§ Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Archie Hamilton.]
1.27 am§ Mr. Tony Banks (Newham, North-West)I have always dreamt of speaking in an Adjournment debate so early in the morning. Perhaps we should regard this debate as practice for debates on the legislation that we understand will probably be set before us next Session.
Nevertheless, I am grateful for the opportunity to draw to the attention of the House what is happening on the South Bank—one of the world's greatest cultural centres — which is now facing serious threats because of the Government's misconceived proposal to abolish the Greater London council.
Last week the GLC's arts and recreation committee received a report on the first 12 months' operation of the open foyer policy in the Royal Festival hall. That policy was initiated by the GLC in the face of considerable ill-informed opposition from many sources. The council's intention was to transform the Royal Festival hall from a graceful, middle-aged concert hall, poorly attended by a dwindling band of graceful middle-aged people, into a thriving arts centre. The GLC's success has been conspicuous by any standards. Instead of being open for evening concerts only, the Royal Festival hall is now open from 10 am every day, providing a complete range of arts activities—free music of all kinds, exhibitions, dance and theatre. The halls teem with life throughout the day, and the public have responded magnificently to the GLC's innovation. We now attract a younger and wider cross-section of society, and this in turn has helped to improve concert audiences and income for the halls.
I can give specific examples of our success. A decade of decline in concert audiences has been halted. The number of first-time concert-goers has nearly doubled. the percentage capacity of the Royal Festival hall is up by 4 per cent. — the largest increase in 12 years. We are touching 1 million ticket sales for the three halls—the Royal Festival hall, the Queen Elizabeth hall and the Purcell room. We have attracted 1 million visits to the Royal Festival hall foyers in addition to the 1 million concert attendances. Nearly 500,000 concert attendances and foyer visits have been made by people who came to the Royal Festival hall for the first time in 1983–84. That is precisely what the GLC set out to achieve by breaking down the barriers that, I regret to say, surround many of our arts institutions. There has been a 64 per cent. increase in concessionary ticket sales, concentrated on pensioners and the unemployed. The profits to the council — something which will interest Conservative Members—from a revamped catering service and the introduction of shops has been about £200,000 in the past year. All that has been achieved in just over 12 months. Nobody can deny the GLC its success, which has been achieved without breaking any contractual arrangements or any lessening of the highest possible artistic standards. The GLC's policy has been to liberate the arts from the domination of the selfish and the unimaginative and to give the maximum number of Londoners opportunities to enjoy the finest available art forms.
The GLC's arts policies have achieved much in the past three years. I believe that it ill behoves a junior Minister in a Government of mediocrities and second-raters to 1137 describe the council's proposals for the Hayward gallery as vandalism, as did the Minister in a recent Arts Question Time. I remind him that it was the Labour London county council that built the Royal Festival hall and a Labour GLC that built the Hayward gallery. The same council provided the site for the national theatre and the national film theatre and still helps to fund both. Without the London county council and its successor body, the GLC, there would be no arts complex on the South Bank.
In that context, we should examine the GLC's current proposal to exercise its legal right to give the Arts Council six months' notice that it will assume full responsibility for the Hayward gallery. As with the Royal Festival hall, contracts will be honoured, but the council will try to integrate the Hayward more fully in exciting new developments on the South Bank. The Hayward's failure to maximise its appeal to visitors was the main reason for the GLC's proposal. It has achieved the scarcely desirable reputation of the most closed art gallery in western Europe. That could not be allowed to continue. It is not the Art Council's function to run art galleries or concert halls. Sir William Rees-Mogg expressed a similar view about a year ago when he was trying to extricate the Arts Council from the Hayward and Serpentine galleries. That being so, one would have expected some expression of gratitude from the Arts Council rather than peevish comments about possible legal challenge. When what I have described is judged, it will become clear that the description of what the GLC proposes as vandalism is ill fitting.
The South Bank is far more than activities inside arts centres; it is a massive outdoor arts arena in which the GLC has initiated a wide range of enormously popular festivals. Thames day, South Bank day, the Children's Festival and South Bank weekend attract audiences of about 250,000. To bring more life to the South Bank—one of the loveliest parts of London—the GLC last year opened the Festival pier, which is the first new pier to be opened on the Thames in the past 30 years. The distinguished architect, Mr. Cedric Price, produced some exciting futuristic proposals for consideration by the GLC and Lambeth borough council.
