Arts Policy

HL Deb 20 June 1984 vol 453 cc318-45

4.41 p.m.

Debate resumed.

Lord Skelmersdale

My Lords, before we resume the short debate on changes in arts policy, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Putney, I think I should inform the House that the revised time for the end of this debate is now 6.21 p.m. and my noble friend the Minister must begin his speech 20 minutes before the end. I would remind your Lordships that the average time for speeches should be six minutes.

Lord Polwarth

My Lords, in the preface to The Glory of the Garden which I was almost tempted to describe as the first leader, because it reads a little like that, possibly not surprisingly, the function of the Arts Council is described as to dung and to water. The trouble is that, as we all know, at the present time we are faced with a shortage of dung and a distinct drought. However much we may regret this, I think we must admit that there is no point in relying on rain as a result of some ritual dance of protest. At least, the current climate has enforced a deep think by the Arts Council and I believe that the report they have produced is extremely valuable in terms of the work they have done.

We in Scotland are fortunate to have our own Arts Council through which funds are channelled to our institutions. They have produced their own report, with a slightly more cheerful cover than The Glory of the Garden. It has been rather more economically produced, as your Lordships would expect, and is perhaps not quite so ambitious in its scope, with nothing about the next decade, but merely the next five years. I can assure your Lordships that it is at least as realistic and practical a document as the main British report. I should like to pay tribute to the work of that council. They have the great advantage of being close to activities and having personal knowledge of what goes on. Their work deserves a great tribute. We shall be hearing later from their former chairman, my noble kinsman Lord Balfour of Burleigh.

I should also like to express gratitude to the Arts Council of Great Britain for their continued level of funding to the Scottish Arts Council over the past difficult years, and I hope that following the policy declared in The Glory of the Garden, the Scottish Arts Council will continue to receive their fair share of the total funds going.

In the Scottish Art Council's report there is one particular point that I would like to highlight; namely, the financial position of the five national bodies in the performing arts in Scotland: The Scottish National Orchestra, of which I once had the privilege to be chairman; Scottish Opera; Scottish Ballet; the Scottish Chamber Orchestra; and the Scottish Baroque Ensemble. All these bodies tour the main centres in Scotland, and some go to the most outlying parts. They have recently been living, as I know, in a state of near financial crisis, despite continued Arts Council support, mainly due to a regrettable drop in support from the Scottish local authorities. This situation originated with the reorganisation of local government, when responsibilities were not clearly defined, and there was ample opportunity for those authorities who wanted to run out on their commitments.

It is too easy to treat the arts as expendable. There are not very many votes in them locally and some authorities—happily not all—have, I think, acted quite irresponsibly in treating the arts as a sort of football in a political game with central Government. The only sufferer has been the arts.

The 1974 reorganisation was bad enough. Now, with the responsibility for the arts being further shifted in Scotland down from the regions to the much smaller districts, it will be a great deal more serious. The districts will, obviously and I think quite rightly, give priority to locally based arts activities. In England there is a similar, if not identical, problem with the forthcoming disappearance of the GLC and the metropolitan authorities. The Government is here coming to the rescue to the tune of, I believe, £34 million, £18 million of its new funds. I hate to say so, but I think this will shift the balance back in favour of England and against Scotland and Wales. This is in direct contradiction to the avowed policy of The Glory of the Garden.

I should like, therefore, to make a strong plea to the Government to recognise the problem of the Scottish national companies, which are all of very high repute worldwide. This problem has been caused by the reorganisation of local government, and the Government should shift the responsibility for their public funding entirely to the Scottish Arts Council and possibly take similar action in Wales, and for that purpose make available the necessary sum, just as they have done in the case of England. If they say that this cannot be done, that the cash is not there, though they seem to be able to find it in England, they could perfectly well do it by reducing the local authority support grant by the equivalent figure. I believe that something drastic like this is needed if these main backbone organisations in Scotland are to be able to maintain their high standards.

I shall say no more, except to give full marks, if I may, to my noble friend the Minister for the imaginative matching grant scheme for sponsorship by business. He knows my personal interest in that on various fronts. I believe that the priming of the pump will result in a greatly increased flow of funds from business organisations, which we all want.

No, my Lords, I do not think all is gloom in the garden; gardeners get used to coping with weather conditions outside their control. If there is a drought, they know they must weather it. That does not mean they will not pray for rain, though, as I am sure we are all doing. Let us hope their prayer will soon be answered and the garden is restored to its proper glory.

4.46 p.m.

Lord Birkett

My Lords, in the course of the recent traumatic debate on the local government paving Bill I was happy to be able to pay a tribute to the noble Earl the Minister for the imaginative and responsive way he had coped with the difference between the original propositions put forward in the report on streamlining the cities in terms of what would happen in the event of abolition, particularly, in my case, of the GLC, and what he had recently proposed. I was so glad about that because what seemed to me to be wrong with the original proposal, was that it relied to far too great an extent upon the good will and the ability of boroughs to cope with funding for the arts in London. Not only would they be facing rate capping. of course—and they might be even less able than some of them now are—but the pattern of borough funding of the arts in London is basically so unpredictable and so unstable that it varies from below 20 pence per head of population to over £2 per head, which is an enormous variation. I thought that that could not be relied upon, and I was therefore enormously relieved to find the Minister's latest schemes, which seem to take that worry away from me.

I was ever so slightly alarmed, therefore, this afternoon by the exchange between the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins, and the noble Earl the Minister, if "exchange" is the right description of a speech interrupted by one monosyllable. However, as I understood it, the noble Lord was asking the Minister whether he would again give the famous £34 million that he promised. I hope that the noble Earl took it that he was being asked to increase the budget of the Arts Council by £34 million every year, because if that was his understanding, perhaps the monosyllable he uttered is not entirely unpredictable. I was worried for a moment lest his good offices had amounted to a one-year stay of execution. I am glad to see him shake his head on that point, and I shall not pursue it further.

