HC Deb 26 April 1965 vol 711 cc163-82

10.2 p.m.

Mr. Robert Cooke (Bristol, West)

I beg to move, That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that the Transfer of Functions (Cultural Institutions) Order 1965 (S.I., 1965, No. 603), dated 24th March 1965, a copy of which was laid before this House on 30th March, be annulled. The purpose of the Opposition in putting down this Prayer is to explore the mind of the hon. Lady the Joint Under-Secretary of State for Education and Science, and to try to unravel the tangle into which the arts policy has been falling since her appointment. The hon. Lady was appointed amid a blaze of publicity. She promised both a debate and a White Paper and a full statement to the House. Promises for debate have been legion, and we had a debate on the subject of leisure in which my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley (Mr. Hunt) first mentioned the subject of the arts.

In spite of this, the Joint Under-Secretary of State for Education and Science in charge of sport rose in his place, without warning to the House, in the course of a speech by one of my hon. Friends, and said that it was not proposed then to give the Government's answer on the subject of the arts, but that that would have to take place at a later date. Indeed, the Minister then said that he was asked …to make it clear to the House that we very much hope early in the new year to have a debate specifically on the arts and the amenities."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 4th December 1964, Vol. 703, c. 947.] That did not happen.

During Question Time on 21st December last, the hon. Lady said: I can confirm now that there will be a comprehensive statement …—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 21st December 1964 Vol. 704, c. 857.] That, presumably, meant a statement from the hon. Lady. She went on to say that she hoped very much that it would be in the form of a debate. I am not sure whether she intends to make a statement tonight; I very much hope that she does, or perhaps we will have to wait until tomorrow for that statement. We got a White Paper in due course, and we are eventually to have a debate

The other reason for this Prayer is that the Opposition were positively invited to pray against the Order by the hon. and learned Gentleman the Financial Secretary to the Treasury during the Committee stage of the Museum of London Bill, when he said that the provisions of the Bill would be covered by this Order. I gather that that is not so, because I do not see the Museum of London mentioned. I gather that the Bill will have to be amended by the House, and that the hon. Lady will do her best to take part in these proceedings on Report. Perhaps, therefore, we can examine her mind a little further, because I am sure that she will appreciate that the House will have only a limited opportunity to explore her mind, even during today's debate and tomorrow's.

I hope that by examining the hon. Lady's mind this evening we shall be able to clear the air for tomorrow's half-day of private Members' time. I cannot pass on without mentioning that the Government have at no time given any time at all to this subject; indeed, it would be fair to say that they have shuffled—

Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Dr. Horace King)

Order. We cannot discuss, on this Order, the failure of Her Majesty's Government to provide time for a debate on the arts. We cannot debate the general artistic or cultural policy of Her Majesty's Government. We must confine ourselves to whether the functions proposed to be transferred should be transferred. The hon. Member must link his remarks to this.

Mr. Cooke

I am greatly obliged, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, for your guidance. I had intended to pass on to certain remarks which, I hope, will be in every case linked to the Order which is before the House and against which we are praying.

The Order itself arises out of policy decisions in the White Paper "A Policy for the Arts: the First Steps." In referring to the Order I shall also have to refer to the White Paper from time to time. Indeed, the only public exposition of the White Paper we have had so far has been in the Press. Without this Prayer this Order would not be able to be explained to the House by the Minister concerned. This opportunity also gives me the occasion to state very briefly the basis of Opposition policy so that the House can be in no doubt about where we stand.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker

Order. It must be the Opposition's policy on the transfer of the functions mentioned in the Order, not the Opposition's policy on art and culture in general.

Mr. Cooke

I am sorry, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, if I have phrased my remarks in such a way as to lead you to think that I was intentionally straying out of order. I shall try to link my remarks to the Order perhaps even more closely than I had otherwise intended to do.