British society is moving towards more holidays for those who are in work, and we have to try to cater for the enforced leisure that the growing number of unemployed, caused by Government policies, have to endure. Matching those two needs requires a great local authority, such as the GLC, to provide artistic and recreational events for our people. Too many working-class families who live in flats view the advent of school holidays with alarm, as it can be a time of nerve-racking distress that can be alleviated only by increasing the number of organised events in parks and open spaces. The South Bank provides many such opportunities. Clearly it is nonsense to expect Lambeth borough council or Southwark borough council to replace the GLC's finance and expertise, which are necessary to organise the huge festivals that Londoners have come to look forward to and enjoy.
Among events on the South Bank are the London marathon, the Easter parade, open-air concerts at Kenwood, Crystal palace and Holland park, the Greater London horse show and the May festivals. They are all under threat directly from the abolition of the GLC. Tonight I want assurances from the Minister about their 1138 future, instead of the usual bland, complacent utterances about the boroughs taking responsibility. How can they be assumed to take responsibility, when their councils are to be rate-capped, and the events that I listed are regional rather than borough activities?
The Arts Council is clearly worried about being made responsible for the South Bank. I have seen a confidential memorandum from one of its directors. He states:
the South Bank would set up an anomaly so long as it remained administered by the Arts Council.The Arts Council has neither the wish nor the expertise to assume responsibility for the South Bank.That would not be the only anomaly arising from the abolition of the GLC, which is Government policy and which presents a prime political example of speaking first and thinking afterwards. When the Prime Minister personally wrote the abolition of the GLC into the 1983 Tory party manifesto, she committed an act of gross folly, which was subsequently compounded by constitutional outrage, the consequence of which will dog her party in London for many years to come. But I am no mourner for that news.
The Government say that they have provided sufficient extra funds for the arts to replace those of the GLC and the metropolitan county councils. Such a claim represents a deception to the art world and to this House. Of the £34 million additional funding to be provided, £16 million is earmarked for both the GLC and the seven metropolitan county council areas—but only for the first few years. In London, the GLC alone spends about £18 million on the arts, excluding museums, historic houses and so on, which are catered for from the Government's additional allocation. That means that someone will seriously lose out if the GLC is abolished.
The South Bank arts complex receives no less than £9 million from the GLC. The money is spent on the concert halls that I mentioned, the national theatre, the national film theatre, the London orchestral concert board and the South Bank open-air events. Do the Government seriously suggest that the Arts Council will dedicate that level of resources to the South Bank? If so, what will happen to the rest of England? There will not be much left to go round.
We need some straight talking from the Minister. To that end, I shall ask him six specific questions, of which I gave him prior notice in the hope of achieving sensible answers. First, will the Minister join me in congratulating the GLC on the success of its open foyer policy in the Royal Festival hall?
Secondly, will he give an assurance that adequate resources will be made available to the Arts Council for the maintenance of the open foyer policy and related activities.
Thirdly, will he state the likely date for the setting up of the proposed South Bank board? What will be its responsibilities? What sort of people will constitute its membership?
Fourthly, will he give an assurance, in conjunction with the Secretary of State for the Environment, that Thames day, South Bank day, the London marathon, the steel band festival, the brass band festival and the South Bank weekend will be continued?
Fifthly, will he give an assurance, in conjunction with the Secretary of State for the Environment, that the Jubilee gardens will continue to be made available for demonstrations and open-air events?
1139 Sixthly, will he give an assurance, in conjuction with the Secretary of State for the Environment, that no commercial development will be allowed on the South Bank? Perhaps in that context he would wish to say something about a possible new portrait gallery in that area.
Perhaps the Minister can say that the Government have decided to drop their abolition proposals. There is still a little time for sanity to prevail.
The proposal to abolish the GLC, which was founded on political malice, now goes forward on a wave of mounting Government despair and unbelievable ignorance. In the case of the South Bank, the GLC is trying desperately to prevent the Government from perpetrating one of the grossest acts of vandalism in the history of public funding of the arts. To try to head this off, I have even invited the Minister to accompany me to the Royal Festival hall —an invitation that he has still not taken up. But I shall send similar invitations to all London Conservative Members. Perhaps none of them may relish my company, but they owe it to themselves and to Londoners to see at first hand all the admirable things that I have described that happen on the South Bank and that are imperilled by Government policy.
If the GLC is abolished, I fear that the South Bank will return to the drabness from which the Greater London council was gradually rescuing it. If that happens, the Government will have earned the rightful condemnation of all decent Londoners.