Let me, instead, in what time remains to me, say a few words about the Art Council's report The Glory of the Garden. I, of course, welcome the fact that after its first 40 years it should finally re-examine its own house and make propositions. One or two of them, however, I cannot entirely agree with. First of all, predictably, your Lordships will understand that I am not at all keen about the shift away from London towards the regions. I am entirely happy that the regions should receive more money, but I wish it had not been at the expense of London. Indeed, I wish it had not been at the expense of anything. It was only £6 million that the Arts Council's policy document came up with, as necessary to implement the new policies—£6 million on top of around £100 million these days. It would have been a nice thought if the Government could have congratulated them in the form of giving them the £6 million, and not forcing them to take it off something else. However, I must be fair and not complain that the £6 million has come off London, because it has not. In fact only £826,000, according to my calculation, has come off London.

Nevertheless, in some of those areas it is very significant; in particular concerning the theatre. Theatre is a very difficult point because among the London theatres who next year will be losing their Arts Council grant are those at Bromley, Hornchurch and Croydon. Bromley is vastly supported by its local borough; Hornchurch is fairly well supported by its local borough and Croydon practically not at all. There are no doubt good arguments why this imbalance should be.

But the problem is that, in the course of The Glory of the Garden, the Arts Council have taken a long and beady look at the funding of the Royal Court Theatre, and they have pointed out with some justification that the theatre's local borough, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, provides not a penny for it. Indeed, the GLC provides only £20,000 towards what is very close to £500,000 now. That is an understandable complaint; but one can understand that there is scant encouragement to Kensington and Chelsea to provide funds, if they see a borough like Bromley, which has provided very handsomely for that theatre suddenly finding the Arts Council support withdrawn. It seems to me, in a way, that the Arts Council cannot have it both ways; and the same, I fancy, might apply to Guildford. I have a great deal of sympathy with the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Nugent of Guildford, though I have to confess that it is because I live very near Guildford.

The other point which seems to me to be a mistaken policy in The Glory of the Garden is the question of the fourth London orchestra. I am well aware that there has been a climate of opinion for a long time which says that four London orchestras are too many and that there should be three. No one supposes that by reducing them to three one automatically invents a Berlin Philharmonic or a Chicago Symphony Orchestra. That is not the way things work. The problem is that this reduction is supposed to be to fund a new orchestra for the east, based at Nottingham.

It is clear that no London orchestra will move lock, stock and barrel to Nottingham, which is suggested in the report. It is equally plain that to recruit a new orchestra from the profession in Nottingham will not work, because the orchestral players of today do not depend entirely upon the plans of their orchestra. They depend upon freelance work, upon recording, upon film work and all sorts of other things. These will not be readily available in Nottingham, but they are in London. I should have thought it not beyond the wit of the musical world to use the four orchestras that there are in a pattern which would satisfy the east as well as keeping London well provided. Rather than taking £280,000 off the LOCB for one of the London orchestras, a rethink would be in order. I shall not labour the point, because I have a sneaking suspicion that I may be pushing at least a half open door on this subject.

As my last minute comes up, let me say that what I regret most is the removal of the Housing the Arts fund. It is tragic, just in the year when the GLC invented its own Housing the Arts fund to match the Arts Council one, first, that it should be reduced by all sorts of problems about the Money Bill; and, secondly, that the Arts Council's fund should be removed. I understand perfectly well the argument that says it was never big enough to cope with major projects and too big to cope with the bricks and mortar funding that ought to go to the boroughs. Nevertheless, somebody must do it. If there is to be no GLC and no Housing the Arts from the Arts Council, the bricks and mortar of the arts will inevitably suffer, and they should not do so.

4.54 p.m.

Lord Vaizey

My Lords, I should like to pay my tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins, who is an old friend of mine. He introduced this debate with a series of extremely telling arguments. He put my wife on the Arts Council, from which august body she was removed by the saintly Leader of the Social Democratic Party. I have therefore taken a long and detailed interest in arts policy and the Arts Council at secondhand, and I should like to concentrate my remarks on the Arts Council and its role in the arts.

As the noble Lord, Lord Birkett, said, it is not before time, 40 years after its foundation, that it reviews its policy. Quite candidly, I think that the review should go much deeper. The Arts Council's basic role, as the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, both said and hinted, is to stimulate individual people to enjoy the arts, to buy tickets, to buy the works of painters and to buy the works of creative people. That, after all, is the foundation of an enormous amount of the activity of individual artists and companies throughout our country.

One test, therefore, of the Arts Council should be whether or not the subsidy can diminish in particular circumstances, and I do not think nearly enough attention is paid in a thoughtful and thinking way in this absurdly named document to that particular question, instead of which we get what the noble Lord, Lord Nugent of Guildford, referred to as the arbitrary and capricious cutting off of grants which, if done more properly, might well be used instead to stimulate the development of other sources of finance as the thing becomes more autonomous.

Secondly, I strongly feel that the flow of funds to the big companies is something that ought not to be a matter for the decision of the Arts Council. If you decide to have a national opera and to have great national institutions—orchestras and so on—up and down the country, then you have made that decision and you know roughly to within a few hundred thousand pounds how much it costs to keep them going. There should be no more dispute, year in and year out, about whether or not Covent Garden should have a few more hundred thousand or a few fewer hundred thousand than about whether the Royal Parks should have tulips or daffodils this year. These things are an on-going commitment in a civilised community and I see no reason at all why they should be thought to be part of the activity of the Arts Council. That is because I regard the activities of the Arts Council as being to support art which cannot be directly supported by central government, because it might bring central government into great difficulties if it were seen to be supporting this kind of stuff.