Perhaps I should pass on to say that this Order deals with administration. It would seem to be an attempt to provide the apparatus by which the hon. Lady can carry out the Government's policy which is her special—but, I fancy, not her exclusive—concern. As a Joint Under-Secretary for Education and Science she has replaced another Minister. Is the hon. Lady doing that Minister's work, the work he was doing before? Or is she now exclusively concerned with Government policy for the arts because, before her transfer, at her previous Ministry she had sole responsibility for this subject? She was at the Ministry of Works, notable for its patronage of the arts, and with other Departments, notably Housing and Local Government and planning, this has an important bearing on the subject.

This Order is a meagre affair. Is it part of a series? I am sure that the House would be grateful if the hon. Lady could explain whether it is part of a series of Orders, or whether we see here possibly the whole apparatus by which the hon. Lady will control the arts. I use the word "control" advisedly, because the hon. Lady is on record as having said that "Nothing must happen that I do riot know about." I quote her actual words. If the Order is part of a series, what others will follow? If it is not part of a series, how will the hon. Lady control or influence policy in those other fields? If she can do it without a transfer of functions, why has the Order been made at all?

From the terms of the Order it appears that the Arts Council, which is specifically mentioned in the Order, emerges as the major agency for carrying out the Government's policy, though what benefit there is in removing the Treasury's child to education my party fails to see. No doubt the child is guaranteed support for the immediate future, but later it will find itself in the same position as hundreds of others—coming under the stern scrutiny of Gt. George Street.

The Government have made much of increased grants to the Arts Council, but these were inevitable if the policy of expansion which the former Government initiated was to be maintained. We are entitled to ask how the new money is to be spent. Does the Order provide for some new relationship between the Joint Under-Secretary to the Ministry of Education and Science and the Arts Council? Will the hon. Lady derive power to earmark certain sums for her pet projects, because the Arts Council is asked to do much more in terms of the White Paper and surely it will need more staff, larger premises and a larger increase next year?

The White Paper says that the Arts Council will retain its full freedom to allocate the grant in aid made available to it. The same applies to the Historic Buildings Council and other bodies. Can the hon. Lady explain why they are not transferred to her Ministry?

The Joint Under-Secretary of State for Education and Science (Miss Jennie Lee)

indicated assent.

Mr. Cooke

I am glad to see that the hon. Lady shows assent and that we can have an explanation. We still feel, without proper explanation from the Government, that the hon. Lady is in the wrong place now and that she has left a Ministry which had honourable associations with the field which she now seeks to direct. Heaven forbid that we should transfer some of those functions to the Ministry of Education and Science. We would rather see the hon. Lady back at the Ministry of Works. I will in a moment describe how we think the hon. Lady should have enhanced status, or at least how a Minister for this subject should have enhanced status.

There has been much talk about encouraging local enterprise in the field of the arts. The Order affects them only marginally. I gather that the work of the area council for museums set up by my party is to be expanded. Perhaps the hon. Lady will explain the statement in the White Paper that the Exchequer grants will not be large until the schemes are in full working order.

What new apparatus is there here to help local effort? Is it not a question of persuading local councils to spend out of the rates? Would not only a direct financial inducement persuade those which have hitherto not been persuaded by public opinion? If the hon. Lady wishes to direct affairs she must surely do it in an effective way. I am not saying that my party would favour this method, but financial inducement would at least budge some of those authorities which have not been very helpful so far.

Paragraph 92 of the White Paper says this: Nor must Government support be given only to established institutions. Under the terms of the Order, is the Arts Council to have wider discretion? Will an amendment to its charter be necessary, which is somewhat liberally interpreted, even today? The hon. Lady looks somewhat impassive at that question. I hope we shall have the answer to it this evening.

It is Government policy that the Arts Council should adjust its plans to the wider opportunities now offered to it. Perhaps we could know what the wider opportunities are and by whom they are offered because, as we see it, this is a meagre Measure. It might almost be described as a piece of Heath Robinson apparatus, under which the hon. Lady will find it difficult to discharge her many and various duties as we see them.

