Arts Policy (Hansard, 20 June 1984)

§ Lord Howard of Henderskelfe
My Lords, I rise to continue the short debate which we are having on the arts, and in doing so I shall try to confine myself to as 306 relatively few minutes as possible; even fewer minutes than the limit set, if I can. Therefore, despite my own very great personal interest, I do not intend to discuss the living or performing arts, which form part of the remit of both the Office of Arts and Libraries of the noble Earl and the Arts Council. This afternoon I want to confine myself purely to those arts which, in contrast to the living arts, I do not think I can refer to as the "dead" arts, but the arts which concern objects rather than people.
I shall not speculate on what the noble Earl has said so far about the methods by which he will replace present support, because there are many rough edges, green edges, or whatever one likes to call them, on that policy which have not yet been sorted out. It would be quite improper of me in my present designate position to comment on such measures in regard to the future.
However, I believe that within the restrictions imposed upon him the noble Earl has done very well for the arts. In a time when cuts are being applied in a very severe fashion in all directions, he has managed to maintain roughly the same level of support. In fact, he would argue that support has increased. There is room for interpretation of all kinds on figures, but compared with other countries which regard themselves as being no less civilised than ourselves, and in some cases certainly more civilised, we are the odd men out, we are the philistines. We spend less per head on the arts than any other country in Europe. As regards museums and galleries, we spend less per head than France, a country of comparable size: we spend less per head than Germany, again a country of comparable size. We spend a great deal more than the United States, but the whole system of patronage in the United States is completely different and has an entirely different history. Therefore, I think that we can ignore that particular country. In fact, the smaller countries spend far more on the arts. Sweden spends 10 times as much as we do on its museums and galleries, and Austria spends eight times as much. These figures should make us pause for thought.
I am not suggesting for one moment that this Government, with all the other pressures which face them, should over night increase their spending on the arts by 100 per cent. One of the principal reasons I do not suggest that is that I greatly fear that most of that money would be pinched by Covent Garden. But I still suggest that over a period of years we should look for a steady increase in support for the arts from all quarters, including the Government, but not excluding other sources. The level of support we give to the arts is an indication of whether we are at all a civilised country.
What are these objects of which I am speaking? They are all objects which, by their very nature, are perishable over either quite a short-term or, in some cases, a very much longer-term. But they all need to be housed and they all need to be looked after. I am not saying that the housing in which they are at present placed is coming to the end of its useful life, but the period is approaching when absolutely horrendous sums will have to be spent on either replacement or doing up the buildings, whether it be a well-known building such as the V & A, or a much smaller building, costing a much smaller sum in a small town. This expense is unavoidable. It does not produce more 307 objects for people to look at, but it will ensure that those objects we have are at least kept safe from the weather, vandals and thieves.
At the same time it is no good preserving those objects by placing them in specially constructed buildings, or making sure that the buildings are properly constructed, unless the objects themselves are properly conserved. This is the field in which we lag far behind any other country. It is a field which we should pursue with renewed vigour and one where quite small sums, compared with the sums that have to be spent on buildings, can achieve quite considerable results.
The Government provided £500,000 for the Museums and Galleries Commission to distribute in connection with conservation. We had a very short time in which to invite applications in respect of that money from people responsible for museums and so on. Within a very few weeks, after we had thrown out all the dud schemes and the oddities, we still found that we had applications for in total £5 million to be spent on such schemes of conservation. Therefore, we need to establish a proper structure and scheme for conservation whereby we can train people to do the job and, when they are trained, ensure that they have jobs to go to. Hitherto we have had a Catch-22 situation where we were not training enough conservators and when we did train them, there were no jobs for them. We must avoid that in the future, and it will not cost us very large sums of money. There will not be very much glory in the garden unless it is kept properly mown, unless the hedges are trimmed, and unless it is prevented from being overgrown with nettles.