The noble Lord, Lord Jenkins, mentioned the people carrying the pole around East Anglia. We have seen the difficulties with the bricks in the Tate Gallery. The purpose of the Arts Council, precisely, is to support what is only marginally acceptable, and sometimes not acceptable at all, to the great British electorate. In other words, I think that the Arts Council ought to be equivalent to some of the more progressive American foundations in being highly irresponsible. It is extremely difficult to combine the irresponsibility of supporting great sections of the artistic community which call into question the fundamental values of our society, and which run against the prejudices of huge sections of our society, while at the same time asking it to be the main source of finance for what are the pillars of the establishment in the country—such as Covent Garden and the great national orchestras.

The re-think of the Arts Council ought to go much further, and in 10 years' time I hope we shall have a more sensibly named document coming out with some proposals for a permanent mode of support for the great national institutions, and for a more irresponsible foundation financed through the Government for the more experimental types of art.

4.58 p.m.

Lord Gibson

My Lords, having done a five-year stint in the early '70s as chairman of the Arts Council, I know how difficult it is to alter course at all without a significant increase in resources, and how easy it is to criticise any attempt to do so. I do not intend to be critical this afternoon. The Arts Council's approach is understandable in present circumstances and, in principle, has been both thoughtful and courageous. Whether they have cut down the right plants in the garden to make work for others, I do not have the up to date knowledge to judge and it would not be helpful if I tried.

I should like to make two general points very quickly. It is vital that the council should defend their independence and be very chary of earmarking. Personally, I do not agree with the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, that they should be restricted to the experimental and that the permanent companies should get their funds, I suppose, direct from central government. I think that that would make plurality of support much more difficult and I personally do not envy the role of a chairman of the Arts Council whose sole duty was to support innovation and experiment; but a bolder man than myself would no doubt be very happy to take it on. I think that these matters do have a unity and that the Arts Council should be left to cope with all the arts. However, I do not know that that is very important.

The other thing I wanted to say was that I hope the Arts Council will be careful not to allow their enthusiasm for the regions (which I share) to develop into a bias against London and the South-East simply because, on a population basis, London and the South-East get too large a share of the funds. The lumping together of London and the South-East is not fair to the South-East. I am biased, in that I happen to be President of the South-East Regional Arts Association; but I do know that there is as great a need and as great a deprivation in parts of the South-East, and especially in parts of London where poverty is very great and in parts of the South-East where the fare to London is very high, as there is anywhere else in the country. London is not the South-East, and it is loose thinking to judge the priorities as though the two can be bracketed.

When the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, (whose CH we were all pleased to hear about) appointed me to the Arts Council, both he and I felt the urgent need to put as much of the new money as possible into the regions, and because during my first two years at the Arts Council the annual amount of subsidy grew in real terms, we were able to safeguard the arts in London while putting most of the increase elsewhere. Runaway inflation then took hold and our total in real terms grew very little from then on.

The fact is that, unless the total grant-in-aid increases, it is very difficult to correct the imbalance. Indeed, it is impossible to correct it without damaging the companies based in London, many of which serve the arts in a genuinely national sense. The noble Lord, Lord Howard of Henderskelfe, spoke eloquently of the need gradually to increase funds for the arts from all sources, and it is in fact only by this means that problems of imbalance can be resolved.

My Lords, in the few minutes that I am allowed today, will you forgive me if I concentrate on the needs of the big companies? It does not mean that I am not sympathetic to the small ones, of which in the 1970s I had some experience; but, as a director now of the Royal Opera House, I have had the opportunity of observing the problems of the big companies, which are fundamentally all the same. These companies, as the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, pointed out, are part of our national life. We have decided that we want them—at least I think we have: sometimes I wonder—but if we do want them they need financial stability. It is not so much a matter of more money as of financial stability, so that they can plan.

It is right to determine to expand the arts to reach a wider range of people all over the country, but this must not blind us to the needs of our major companies or to their value as the national assets that they truly are. I had the experience of spending Easter in Prague—certainly one of the happiest visual experiences that one could enjoy—and on Good Friday evening there was a performance of "Much Ado About Nothing" by the Royal Shakespeare Company. The excitement in the city was intense, the performance was marvellous and the reception of it was overwhelming. I do not know what Dogberry sounded like in Czech in simultaneous translation, but the enthusiasm of the audience was tremendous and I have never been prouder of being British. I think that people tend to underestimate the value of these great companies as ambassadors for Britain.

Many people say that the financial problems of these companies are the product of extravagance. As your Lordships know, the Government recently appointed a team, led by Mr. Priestley, to examine the Royal Opera House and the Royal Shakespeare Company. They examined them with a thoroughness and detachment that would stand comparison with the best business consultancies in the world. They made some criticisms, but they exonorated the two companies of the charge of extravagance and, in the case of the Royal Opera House, which I know so well, Mr. Priestley said that it could not continue to sustain its role as an international opera house on the subsidy it received. He made it clear that if the community wanted an opera house of that kind it must cost a bit more but, above all, it needed stability and its funding must be planned. He called it targeted funding, but I will not weary your Lordships with a description of it. Its basis is that it should be planned.

Many people believe that as a result of Priestley all has been secured. It is not clear that that is so. The report was given what I think the noble Earl the Minister called "a broad welcome". So far, "broad" has meant that the deficit has been largely but not completely wiped out and that the Government have not accepted the principle of targeted funding. The opera house itself has begun to implement the management changes recommended and is making a beginning on certain required savings. But one thing is clear: whether or not targeted funding is introduced, some basis on which to plan ahead is essential. Without it, the great companies will continue to stagger from one unplanned deficit to another.