Perhaps it would be wrong this evening to go into great detail about the question of arts grants. No doubt, one could juggle with figures, and we have a Treasury Minister present, though perhaps the combination of a Treasury Minister and the rules of order would prevent me going very far in that direction, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. However, perhaps we can explore that tomorrow. Suffice it to say that £13½ million was spent in the last year by the last Government, and one could argue about the significance of the very meagre increases now proposed. It is possible that these increases are somewhat meagre because if this is the only functions Order that we are to have, the apparatus will not be there to spend any more money.

Perhaps that is the reason why the Government have done so poorly in spite of the blaze of publicity and the juggling with figures. If those figures are scrutinised, as they will be tomorrow—

Mr. Deputy-Speaker

Order. The hon. Gentleman must not anticipate tomorrow's debate. At the moment he is perilously near getting out of order in every sentence that he utters.

Mr. Cooke

Thank you, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. I had realised that, and I am sorry that I proceeded even further than I had dared to do.

To return to the Order, which is about administration, under my very next heading I had intended to say that policy and administration must be interdependent, and that there is one vital matter covering the arts from which the hon. Lady, as far as we can see, by conscious design, cut herself off completely. I return to the question of architecture, town planning, preservation of beauty—

Mr. Deputy-Speaker

Order. There is nothing about this in the Order. If the hon. Gentleman looks at the Schedule he will find the limits of his speech carefully set out.

Mr. Cooke

Yes, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. I am sorry that I have caused you so much trouble. It is simply because it is my hope to complain about the lack of apparatus—

Mr. Deputy-Speaker

Order. I want to help the hon. Gentleman. He is usually an astute Parliamentarian. This is a very narrow debate. It is a debate on the transfer of certain functions from the Chancellor of the Exchequer as respects the Arts Council and the Secretary of State for Education and Science. All of his remarks must be addressed to this Order.

Mr. Cooke

I will certainly endeavour to do that, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, and I apologise to you for having strayed beyond the narrow limits. I was positively invited by the Treasury Minister—

Mr. Deputy-Speaker

Order. Even the invitation of the Treasury Minister, powerful as Treasury Ministers are, does not entitle the hon. Member to trespass beyond the rules of order.

Mr. Cooke

I was going on to say that I had no intention of using that as an excuse for trespass I was trying to make it abundantly clear to the Government that they had held out false hopes to the Opposition in the opportunities which might be offered to us to discuss this vital matter.

If I may return to my earlier theme in which I appear to have been in order, the point that I made at the beginning was that we had put down this Prayer to try slightly to expand the very limited time available. But I will quickly pass to matters which are directly related to the Order. Indeed, I was going to ask the hon. Lady why so many museums and galleries were included in the Order. In view of the effects of the recent Budget which will decimate private collections in country houses all over the country arid which, in a generation, will result in those contents being emptied, is it the object of the Government, in including so many museums and galleries, that they will have the place to put the ill-gotten loot which they will be getting as a result of the recent Budget?

I have asked a number of questions to which I think we are entitled to have an answer. What the Government have done so far is to create confusion and, indeed, some bitterness, and this Order does not appear to give the hon. Lady the powers to carry out the policies to which her party has committed itself. We believe that a Joint Under-Secretary of State for Education and Science is not the answer. The hon. Lady was better off at the Ministry of Works, alone and unchallenged. She was better off where she came from, and in a Government positively loaded with Ministers of State she should at least have had that status and influence.

Not all the hon. Lady's personal charm can get her out of her present difficulties, and not even apparently the provisions of this Order, which seems a somewhat narrow document. Not even if she tours the countryside in the inflatable collapsible arts centres, painted in "Come to the Fair" colours which she describes in paragraph 54 of the White Paper, will she get out of her difficulty. The hon. Lady cannot hide from the House the fact that hers is a makeshift Department with inadequate functions.