§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. William Waldegrave)The hon. Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks) has made his usual speech. We need a scare for the week; as the arts world has been rather quiet—the hon. Gentleman is not doing his job — he has been sent out by the public relations men to try to stir up interest. His speech lost some of its freshness in this "packed" House because hon. Members were able to read it in The Standard earlier today —perhaps it needed a space-filler.
The hon. Gentleman believes that the GLC arts committee has done a wonderful job. His customary modesty forbids him to admit that he was once the chairman of that committee, but as usual he is sure that no one knows anything about the subject apart from him. He underestimated the greater people who went before him in the Labour movement in London and who played a major part in building the facilities on the South Bank, which he is now trivialising.
The hon. Gentleman conjured up a terrifying spectacle of the end of civilisation as we know it on the South Bank. That is not what the abolition of the GLC will mean. On the contrary, the Arts Council will take over the direct ownership and management of the South Bank. The paper which the hon. Gentleman saw contained another option, but that was what the Arts Council chose to do. No one is better placed to maintain and, I believe, improve the South Bank's position as a centre of international excellence of which Londoners can be rightly proud.
The hon. Gentleman asked several detailed questions, and I am grateful for his courtesy in giving me notice of them, about the future arrangements for the South Bank. I shall return later to what he says about the Arts Council's plan. I agree that the open foyer policy has not been a complete failure. The commercialisation of it has been 1140 fairly good; as the hon. Gentleman said, he got in some better caterers. If he does not wish to have commercialisation on the South Bank, perhaps he should not have those good caterers; but I do not believe that that was what he meant. The policy has not been that much of a success. I spend a good deal of time on the South Bank, as I am sure does the hon. Gentleman, and I know that some of it is good and some bad. Some of it is scruffy — it is unnecessary to have those childish posters and political advertisements stuck up.
Some of the statistics that the hon. Gentleman gave are not impressive. Only about 5,000 first-time visitors have attended a concert as a result; and overall the number of regular attenders at concerts has dropped since 1982. There are pluses and minuses, and there is still a long way to go before the facilities are properly used. Whether the open foyer policy is continued after abolition is entirely a matter for the Arts Council. However, I remind the hon. Gentleman that my noble Friend the Minister for the Arts had a more ambitious target for the South Bank in the comparisons that he made with some of the events in the Lincoln centre and elsewhere.
§ Mr. WaldegraveNo: I think we had better continue.
To answer the hon. Gentleman's second question, the South Bank board will be set up some time after the abolition Bill has received its Second Reading. If it were set up before then, I am sure that the hon. Gentleman would accuse the Government of setting it up before the Bill had come before the House.
The future of Thames day must be a matter for the Arts Council. Some of the most successful occasions will undoubtedly find support in future. The London marathon is nothing to do with the GLC as a separate organisation is involved. I believe that at least one borough has offered already to support the marathon in future and to give it the necessary facilities. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has given assurances about that for the future.
The hon. Gentleman asked for assurances for the future of the Jubilee gardens. I am concerned about the present use of the gardens. They have hosted many demonstrations which have had nothing to do with the arts. The area has recently been used as a parking lot for a striking miner's caravan. We can expect the Arts Council, should Parliament decide that it should have the Jubilee gardens, to have a little more style.
I can understand why the hon. Gentleman is worried. He and his colleagues at county hall must be wondering where to put their great pink birthday cake. This was another triumph for the GLC! It was forecast in a committee paper last March that 1 million visitors would see this object and unfortunately 950,000 of them have not turned up. Only 50,000 had come by the end of September. If we assume, charitably, a last-minute rush of another 25,000 in the remaining weeks that the cake is open, that still works out at a cost of £3.30 per visitor. I am sure that hon. Members, and perhaps even the hon. Gentleman, would agree that the £250,000 could have been spent in much better ways to help the arts.
The GLC's record on support for the arts generally in recent years is not all that good. It threatened to sell the pictures at Kenwood. It threatened to withdraw grants to the Royal Opera House development trust. It has attempted to blacklist artists for performing in South 1141 Africa and in its latest piece of civic vandalism—I think that my use of "vandalism" is justified—it has served notice on the Arts Council to quit the Hayward gallery. Nothing could show more clearly the cheap and shoddy side of the GLC's arts policies.