5.6 p.m.

The Earl of Dundee

My Lords, I would like to join with other noble Lords in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Putney, on introducing this debate. Given that changes in arts policy have been recently announced by the Arts Council, these policies should certainly be debated in Parliament before they are implemented. The chief aim of the new policies is to give a greater proportion of total funds currently available to the council to regions outside London. While that aim will receive general approval, the particular method proposed for reallocation is of course a separate question. Can it be said that the right choices have been made for improved subsidy and correspondingly the right choices made to effect the savings necessary of approximately £6 million?

I think it is to the credit of the Arts Council that a detailed plan to change direction should have been produced at all. It would not be helpful to try to pick holes in it. However, I should like to mention briefly two points. First, there is the distinction between the performing arts and the creative arts. At present nearly all the council's grant-in-aid is spent on the former and hardly any on the latter; but there is a strong case to spend more money on the encouragement of new liiterature, contemporary visual art and musical composition.

The noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Putney, has already referred to this. And, as has recently been emphasised in the Kirkham Report produced by the Welsh Arts Council, it is necessary that more help should be given for the sales and marketing of new works, and a proper system of references developed so that the market can become aware of, and in touch with, these contemporary works.

As we often hear speculated, John Milton would not have wished to collaborate in committee to write "Paradise Lost", but if a seventeenth century Arts Council had been there to give him more money, posterity now might well have from him an even greater number of works of the excellence that it has. In view of these considerations, when he comes to reply, I wonder if my noble friend the Minister would indicate whether he thinks there should be a higher proportion of Arts Council grant spent on the creative arts than is the case at present.

My second point on current Arts Council proposals concerns touring companies. By definition, the existence of these can present to the regions a greater level of choice and a greater quality of performance at less cost to the council's grant than a network of local companies. This is not in any way to denigrate local companies themselves, which are important community assets. But could my noble friend the Minister say whether he thinks it would serve the interests of the regions better for the Arts Council to give more support to touring companies?

Another question is the part the Government can play to help the Arts Council carry out its job in general. Reference has already been made in this debate to the "arm's length" principle. But if the council should be left to decide how it spends a fixed budget, the Government can do much in the country to support the system of aid which the council has been given to administer. In that regard, much confidence will already have been aroused by some of the measures carried out by my noble friend the Minister. These include the maintenance of arts subsidies in real terms while other departments have suffered cuts, the commitment by the Government to replace the GLC's art budget in the event of the abolition of the GLC itself, and the introduction of business sponsorship schemes.

Before the introduction of new tax incentives schemes relating to art, care has to be taken to reconcile these with the demands of other sectors. But it is strongly recommended in the recent report of the Select Committee that such tax incentive schemes should be introduced. Their effect would be to give proper backing from business and industry to any constructive policies now initiated by the Arts Council and other agencies. And their existence would create a better balance between support from public subsidy and support from private enterprise—which balance is necessary to any thriving sector in a mixed economy. In view of this, can my noble friend the Minister indicate whether his department will reconsider the tax incentive proposals of the Select Committee in order to find ways of introducing them to resolve or minimise conflict with other sectors?

If the Government can encourage business and industry to contribute at home, they should encourage also foreign investors from abroad. Here, there are perhaps two separate considerations. The first is to give every chance to potential British buyers to acquire British works when they come up for sale; and in this regard the removal of the present VAT impositions on art purchases would do much to ensure that works do not leave the country in the first place.

The second consideration is that when works have left the country, foreign buyers should be encouraged to bring them back on exhibition; and, in that connection, hence also to invest in this country. The Getty collection and other large foreign buyers demonstrate that they act responsibly and are almost always willing to co-operate with the country whose works they acquire. The conditions of a British export licence could come to require a certain percentage of a foreign collector's total British acquisitions to return here on exhibition at intervals. If such a restriction did apply, it would only be consistent with the policy and attitude of large foreign collections—which is, to co-operate on both a national and an international level.

In view of these various considerations, will my noble friend the Minister indicate whether he is prepared to urge the abolition of VAT on art sales in order to help prevent works leaving this country in the first place? Secondly, will be indicate whether he wishes to introduce new export licence stipulations as a basis of negotiation with foreign collectors, so that once works did leave this country, they could return on exhibition—and hence also so that foreign investment could be invited in art and in its centres and institutions in Britain?

In summary, my Lords, the recent policy changes announced by the Arts Council are to be welcomed for the fairer distribution to the regions which they imply and for the level of vigilance over grant aid funds which the policies reflect. In their present form, and among other areas which should perhaps be reconsidered, there is the need to correct the imbalance between aid to performing art and aid to creative art. There is also the need to widen the choice for the regions by encouraging touring companies. But for the new plans to be carried out effectively, more money is necessary from business and industry and more investment desirable from overseas.

If the Government take steps to encourage these additional funds, there can be hope that any new policies will achieve proper results and contribute to the principal objectives. Those objectives are to maintain the present reputation of London as an international centre—

Noble Lords

Order!

The Earl of Dundee

I apologise, my Lords. If I might just finish, the other objectives are to develop quality and standards for the regions and, in an age which still produces high levels of unemployment and urban deprivations, to bring to all communities the oportunities of leisure and the inspiration of art, past and present.

5.13 p.m.

Lord Broadbridge

My Lords, the Arts Council is in the public relations business: it is in the business of working with people, which requires humility—and, heaven knows, it gets a difficult enough press. The title of its "strategy for a decade", The Glory of the Garden, is a poetic but pretentious one; it rubs me up the wrong way—a bad start. The subtitle, "The Development of the Arts in England" is simple, eloquent and would have stood well on its own. In this modern marketing world, the council must realise that names are all-important—and I suspect that the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, agrees with me here, because he is nodding his head.