I want to ask the hon. Lady another question. What is now possible under the Order which was not done well before? Presumably there is some reason other than pure empire-building in bringing the Order before the House. The country was led to expect much from the hon. Lady's appointment as a Minister for the arts. It has turned out to be something of a grotesque sham. We do not even know whether the hon. Lady is devoting her talents exclusively to the arts in her new post.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker

Order. If the hon. Lady were to endeavour to satisfy the hon. Gentleman in that query she would be out of order.

Mr. Cooke

I am so grateful to you Mr. Deputy-Speaker for warning the hon. Lady.

I will pass on to my next point and describe previous expenditure on the institutions mentioned in the Order as being on a Poor Law relief basis and arts expenditure as being on a shoestring basis. This shows a warped state of mind.

This debate has, naturally, been somewhat narrow. The extent to which we can explore the hon. Lady's mind is limited and I must not anticipate tomorrow, but I hope that she will use the opportunity to answer such questions as have been in order; and there have been a number. Throughout this brief speech there have been a number of points which appear to have made a hit and I hope that the hon. Lady will do her best to cope with them. I will not now give a catalogue of the great achievements of my party in this field.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker

Order. The hon. Gentleman is not in order even in threatening to give a catalogue.

Mr. Cooke

I am sorry if my tone sounded threatening, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, because it certainly was not intended to be. I am greatly obliged to you for bringing me to my final paragraph.

The terms of the Order smack of control, control of the arts. It has always been my party's aim to cultivate the arts and not to control them. We maintain that the dead hand of Socialism is guaranteed to kill artistic creation and enjoyment.

Mr. E. S. Bishop (Newark)

Will the hon. Gentleman explain why, when it is felt that this matter is worthy of a Prayer being put down, only five of his hon. Friends are here to talk about the threat of Socialism to the arts?

Mr. Cooke

Perhaps I should be out of order if I were to follow the hon. Gentleman and give a full explanation. I say only that this is a day on which the Government insisted on bringing the House back because they found themselves in difficulties, and perhaps many of my hon. Friends had already made other arrangements to do valuable work outside. I am grateful to you, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, for allowing me to answer that point.

I have said that Order smacks of control, which is not our way of doing things. My party has given understanding and encouragement to the arts as well as substantial material help, and we are pledged to expand this work when we return to office. All those many people who are directly or indirectly interested in the arts in their widest sense need be in no doubt which party is their true friend. It is the Conservative Party every time.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker

Before I call the next speaker, may I say a word to the House? I do not like to appear to be hard, especially to a back-bench Member who is making an appearance at the Front Bench, but the House must know that a debate on a Prayer against an Order is confined to the subject matter of the Order, no matter how intensely interested one is in the topics which are raised indirectly by the Order.

10.28 p.m.

Dame Irene Ward (Tynemouth)

I support the Prayer. You will know by long experience, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, that I am very often out of order. I listened with great attention to the various Rulings which you have given, and I shall try to confine myself to the context of the Order, but I wonder whether it would be in order for me to say that the basis of my argument in support of the Prayer is that the hon. Lady the Joint Under-Secretary of State seems to have got herself very admirably, though probably through no fault of hers, into the position of the man in the old rhyme who flew through the air with the greatest of ease.

Originally—the point is emphasised by the presence of one of the Treasury Ministers—the arts were administered by and under the control of the Treasury. Then, after the General Election, it was decided that the arts should be transferred from the Treasury to the Ministry of Works. I did not myself like that very much, but I cannot pursue the point now. The next thing that happened was that the hon. Lady, having started at the Ministry of Works, though she never reported at the Treasury, took another flight, like Mary Poppins, and arrived at the Ministry of Education.

I do not think that it is in the interests of the arts that this transfer of functions should be carried out, and I think that I shall be in order in giving the reasons for my view. It seems to me that by the transfer of functions the Government have deliberately set about to denigrate the position of the arts. I have been in the House a very long time, and, having taken a reasonable amount of interest in the machinery of government, I should have thought that it would have been very much better in the interests of the arts if the hon. Lady had remained at the Ministry of Works, where she would have been able to argue directly with the Treasury. The alteration in function means that she will find it much more difficult to deal with the Minister of Education, who is responsible for the Department, the hon. Lady being only a Joint Under-Secretary. She will have to get him to agree about the policy that she wants to pursue and about the amount of money that she hopes to obtain from the Treasury.