§ Lord Nugent of Guildford
My Lords, I should like to begin by congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins, on bringing this subject before us today and, indeed, on his speech, with much of which I agreed. While I am sorry to lose plurality, I am even more sorry about the enormities committed due to the bodies which are disappearing, since I agree with the noble Lord that plurality is valuable.
I should like to congratulate my noble friend the Minister for the Arts on the deep personal appreciation which he has brought to this very important field and on his personal stature, which has been well recognised by his appointment to the Privy Council.
He has, of course, the credit of being the first Minister to obtain over £100 million for the Arts Council. As president of the Yvonne Arnaud theatre, in Guildford, I have a slight criticism to make of the Arts Council. I approve of the Minister's arm's length principle and perhaps in this regard he will be interested in what I have to say about the Arts Council. We have lost our grant. After some years of receiving about £100,000 a year, the grant is to cease at the end of this year. Our level of grant was not very great; it was about 18 per cent. lower than that of most provincial theatres. However, the ending of our grant catches us at a bad moment because we made quite a substantial loss in the recession the year before last, which was mostly due to our rather ambitious classical 308 programme, and we are also about to make a public appeal for £300,000 for the redevelopment of the theatre. It really is an awkward moment for us.
Part of the redevelopment is to build a studio theatre which will allow us to put on experimental work, youth theatre, and so on, on the advice of the Arts Council who told us that this would ensure the continuity of our grant in the future. It is ironic that it should now disappear because we are left permanently with a liability in terms of finance. In the event no public statement was made about cutting off the grant, and the obvious implication to the locality was that we had done something wrong, or had offended in some way.
I recount this sad little episode because I want to make a point part of which was made by the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins, that the members of the Arts Council have a tremendous responsibility when they are provided by the Government of the day, by Parliament, with this huge sum of money on which many theatres and other institutions depend. Their clients are therefore in a position of great vulnerability in relation to the Arts Council.
The Arts Council have an obligation to use their judgment and their sensitivity in dealing with their clients. When they are going to cut off a grant—and I quite accept that it is for their judgment to decide when this should be—it seems to me the absolute minimum consideration that they should have close preparatory consultation with the institution concerned, that there then should be a carefully drafted explanatory statement for publication which will ease the position generally, and then the grant should be tapered off, say over three years, to give the theatre a chance to readjust itself to the big change it has then to face.
None of these things was done for Guildford, and the Arts Council is very much at fault. It must be regarded as either careless or capricious. In either event it is not measuring up to the great responsibility that we have put upon it. We shall manage all right in Guildford one way or another. We maintain a high standard of production and we shall continue to do so, but we have not been helped by the Arts Council. I hope that they will take it to heart. I have the chance to say this here, but most other people running local theatres do not have that chance. This may perhaps bring home a lesson to them that they might be a little more sensitive in dealing with other theatres.

§ Lord Rhodes
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins, on introducing this subject and I congratulate the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, on his preferment to Companion of Honour. He has been my friend for a great number of years and I am delighted. I must declare my interest in that I am president of the North-West Regional Arts Association. I think it is a pity that more time has not been given for this debate, but at any rate it enables us to ask a few questions vital to our increased reponsibilities in the regions.
We are grateful for the change of emphasis towards the regions, but as the timing coincides with the drastic changes in local government it is natural that we should be asking questions as to where we stand. To 309 this end I have forwarded to the Minister a list of questions that I propose to ask now. Now, £60 million was allocated to the Arts Council by the Minister recently. The idea is that the Council will be able to look after the needs of major performing bodies like the Hallé, the Royal Exchange Theatre, the Northern Ballet after the abolition of the Greater Manchester county and other metropolitan counties, but the boroughs and districts will be expected to make provision for local activities, so we in the North-West arts are concerned on several counts.
The local activities are currently funded by a number of sources: first, the metropolitan county councils; secondly, the district authorities; and thirdly, the regional arts association, all depending on the scale and nature of the particular project. We should like to know what will happen when metropolitan county funding ceases. What provision will be made for districts to take over county responsibility? Will they be given additional monies to do this? If so, their additional responsibility for the arts must surely be taken into consideration when decisions are taken regarding penalties and rate capping. The responsibility of regional arts associations will be increased with the devolution of funding of some organisations from the Arts Council to regional arts associations, and with the provision of development monies.
Another point which needs answering is, what arrangements are to be made to cope with the situation when activities cut across district boundaries? Our next major anxiety perhaps affects the North-West arts more than any other region. It concerns the voluntary subscriptions paid to North-West arts by the local authorities. The Greater Manchester Council pays this subscription on behalf of itself and the 10 districts which comprise the Greater Manchester area. It happens that our local authority income represents a higher proportion of our budget than in any other regional arts association as Greater Manchester covers 60 per cent. of our region.
Indeed, in 1983–84 North-West arts received from the GMC £190,000. At present we have no information from the Government or the Arts Council as to how this large proportion of our income is to be maintained, never mind increased. It is unlikely that the 10 districts will pay an extra large annual subscription in view of the penalties at present imposed upon them. Furthermore, are not the district councils entitled to expect that they should be given the money to fund those activities which they will take over from the GMC?
Those activities comprise not only the North-West arts subscription but a variety of directly-funded organisations such as the Bolton Octagon Theatre, the Oldham Coliseum, the Manchester Camerata, and many others. The total sum involved is well over half a million pounds, and that is the sum which would cover those activities which the districts are expected to look after once the GMC has gone.
I do not want to give the impression that we in North-West arts are concerned only for ourselves, because that would not be true. We are concerned about the well-being of the arts not only for our region 310 but in the country at large. In regions like mine unemployment is high and we need all the help we can get to prevent morale from getting low. I sincerely hope that when the present uncertainties are resolved we shall be able to expand our work rather than contract.