The Select Committee report described the arts in Britain as being "irresponsibly underfunded". That is a judgment which the Arts Council "heartily endorses" in its report, and I would agree. The noble Lord, Lord Howard of Henderskelfe, has given some very interesting figures illustrating comparisons with other countries. When the council can afford only £700,000 towards the initial cost of its strategic programme in music—or roughly one penny per person—we have come to a pretty pass. But I have grave misgivings about the relocation of a London orchestra to the eastern region. In the council's own words, on page 18, The Arts Council therefore intends to enter into discussions with a view to discovering whether one of the London orchestras might be willing to transfer its base operations to a city, most probably Nottingham, from which it could serve the eastern part of the country. Alternatively, the Council could seek to establish a new orchestra in the region". The latter suggestion is far more practicable. I do not believe that a London orchestra would go there; they would give music lessons instead.

In its preface, the strategy states that, London is 'a place to visit and wonder at' and that achievement—one of the most important of the postwar achievements of British culture—must not be put at risk". Two paragraphs later, we read: Nevertheless, after forty years it is time to come to grips with Keynes' first priority, to decentralise and disperse the dramatic and musical and artistic life of this county". Although, for the first time, the funding of the arts in millions of pounds is running into three figures, part of that figure has already been earmarked for four national institutions. There has been an increase of about 3 per cent.—just over half the rate of inflation—for everything else. So London is to be maintained as, a place to visit and wonder at", and the regions are to be more greatly supported, and yet there is less money in real terms. Either I or the Arts Council, or both of us, are the victims of some kind of conjuring trick, whereby more bread for all results from fewer loaves. What a position that is to put the council in—although I feel that the council might be more robust in stating its difficulties.

As was noted in last Thursday's debate in another place, the true arm's-length independence of the council is somewhat jeopardised by the earmarking of funds I have mentioned already; that is, by the Government saying, "You must spend this amount of your increased allocation on these four institutions, An encouraging strategy to be adopted is that described on page 11 as "challenge funding", where we read: To finance many of its proposals, therefore, the Council will issue challenges to local communities to match its funding, at least in part, whether from local authority resources or other locally-raised funds". The council hopes that, by setting forth its plans, it will engage the enthusiasm of all those people—artists, administrators, local authorities, business sponsors and the public—on whom the success of any new venture in the arts depends. At a time when some authorities are to be abolished, some rate capped, and some cut—and when the Government have turned down the Select Committee's pleas for business tax allowances on sponsorship—the times would not appear to be too propitious for this strategy. I hope that it will not turn out to be wishful thinking and without any teeth.

Finally, I wish that the Minister for the Arts did not have to deal through three or sometimes four departments of Whitehall and that the arts, the heritage, tourism, libraries, films and broadcasting could—as recommended by the Select Committee—be brought together as his responsibility. I also wish that he could have this full arts ministry with membership of the Cabinet.

5.18 p.m.

Lord McAlpine of West Green

My Lords, whether Government subsidy is provided directly through grants or indirectly in the form of tax rebates, it is still Government subsidy; the money still comes from the taxpayer. I welcome such Government support for the arts but I hope and I believe that one day great areas of the arts will be able to operate without Government subsidy and be backed simply by the concern and support of many individuals. We are still some way from reaching that happy situation. In the meantime, Government support continues. So let me ask this question: what kind of Government support is best suited to assisting the arts?

I believe that a great nation requires great national institutions. Such institutions deserve support in the form of adequate and continuous government funding; I have no doubts about this. They should be certain about their future. They should know what funds they are to receive, and always be sure that those funds will be made available. I see the support for our great cultural institutions as being quite separate from the rest of the debate concerning the Government's involvement with the arts. The creation and development of art depends crucially on the choice of individuals; responsible to nobody but themselves for their own taste, and who have the freedom to be horribly wrong.

There is an inherent contradiction in centralised development of the arts. Let us take the Arts Council, which is the main vehicle for Government arts support. The aims of the Arts Council are truly noble and they are aims which I wholeheartedly support; that of developing and increasing the accessibility of the arts. But let us ask how well it works in practice. How well does the council manage to achieve its noble ideals? In particular, how does it manage to involve individuals with the arts?

One of the prime functions of the Arts Council, as I mentioned, is to provide support for our great national institutions. Last year the Arts Council devoted nearly a third of its budget to the support of these institutions. I applaud this expenditure but I question whether we need the Arts Council to be responsible for this funding. So let us look more closely at the other two-thirds of the Arts Council's budget. Nearly £34 million went directly in operating costs. That represents a heavy bureaucratic burden on the back of the artist. By any measure, it is an expensive means of giving away public money. I have to ask whether an extensive administrative organisation directed from a mansion in Piccadilly is really the right way to promote individual involvement in the arts around the country.

Yet we should not get bogged down in bureaucratic detail. That is not what art is about. Art is about choice—your choice, my choice: what is good or what is had art; what is not art at all but simply a pile of bricks; when does a pile of sand change from being simply a pile of sand into the art of forming sand gardening which has been practised in Japan for centuries? Art is all about individual choice and the individual's freedom to be wrong. A committee administering public funds do not have this freedom. In the end they are always accountable to the tastes of those who provide the funds. There is a limit to how many piles of bricks the Treasury, reflecting the views of the public, will tolerate.