I am not arguing that the hon. Lady is not desirous of supporting and expanding the arts. I know her too well for that. We had the pleasure of welcoming her to the North-East Coast, and we know that she has a very deep interest in the subject. But I visualise that she will have a much more difficult task in finding support for her policy and a proper priority with finance with the Minister of Education as her supreme Minister rather than the Minister of Works. That is my main objection to the transfer of functions.

I realise that I should be out of order if I were to catalogue the controversies already circulating about the Minister of Education, but I can imagine what will happen when the hon. Lady seeks her place in the queue. I learned enough from my own Government. We did not always get the support we wanted for the arts from the Conservative Government. I am never satisfied, and I am prepared to admit it. I can visualise the hon. Lady, with her beautiful hair flying, going—I will not say "cap in hand," because she never wears a hat—to knock on the door of her Minister to demand some of the money she is desperately trying to get out of the Treasury to pursue the policy that she wants for the expansion of the arts. I am sure that the Minister, in view of all the complications in which he is involved—he is a very clever and brilliant Minister—will deal with the hon. Lady with all the charm that he has, but I doubt that she will leave his room having won a proper place in the priorities, which those of us who are interested in the arts would like her to obtain.

That is one objection. I am quite certain that with the mixing up of money for the arts with education the Minister will argue, for instance, about the provision of art teachers in teachers' training colleges, and all sorts of things of that kind, and I doubt whether the hon. Lady is sufficiently experienced to get past him and through to the Treasury. We on this side, when we were in office, were able to go to the Front Bench, go to the Chancellor, and get the additional money which we got. I do not trust the Minister of Education. Notwithstanding the charm which the hon. Lady can exert, I do not trust the Minister of Education to put the need of the arts in its proper perspective and priority, and that is one of my objections to the transfer of functions.

The second thing I am anxious to elicit from the hon. Lady if I can is a definition of what the Socialist Government mean by expansion of the arts. I think that perhaps their approach to that is rather different from that of my party —although, perhaps, I should not say my party, because sometimes I have my own ideas and like to expand them rather than my party's point of view. However, I thought that the arts stood out in themselves, and did when we had control of the Treasury, and when we were discussing big orchestras, grand opera—always very unsatisfactorily administered under my Government. But I am speaking of the whole art world, and the big overall plan of the art world, not only opera, painting, drama, music, but poetry and historic houses—the whole field of the arts.

With a cheap-money allocating Minister deciding what he felt about expansion of the arts, the arts still, I thought, stood out, whereas under this transfer of functions, the hon. Lady, again through no fault of her own, will find expansion of the arts mixed up with the education world, and that is not my concept of the expansion of the arts.

I can quite see that in the position in which the hon. Lady now finds herself it will be possible for her, under the transfer of functions, and in the consultations and discussions in the education world, to discuss whether sufficient is being done to encourage the young to have an interest in the arts—

Mr. Deputy-Speaker

The hon. Lady has been in order almost all the time, but she is not now. We cannot discuss the arts in general or cultural, policy in general or the welfare of the young, and so on. The hon. Lady must confine her remarks to the functions which are being transferred.

Dame Irene Ward

I am very glad you have said that, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, because I have already made my point. Although the hon. Lady's politics are different from mine, and our view of the transfer of functions may differ, I know that she she is very quick on the uptake. I feel sure that she has taken the point. I have said enough to show that I think the transfer of functions has weakened the argument for the expansion of the arts in their proper sphere.

I think that I have said enough, but to sum up, there are these two points. The hon. Lady, with the transfer of functions, will be in a much weaker position—and we on this side of the House regret that—to argue for the arts, because she will have to argue with a whole chain of Ministers If she had remained at the Ministry of Public Building and Works she would have been able to argue her case direct with the Treasury.

