§ 40. Mr. Tony Banksasked the Minister for the Arts if he has given any guidance to the Association for Business Sponsorship in the Arts on matching funds provided by trades unions; and if he will make a statement.
§ Mr. LuceThere is at present no special guidance to the Association for Business Sponsorship of the Arts on funding provided by trades unions; the same rules apply to trades unions as apply to businesses.
§ Mr. BanksWhy did the Minister support ABSA's recent act of political censorship against the Crucible theatre, when it refused to match a grant from NALGO for the sponsorship of the play "The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui", which is a Berthold Brecht play? Does the Minister approve of this sort of political censorship by ABSA'? Is it not the thin end of the wedge? What other productions would he be prepared to support ABSA in censoring, given that he supported ABSA on that occasion?
§ Mr. LuceThere is absolutely no question of any censorship on the part of ABSA. The play to which the hon. Gentleman referred, in respect of which the producers had asked for sponsorship from NALGO, went ahead as planned and was not stopped in any way. The sponsorship was stopped, and neither I nor ABSA can accept sponsorship that leads to party political activities and propaganda. To do otherwise brings the whole sponsorship scheme into total disrepute. Sponsorship must therefore be confined to promoting the main products or services, and nothing else.
§ Mr. BuchanTo be precise, it was not the sponsorship that was stopped, but the matching funds, and that arose because of the interpretation of politics and party political argument. I have read the material carefully. It is certainly political, but it is not party political. NALGO would have used exactly the same argument—and has in the past—in relation to Labour Governments. Does the Minister riot accept that in this interpretation we must make a distinction between sponsorship from private and 443 commercial firms, which are concerned with profit, and that from trade unions, which are concerned with the wellbeing of their members and of society as a whole? That is the crucial distinction, and if the Minister fails to understand that, he will fail to understand the basis of trade union sponsorship.
§ Mr. LuceThe right hon. Gentleman is right to say that ABSA was unwilling to give the matching grant. Although it is right to allow trade unions to be part of the sponsorship scheme—my predecessor decided that, and I stick firmly to that policy—it is essential that the provision of taxpayers' money in the scheme should in no way lead to party political propaganda. That is what would have happened had the sponsorship been granted.