Let us look at the practical problems faced by the Arts Council. It has two quite separate areas of activity: first, sponsoring new forms of art; and, secondly, helping existing forms of art. How can a centralised body really make a sensible impact on new art? Let me take the example of the Beatles who have undoubtedly contributed to the development of modern music. They are already part of our cultural heritage. But could any committee possibly have decided to support them before they were successful? Now they are successful they scarcely need supporting. In fact, the Beatles are probably in a better position to support the Arts Council than is the Arts Council to support the Beatles. I use the Beatles as an illustration and not as an all-encompassing argument, but undoubtedly in their efforts to support new arts the arts bodies have inadvertently been drawn into supporting what I might call therapeutic art, which is art designed more for the benefit of the artist than for the audience.

A committee finds it almost impossible to indentify and support new art, and instead they almost inevitably resort to supporting those individuals who claim that they are the practitioners of new art. This proportion of the Arts Council's grant is directed not to the sponsoring of new art but to the providing of soup kitchens for would-be artists. The two are not the same. This is not a criticism of the integrity or the efforts of the Arts Council but simply a reflecton of a fact of life. Committees decide by compromise, while art lives and develops by refusing to compromise.

A similar problem arises in the Arts Council's attempts to support established art forms. How can a centralised decision-making body ensure that grants are made to the right people at the right time and in the right place? So they naturally tend to try to resolve this problem in another way: by directing financial support to the fabric rather than the content of the art world. Thus, extensive grants are made to ensure the good repair of theatres rather than to the production of plays. But do good theatres in the long run breed good plays, or is it good plays which breed good theatres?

This may sound very critical of the Arts Council and its members and I do not mean to be so. I simply raise the question of whether a centralised body is the appropriate means through which to channel government support for the arts. The Arts Council was formed in 1946 at the height of euphoria and optimism about the state's ability to plan the nation's progress. Yet I would submit that the world of art and culture is a uniquely innappropriate one for national planning. You cannot budget for creative art—and an attempt to do so is doomed to frustration.

This is not a simplistic subject, and I appreciate that it is easier to raise problems than to solve them. There has never been a shortage of people who aspire to be artists, but there has always been a shortage of individual patrons. For this we need more wealth creation, lower taxes and an environment that encourages individuals to become involved in the arts of this country.

We have what is undoubtedly one of the broadest and most fertile bases of art creation in the world. We have immense artistic treasures and even greater artistic potential. But that potential cannot be realised by government; it must be realised by individuals.

5.25 p.m.

Lord Balfour of Burleigh

My Lords, if an interest group cries out bitterly over a number of years that they are being desperately under-funded, they run a very distinct risk that those not immediately concerned with their interest group will become bored, and will become progressively less responsive to the problems, particularly perhaps if at the same time a number of other interest groups are able to shout more loudly and have more muscle with which to further their cause.

I was interested to read that the philosophers of Great Britain recently assembled in a central part in order to compare the progress of their studies, and I was interested because, like many others, I have always thought that if I had been trained in philosophy I should have been very much better at all which I have attempted, particularly my work in the Scottish Arts Council, and the Arts Council of Great Britain. The philosophers concluded that if the public of Britain came down on the side of the miners in the present problems, then the miners would be right and the laws should be altered in accordance with their views. But if, on the other hand, the public of Great Britain came down on the other side, then that other side must be right. I could not help feeling that I did not miss so much by skipping philosophical training.

The noble Lord, Lord Nugent, has told us that his theatre has lost its grant. The point I make is that the noble Lord, Lord Nugent, will not go out into the streets and set fire to municipal buses in order to draw attention to the plight of his theatre. We must not be misled into feeling that it is not all that important by the courtesy with which he brings the point home to us. I am not going to make any comment on the merits of that particular decision. But I believe something like this is going on now in the field of the arts. The plight is not understood. In the early part of this century the burden of the arts fell increasingly on the performers. The Arts Council came into being and enabled the survival of the supporting arts, and the grants initially from government were very small. But once it got to the level of 1 million it rapidly grew to 10 million, and is now 100 million.

Many of us realised 10 to 15 years ago that this could not go on forever and I am not, you may not be surprised, going to be able to give you the solution to this problem today. But generally throughout the sixties and seventies, as a result of this central government funding through the Arts Council, what appeared to be an apparently secure foundation was achieved for a very wide level of artistic organisations throughout the country, albeit somewhat unevenly. By the late seventies, however, it was becoming necessary to spread the available money more and more thinly until it hardly stretched, and by the 1980s a pretty desperate situation had developed.

With annual increases broadly matching the RPI, why is the situation so desperate? I will remind your Lordships of one or two points. First of all, the remuneration and terms and conditions for performing artists are far, far inferior to those of almost all other recognised jobs in this country. Secondly, inflation in most activities is expected not to proceed at a rate greater than the RPI. In almost all walks of life there is some measure of increase and productivity, but we know in the arts that we cannot expect to transfer wholly to electronic music in place of orchestras. Nor can we expect singers or dancers to sing or dance more than one part at the same time. Fourthly, all parties who contribute to the arts, in addition to the Arts Council, must keep up a proportional share of the cost. They have not done so.

Finally, it is obviously absolutely imperative to consider and accept new art forms, and the severity of the dilemma facing the Arts Council of Great Britain is shown by the fact that in The Glory of the Garden I think it is said they have, for the time being, had to put a total clamp-down on any new applications from artistic organisations within the London area.

I hope I have now made it clear why the situation for those operating in the field of the arts is really very serious. What is being done? First of all, The Glory of the Garden. As I understand it, they are grasping two nettles. The first is the nettle of equal misery for all. That means spreading funds more and more thinly. What they said is, "We cannot go on doing this and we must find some people to cut in order to provide enough for others". The second nettle to grasp is that whereby 50 per cent. of the English share of the Arts Council funding is spent in the London area, and they said, "We must push it up the country". I am offering no judgments at the moment as to whether this will turn out to be right or wrong, but I must congratulate them on grasping these nettles.