I doubt whether the present Minister of Education will allow the hon. Lady to do that. She will have to go through the normal channels through which the spending Departments have to go. Her budget will have to be passed by the Minister of Education and then presented to the Treasury, or the Chancellor of the Exchequer, along with a whole string of other requirements. That is regrettable, and that is perhaps my major objection on this proposal.

My other objection is that by the transfer of these functions the public will wonder what she, as the "Minister for the Arts," is going to do. She will become a Ministry of Education Minister in a junior position. That is not what the public want. The public are tremendously interested in the purpose of having a Minister for the Arts in the Government set-up, and the hon. Lady's position will be weakened by the transfer of these functions. I hope that she will regret that a little bit of her glory—because I take it as that—has been lost by the transfer of these functions.

10.41 p.m.

Mr. George Jeger (Goole)

I suppose it is a tradition that one should offer congratulations to a back bencher who has been brought forward to the Front Bench for the first time, and I do so most sincerely, and I utter the usual phrase, also sincerely, that I hope we shall hear the hon. Member for Bristol West (Mr. Robert Cooke) from the Front Bench on a good many occasions, for nothing would expose the poverty of the Opposition so blatantly as to have the hon. Gentleman making more speeches of the kind that he has made tonight. It seemed to me that he had no case whatever, and in his endeavour to explore the mind of my hon. Friend the "Minister for the Arts" he was unable even to keep to the narrow point of the transfer of functions on which this Order is based.

The hon. Lady the Member for Tyne-mouth (Dame Irene Ward), who has just made a powerful speech against the transfer of these functions, surprised me. She and I have been associated in the past with demanding more money from the Treasury for the arts. We have also been disappointed in the demands that we have made on the Treasury for more encouragement for the arts. Yet the hon. Lady is against the transfer of these functions from the Treasury, which, in the past, has been so parsimonious and so disappointing, to the Ministry of Education, which has a much more enlightened outlook and a much more direct interest in the encouragement of the arts in the future than the Treasury has had in the past.

The hon. Lady knows that we had to fight the Treasury for every penny that we received for the Arts Council, or for the encouragement of the arts. Time and again we had to go to the Treasury in joint deputations to demand that something more should be done, and grudgingly it was done.

Dame Irene Ward

It is obvious from what the hon. Gentleman has said that he does not have very much confidence in his own Chancellor of the Exchequer. He might have had better luck with his Chancellor than I had with mine.

Mr. Jeger

All Chancellors of the Exchequer have an interest in money. We want the arts to be guided by a Ministry which has an interest in education and art. There is a great difference in outlook between the two Departments, and I am glad that the Treasury has been persuaded to give up its control over the arts, which is a monetary control, and that the question of the encouragement of the arts is to be dealt with by the Ministry of Education. It augurs very well for the future encouragement of artistic endeavour in this country in every sphere.

Perhaps tomorrow we shall go into the details of that; here we are concerned only with the transfer of functions. I do not see what all the fuss is about. It seems an excellent idea to transfer those functions from the Treasury to the Ministry of Education, and I congratulate the Government on having done so.

10.45 p.m.

The Joint Under-Secretary of State for Education and Science (Miss Jennie Lee)

First, I should like to offer my congratulations and sympathy to the hon. Member for Bristol, West (Mr. Robert Cooke), speaking for the first time from the Opposition Front Bench—congratulations far the boldness with which he tried to widen the debate and sympathy because I know how frustrating it is when all who are interested in the arts want to get on to the wider debate that will be in order tomorrow. I am grateful for this opportunity, if it can be used to clear away any doubts that Members in any part of the House may have about the wisdom of the transfer of powers which we are now discussing.

In opposition we believed that there was a need for the administration of the arts to be made more coherent. But in this country we do things in a typically British way. It might be said that we should have started by creating a separate Ministry for the arts and to have gone on from there; instead, we took a cool look at the situation as it was and decided that the first thing to do was to remove from the Treasury the responsibility which it had for the arts during times in our history when Governments had no arts policy and when expenditure on the arts was relatively trifling.

