn from a wise man like Lord Bridges, and I think I am right in saying that the Prime Minister said he would be delighted to see him. I should like to see this whole matter looked at again, and I beseech my hon. and learned Friend, before any other unpleasant and undignified actions on the part of the Arts Council take place, to set up either a Royal Commission or a public inquiry. I think that in that way we who are interested would serve the arts better.

9.48 p.m.

The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. J. E. S. Simon)

My hon. Friend the Member for Tynemouth (Dame Irene Ward) started by posing the question, which I think I took down correctly, whether, where there is a board of trustees set up at public expense and subsidised from public funds, the trustees should be absolutely dumb. Without attempting to answer that question in the abstract, may I say that I was aware that my hon. Friend is a member of a board of trustees, and that if it was a certain board of trustees of which she is a member and to which she was referring, I would answer in the emphatic negative.

I do not expect her to be absolutely dumb. On the contrary, my hon. Friend seems to me a sort of parliamentary Reichsmarschal, for as soon as she hears the word "culture" she reaches for the Order Paper.

Mr. John Mackie (Galloway)

Do not encourage her.

Mr. Simon

I know that my hon. Friend has a great enthusiasm for the arts, and that she believes, and has said, that the State should contribute more to the arts, but I think that the publication which came out yesterday, which I do not know whether hon. Members have yet had a chance of seeing—"The Government and the Arts in Britain"—does throw a good deal of light on the work that has been done at public expense for the arts.

I wonder whether many members of the public know that in this year's Estimates nearly £7 million appear for expenditure on the arts, a figure which has increased from less than £1 million. My hon. Friend rather suggested that the Arts Council was the sole dispenser of Government patronage for the arts. That is not so. It is true that expenditure on the Arts Council has risen from £235,000 in 1945–46 to £1,100,000 in this year's Estimates, but that is only £1,100,000 out of just under £7 million which is the total Government expenditure on the arts in Britain in this year's Estimates, and that leaves out of account what is expended by many local authorities.

However, the question arises whether the Arts Council is the appropriate body for the channelling of Government expenditure to the arts. My hon. Friend has made it perfectly clear that she has a fundamental quarrel with the Arts Council, the people who constitute it, and its constitutional position. I must make it no less clear that the Government's view is that the present system is essentially sound. In point of fact, there are only two alternatives. The one is to have State subsidies for the arts directly through a Government Department, and the other is the present system.

Does anybody seriously believe that there should be a Government Department directly responsible for channelling such money as is available from public funds directly to the arts?

Dame Irene Ward

No.

Mr. Simon

Anybody who heard my hon. Friend this evening would have great cause to think twice before advocating such a system, with all its opportunities for Parliamentary lobbying and for representation of one interest against another, and so on.

Dame Irene Ward

rose—

Mr. Simon

My hon. Friend has been speaking for three quarters of an hour and I think that it would be an abuse of the time of the House if I now gave way to her.

Dame Irene Ward

He is not quite stating the truth.

Mr. Simon

It is almost universally accepted that the preferable system is that the State should support an independent body and leave such a body the maximum discretion as to the form in which it allocates its resources to the different institutions requiring its aid. That is the present system of the Arts Council.

After all, the arts are the least suitable victims for bureaucratic control and for that reason successive Governments have deliberately aimed to preserve and develop independent centres of administration in the arts rather than concentrate artistic policy under a more direct State control. I do not know whether my hon. Friend wants me to become Minister of Culture and National Enlightenment.

Dame Irene Ward

No.

Mr. Simon

I did not think for a moment that she did, but that is the alternative to which her policy was bringing us.

Dame Irene Ward

Not at all.

Mr. Simon

There is a great variety of applicants, and the experience of the very distinguished members who combine expert and detailed knowledge of the different arts, such as one finds on the Arts Council, is not to be found in any Government Department. For that reason it seems to me that the present system of the Arts Council is far preferable. It is analogous to the system of the University Grants Committee for academic policy.

So much for the general question. My hon. Friend also related it to the unfortunate disputes which have arisen relating to the Carl Rosa Opera Company. I believe that one dispute arose in connection with the degree of independence which should be given to Professor Procter-Gregg, as artistic director of the company. He was called in as director for a year in an effort to raise the artistic standards of performance. Some of the trustees, including my hon. Friend, thought that his reforms were too drastic. As a result of mounting disagreement, a number of members of the Trust, including the chairman, resigned. I cannot believe that those disputes redound in any way to the advantage of opera or artistic endeavour in this country.

My hon. Friend has gone into these matters in very great detail this evening. She has gone as far as to read a letter which was obviously written for a private eye, and has made very serious allegations against the Arts Council and a number of former members of the Carl Rosa Trust. I do not propose to follow her into those matters in any way at all. It is sufficient to say that I believe that the House as a whole thinks that the present system of channelling aid to the arts through the Arts Council is constitutionally the most desirable one, and that my right hon. Friend and the Government have confidence in the way in which the Council dispenses the patronage that lies in its scope.

My right hon. Friend finally raised a question which is very important and which commands considerable public sympathy and the sympathy of hon. Members. She raised the question whether there should be a general inquiry into the arts. That is not a matter on which my right hon. Friend has closed his mind, but the fact remains that at the moment the Gulbenkian Trust has set up an inquiry precisely in this field, headed by Lord Bridges, and it seems to me that we would be well advised to await its report, which I hope will be made available to the Government, before proceeding further in that direction. With that, I hope that I have satisfied my hon. Friend.