There are, of course, enormously strong protests at the cuts but approval, perhaps, of the notion that the regional arts associations should be funded to a greater extent. Here I should like to draw a distinction between Scotland and England. England, for the purposes of this, is entirely carpeted with regional arts associations. Scotland has none at all. Why?

Noble Lords

Order!

Lord Balfour of Burleigh

Because the people not living in England felt that they needed more arts provisions and the—

Lord Skelmersdale

s: My Lords, may we ask the noble Lord to conclude his remarks?

5.31 p.m.

Lord Auckland

My Lords, the House will be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Putney, for initiating this timely debate. I should like to praise the authors of The Glory of the Garden. It is an original title and I think it is a most interesting document. I should also like to pay tribute to my noble friend the Minister, who I think, in difficult times, has kept a very vigilant eye on the arts.

In the very short time at my disposal I should like to talk primarily about the repertory theatre. I do so as a trustee of the Thorndyke Theatre in Leatherhead, which my wife and I patronise regularly and which, mercifully, is not the subject of a cut in its grant. I support my noble friend Lord Nugent in regretting that the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre at Guildford is a victim of the cuts and, perhaps more so, the Connaught Theatre at Worthing. Worthing is an area where many elderly people live. They are living on fixed incomes and they cannot all get to London, partly through travelling difficulties and partly for financial reasons. It is a theatre which has had a very distinguished career. Of course, one must accept that cuts, in the financial circumstances in which we live, have to take place, but some of the cuts in the repertory theatres are at least to be regretted.

If the repertory theatre is cut too far—and I am not suggesting that these cuts have been drastic—we are going to run short of members of the acting profession. It is true to say that the repertory theatres are supported most zealously by their regular actors and actresses, their designers, lighting experts and producers. As has already been said, they work for very little money in comparison with many other professions and industries. That is a point which must be made.

Of course, the capital city of London, as in any other country, must receive the lion's share of grant, and the grant of f 102 million for the 1984–85 year to the Arts Council is, by any standard, a generous one; even if the cake is not—and I believe it is not—divided as fairly as it might be. I think that the regions have lost out to some extent in the sharing of the cake. Not everyone lives in London or can get to London. The regions—I am not thinking only of the Home Counties—play a leading part in supporting the arts and in putting on very fine shows.

Reference has been made to Scotland and, very briefly, I say just this. The Scottish National Orchestra—which owes so much to Sir Alexander Gibson and now to its splendid Finnish-born conductor, Paavo Berglund—has played in many countries and, supported largely by one of our major insurance companies, continues to do marvellous work. That applies to the PitlochryTheatre, too. These draw in many tourists and therefore much improve our balance of payments.

In conclusion I say just this. Several years ago I initiated a debate on one of the Arts Council's annual reports. I created the saying, "Penicillin before Puccini". I adhere to that statement. Penicillin and other drugs are necessary lifesavers. We can live without Puccini, although Tosca and Manon Lescaut add so much to the gaiety and the happiness of people in a not always very happy world.

5.36 p.m.

Lord Somers

My Lords, I think we are all very much at one in that we agree that music, or the arts, are necessary for any civilised country. The only question that seems to have arisen is whether the Arts Council is really administering what it has very wisely. Before I come to any criticism of the Arts Council let me say that it has an immensely difficult task. It has a very small grant from the Government and it has to divide that up somehow or other between the whole of the arts—not merely music—in some way that it feels is just and fair. It is rather like the task that the late Lord Rutherford had in splitting the atom. Therefore, if the Arts Council does make mistakes I think one can forgive it.

However, it has made one very great mistake lately; that of deciding to withdraw its grant from one of the London orchestras. I have spoken about the London orchestras on previous occasions. They are not London orchestras in the sense that they play in London. They are international orchestras. They travel abroad. The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, with which I am connected, has recently received some excellent press notices in Germany and is one of our excellent invisible exports. Therefore, I do not think one can possibly consider them as London orchestras.

The Arts Council has apparently decided to send one of these orchestras to Nottingham. It appears that Nottingham does not want the orchestra and the orchestra does not want to go there. Naturally, it is no use planting an orchestra in some part of the country where there is uncertainty as to whether or not it will make any box office returns. Incidentally, as has been said in this debate, all the connections of the members of the London orchestras are in London. They do not only play in the orchestra. They have chamber music and perhaps teaching and other things to deal with. It would be absurd to root them up completely and plant them somewhere in the provinces.

I have been given one or two figures from the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra concerning costs. On expenditure, the figures are: musicians' fees, £1.9 million; artists' fees, £0.3 million; advertising, programmes, hall rents, music hire and transport of instruments, £0.3 million; and administration, £0.6 million. The whole thing comes to £2.9 million. In receipts it gets only £2.8 million. So it is constantly running at a loss. It also says that it regards the Arts Council's paper The Glory of the Garden, as rather a sick joke. The "garden" refers only to Covent Garden and opera and the ordinary orchestras are left completely out of it.

I am not suggesting that Covent Garden is not worthy of support. It is a magnificent institution, and we should be very much poorer without it. But it should not be sustained purely at the expense of other forms of music, particularly the orchestras. I sincerely hope that the noble Earl, who I know has very great sympathy for the arts, will give us an encouraging reply.

5.41 p.m.

Baroness Lane-Fox

My Lords, I am greatly obliged to the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Putney, for initiating this debate. It calls attention to changes in arts policy, and I want to point out one area where there has been welcome advance, yet which shrieks out for more notice and help. A Committee of Inquiry into the Arts and Disabled People, of which I am a member, was appointed by the Carnegie UK Trust in 1982, and we intend to publish our report this autumn. It will deal with the extent to which existing facilities enable people with all kinds of disability to involve themselves in the arts. The Arts Council has shown a keen interest in the inquiry from the outset and has demonstrated that by being present at most of our 16 regional conferences and by providing generous support.