If we go back even over the last 13 years of the last Administration, we see my point illustrated. Expenditure on the arts was small; no Member of the Government was responsible for canalising interest in the arts; we could have a year when there was no improvement at all in the arts grant and when there was even a reversal of that process. We feel that to have one Minister responsible to the House and answering Questions in the House is an advantage in itself. The hon. Member for Tynemouth (Dame Irene Ward) thought that it might have been better if I had remained in the Ministry of Public Building and Works, but in that Ministry, in addition to carrying out the research necessary for the White Paper, I was a junior Minister and I got myself entangled with the Queen's Guard, and barracks, and all sorts of activities of the Department which were not strictly dealing with the arts. There is no change, in the sense that in the Ministry of Works, although I did a certain amount of departmental work, my main work was given to the production of the White Paper. But in assembling the material for that White Paper it became clear to me—and my colleagues agreed with me—that it would be better for those functions which were carried out by the Treasury to be transferred to the Department of Education and Science.

Mr. James Ramsden (Harrogate)

The hon. Lady has referred to the advantages which would accrue from having a Minister in a position to answer Questions. Will she tell the House, if not in the course of her present speech, at any rate tomorrow, what sort of Questions she expects to be in a position to answer about her responsibilities for the arts? I do not want to widen the debate, but I understand that the powers of the Arts Council for the detailed administration of its grant, notwithstanding this Order, are to be left very much as they are now. Therefore, we presume that the widening of Ministerial responsibility will not be very great. It would assist the House if the hon. Lady could tell us at some stage what Questions she will be able to take.

Miss Lee

It is true that there will be no change whatsoever in the relationship between the responsibilities of the Arts Council and the responsibility of Ministers in the House. There is no intention that any Minister should answer on detailed questions of policy. Incidentally, in answer to the question of the hon. Member for Bristol, West about whether I or any other Minister would seek to further the interests of special projects, it is quite clearly laid down that our job is to improve the priority for the arts, to get more interest in the House and in the country and to get more money for the arts. There will be no detailed interference at all with the work of the Arts Council.

In answer to the question of the right hon. Member for Harrogate (Mr. Ramsden), I think it will be found that it is possible now for quite a range of Questions to be put down—I trust to the interest and ingenuity of hon. Members of the House—which I will be responsible for answering and which will help to carry out some of the projects of the White Paper. If hon. Members wanted to know what changes have been made in the work of the Arts Council, they have only to go to last year's annual statement of the Arts Council to find that the Arts Council itself has decided that it ought to interest itself in multi-purpose buildings for art centres. In other words, the Arts Council is eager to make the best of the arts more generally available. For that purpose, it is extending its work in many directions. I am sure that there are many questions which hon. Members can ask which will help to illuminate this work and encourage people who are engaged in it.

It was surely anomalous, once expenditure on the arts had reached more than £10 million, not to have a special Minister responsible for it. The only question was, should it have a separate Ministry and, if not, should it be in a Department of a particular Ministry? The sensible thing was to transfer a considerable amount of work. If I read the headings, it will indicate what we have transferred from the Treasury to the Department of Education and Science—work concerned with the British Museum, the Natural History Museum, the National Gallery, the Tate Gallery, the Imperial War Museum, the National Library of Scotland, the Arts Council, the British Film Institute, the National Theatre, the National Maritime Museum, the British Academy, the Soane Museum, the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, the Music Colleges, and the Wallace Collection.

Already, in the Department of Education and Science, we have responsibility for the Science Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum. It takes a good deal of work to digest those activities in that branch of the Department of Education and Science which I have been asked to take care of for the moment. There may, at some future time, be a case for adding to this some of the functions now carried out by the Ministry of Public Building and Works, but I believe that we are approaching this problem in the right way in tackling it one step at a time.