The GLC has not been able to justify its action and nor has the hon. Gentleman. Councillor Peter Pitt, the hon. Gentleman's successor, who—this is a compliment to the hon. Gentleman— is a much less attractive figure than himself, as chairman of the GLC arts and recreation committee, has spoken of turning the Hayward into a "people's picture gallery". One of his colleagues has suggested a list of quite worthy and interesting groups which might use it such as the Obaala black arts gallery, the women's artists slide gallery and the Wandsworth photo co-op. Many of the groups are perfectly sensible and should have exhibition space, but the Hayward is exactly the sort of space that they do not need. It would be a complete waste to use an extremely expensive high-security building, of which there are not that many modern ones in western Europe, for such exhibitions. It is quite easy to find space for such groups.
If the GLC were to try to continue the Arts Council's type of exhibition programme—the Arts Council has mounted some fine exhibitions at the Hayward, many of which I have seen in recent years—it would have quite a job on hand. It has no expertise in that area and it would find it difficult to persuade the major overseas lenders to part with valuable work—they certainly would not do so at six months' notice. I am forced to conclude that the GLC's action at the Hayward has a great deal more to do with political spite than any coherent arts policy.
I take up the hon. Gentleman's latest attempt at scaremongering, which is to suggest that the Arts Council does not intend to take responsibility for the South Bank. That is nonsense. The council is a responsible body and we expect it to consider all the options that are set out in the paper to which the hon. Gentleman has referred before deciding how best to run the South Bank site. The council has rejected the option of an independent trust. It will be managing the South Bank from April 1986 and it is greatly looking forward to the challenge. It is naturally aware that this will be a major task and one that will not be made any easier by the attitude of the hon. Gentleman's friends in the GLC. Their childish refusal to release information about details of the South Bank operation — future bookings, for example—is a strange way to show their concern for the arts.
The Government are confident that the long-term future of the South Bank is in safe hands. Is it too much to ask of the hon. Gentleman that he should use his good offices to ensure that the immediate future is not threatened by a short-sighted political approach that will result in time being wasted and the use of delaying tactics? There has already been the rather childish refusal to provide information about the South Bank operation, and a political approach will damage the prospects for the future.
I hope that we can put aside the scares which we have been offered by the hon. Gentleman and which are part of 1142 the same old story. We have not had serious worries expressed by the responsible arts people in the past few months because they know that matters are being dealt with properly. The House need have no doubt about the future of the South Bank.
§ Mr. Tony BanksThe Minister, as is customary now, is not directing his attention to answering any of the points. He might not take the arts seriously, but I do, and I do not appreciate the knock-about stuff that we are getting. He says that nobody in the Arts Council is particularly worried. I shall read him the opening sentence of the memorandum from the Arts Council, written by the regional director, who says:
I have been concerned for some months that Council has not yet taken the full measure of the situation that may arise for the arts in London should the Greater London Council be abolished.Far from the GLC having done little for the arts, the GLC has been one of the best news stories for the arts and has done a damned sight more for the arts than the Government.
§ Mr. WaldegraveThe memorandum, which I have as well, shows that the Arts Council is well ahead of taking over its responsibilities and facing up to the considerable challenge that it will have. If the hon. Gentleman is seriously concerned about maintaining continuity for the arts, let him go back to his colleagues and tell them to let the Arts Council have the information that it needs instead of maintaining their campaign of political spite——
§ Mr. WaldegraveIf the hon. Gentleman will say that if the information is asked for he will give it, I shall be most grateful.
§ Mr. BanksI said that the Arts Council has not requested information from the GLC. Nor have the Government, which is rather strange when one considers the power that the Secretary of State took in the paving Act.
§ Mr. WaldegraveWe may get something helpful out of this debate. I think that the hon. Gentleman is saying that if the Arts Council asks for the information it will be given.
§ Mr. BanksIf the Arts Council asks the GLC for information, we shall see what it needs to know. Apparently, it needs to know a great deal, as do the Government.
§ Mr. WaldegraveThe arrogance of that remark is clear, and will be clear on the record. The Arts Council must have the informtion that it needs on bookings and so on to make a sensible policy for the future.
There need be no worries about the future of the South Bank. I pay tribute to some of the things that the GLC has done recently, but the hon. Gentleman over-rates some of the triumphs. Some things have been shoddy, and some, such as the Hayward gallery proposals, have been stupid, but the future of the South Bank complex as a whole will be safe in the hands of the Arts Council for the indefinite future.
§ Question put and agreed to.
§ Adjourned accordingly at nine minutes to Two o'clock.