For instance, one of my first discoveries was that the staff of the Arts Council is working under considerable difficulties. If we are to expand expenditure on the arts, as we are doing, if we are to give more work to the people who are carrying out the decisions of the House, then at the same time as we are transferring functions to the Department of Education and Science, we must also look to 4, St. James's Square. We must also see that we are not over-burdening those people who have to carry out our decisions.

I do not wish to be controversial at this late hour, but I have been rather shocked at some of the conditions I have found at St. James's Square, particularly the conditions in which the experts who are responsible for receiving valuable works of art, paintings for packaging, and so on, are having to work. I could have wished that I had inherited a situation in which more had been done both to improve the working conditions of the staff there and in other ways to facilitate their work.

All I will say is that my White Paper is a first step. It claims to be no more than that. I was asked by the hon. Member for Bristol, West whether there were to be other steps. I hope so. If a White Paper says that it is a first step, one can assume that other steps will follow. Whatever we do will be carefully thought out with one purpose in mind at all times; that the arts in this country should be utterly free from political direction or dictatorship of any kind, whatever Government are in power, and that a civilised Government should spend more money on the arts and give more encouragement to artists.

We consider it quite inappropriate that every time a Chancellor of the Exchequer has to decide his priorities he should have this one function of Government inside his Department. For example, there is no more reason nowadays why the arts should be inside the Treasury than health, transport or any other Ministerial subject. It might be said that one cannot compare expenditure on those matters with expenditure on art. That is true. But I have never made any secret of my belief that we have made only a beginning in the White Paper and in the transfer of functions we are now carrying out in giving the arts their rightful place.

I hope that we will spend more on the arts in future. I hope that hon. Gentlemen opposite, as well as my hon. Friends, will, by their questions and criticisms, encourage the Government of the day to spend more. In my White Paper I have laid special stress on education. Indeed, a whole section is devoted to the subject. It is difficult to reply to a debate of this kind, in which there have been such narrow margins, so to speak. However, education in the arts must begin with the child at school, encouraging youngsters to take an interest in the subject, so that from 15 onwards art becomes a part of community life. The whole matter flows naturally and logically.

We w ill see what happens in the next six months. As I hope to tell the House tomorrow, we have already had some encouraging results in the last few months, since we stepped up priorities to the arts. I think that we are doing it at the right pace and through the right Department. I assure hon. Gentlemen opposite that this work is delegated to a Minister who is wholly responsible in the Department of Education and Science, that the money for the arts comes under a separate Vote and that there need be no fear at all that a Socialist Secretary of State for Education and Science is going to take a different point of view when dealing with the arts from his colleague. We are completely at one. We want more money to be spent—intelligently, carefully and thoughtfully—and I am satisfied that the transfer of this matter to this Department is in the very best interests of everyone concerned with the arts.

10.58 p.m.

Mr. Robert Cooke

I have no intention of using any right to speak again to comment at great length on the hon. Lady's reply at this late hour. I thank her for her kind remarks and sympathy in what she described as my frustration, bet I must point out that my frustration was caused entirely by the Government, in the way they have handled this subject. I also thank the hon. Member for Goole (Mr. George Jeger) for his somewhat backhanded congratulations.

I am glad that the hon. Lady answered some of the questions asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Tynemouth (Dame Irene Ward) about the vulnerability of the arts Vote within the Ministry of Education and Science. I hope that the Joint Under-Secretary will bear in mind the possibility of art teachers and art facilities in schools being counted in with the money for the arts, as a result of which there might be some confusion.

I believe that in putting down this Prayer the Opposition has fulfilled a useful purpose in getting from the hon. Lady certain things which otherwise perhaps would not have seen the light of day, even though this has been a somewhat narrow debate. There will no doubt be other occasions when we can have wider discussions. The hon. Lady has shown herself to be passionately interested in this subject; so are we. Sometimes passions are aroused about different points of view as to how money should be spent and what should be done. I cannot help thinking that the party opposite, the Government, are the party of control while our attitude towards the arts is one of cultivation. I hope that policy will in the end prevail.

Question put and negatived.