Nevertheless, it is disappointing that in The Glory of the Garden there was no mention of art and disabled people, nor of how to bridge the gap to bring us in. We hope that in its wisdom the council will recognise us as an area that has been in the doldrums, and we trust that the question to which we refer will be given prominence at the next stage of the council's review. After all, it is believed that one in 10 of the population suffers from some sort of disability; so this is not only a selfish request. Let it be remembered that simply because we may be cut off from other enjoyments, we can be among the most dedicated lovers of the arts.

Any move that draws attention to the battles encountered by disabled people who want to be participants or spectators in the arts world is really invaluable. Strangely, many able bodied people are still not aware of the huge obstacles that we meet if we have problems of hearing, seeing or mobility because of greatly restricted access and, alas, because of those individuals with unenlightened attitudes of mind who do not appreciate that, as our outlets can be limited, arts opportunities can be especially necessary to us. It is not only that the muse can be strong, but that we crave for inclusion here, where we can often compete on level terms. Not always does the layman realise, either, the work put in by artists to help us in so far as they possibly can within these present cruel limitations.

The inquiry is not bound to any precise definition of "the arts", and regards them as drama, films, puppetry, music, mime, drawing, painting, photography and literature. We are concerned with getting a much greater involvement in the arts for disabled people. There are two ways, we believe, to do that. The first way would be if disablement organisations could regard art as vitally important to us, and not just as a pretty wrapping or the icing on the cake, and could have regard for its healing and therapeutic qualities, which can help us to be light-hearted, despite what can be grotty challenges of life. The second way would be if arts organisations would recognise that they have an equal responsibility to the disabled public—a responsibility which they are in a unique position to discharge.

At the moment our worst obstacles and enemies in this field are inaccessible steps and other such impedimenta, and of course fire regulations. It is quite usual to be told, "No, you cannot sit there. You are a fire hazard". I for one know what it is like to be turned out of a theatre on those grounds. Since it is always maintained that escape in the case of fire is a question for management, this points to the need for much more discussion and agreement among fire officers, managements of theatres, cinemas, museums, and so on, and representatives of disablement organisations. It must be agreed that the many people with walking difficulties can be more of a fire risk than people in wheelchairs; yet nobody would deny bad walkers the chance of seeing a show.

Our best hopes of finding ways to ease this gruesome problem lie in the keen interest shown by the Minister for Housing, Mr. Ian Gow, who seems most anxious to sort it out, as well as in the recent formation of the Access Committee for England, which will be much exercised on these fronts. Also of course our hopes rest on the Arts Council. I should like to thank my noble friend the Minister for the encouragement that he gave this inquiry by attending two of our conferences and speaking at one, as also did the Minister for the Disabled. Mr. Tony Newton. In particular, we welcome the £10,000 grant which showed practical good will towards our endeavours.

Many who often have to face great difficulties, sometimes with pain and tribulation, find that absorption in artistic interests can recharge their spiritual batteries and help them to achieve a more fulfilled existence. This justifies my remarks, which I now end.

5.47 p.m.

Lord Beaumont of Whitley

My Lords, I want to take the limited time available to talk about one particular organisation, not because my wife has been connected with it and its running for some time, not because the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, was an extremely distinguished chairman of it for some time, and not even because I gather that the Minister yesterday spent a lot of time there at a very successful session, but because the subject of the debate seems to me to raise some problems about this organisation, which is agreed by everyone to be doing a very good job of work, and which should be encouraged, and yet is threatened by the present thoughts and plans of the Arts Council. I refer to Air and Space, which together make up the Arts Services Grants Limited. Air is an acronym for the Artists' Information Register, which has its own gallery; Space Studios runs over 250 studios throughout London where artists can work and sometimes live. The chairman is Nancy Balfour and the co-ordinator is Robert Macpherson.

The new policy of the Arts Council is to shut down the Air gallery altogether in six months and to phase out the funding of Space over four years, so that it may become self-sufficient. I emphasise that that second part is at the moment just a recommendation of the arts panel of the Arts Council and has not yet received Arts Council central approval, and I hope that it will not. Such a policy seems to me to be disastrous and to go against the professed objectives of the Arts Council itself.

The arts panel has stated that it believes in providing studio premises for artists, but the economics are such that it is impossible for the studios to be provided without a grant. The £40,000-odd required to administer Space would then have to be loaded on to the licence fees, which would entail an increase in rent of approximately 25 per cent. That would lead to many artists having to leave their studios, with the consequent difficulty that Space would have many empty studios, in order to pay for which it would have to increase licence fees, and so on and so forth. That is clearly a nonsense.

Likewise, the council also states that it wishes to increase the existing expenditure on schemes which encourage the patronage of individual artists. Of course, they do, and hurrah say all of us! But the Air Gallery, which they are going to close down in six months, is just such a scheme, one of the few galleries, and admittedly such, which is non-commercial and which provides first shows for young artists starting their careers.

I seem to detect two reasons lying behind these unfortunate measures. One is a historic bias against the visual arts which have not neatly fitted into strategies. It has been widely admitted, I think, over the years that the visual arts have suffered in this way. Another is an unconscious bias—I stress the adjective—against the humbler end of the arts spectrum. In the debate between the higher and the lower arts, the expensive and the cheap, arts for the cultivated and arts for the uneducated, I tend to side firmly with the lower, the cheap and the vulgar. Not that I do not recognise the case for the other side. But I reckon that it has everything going for it, as a survey of the make-up and taste of your Lordships' House would testify.

It is an eternal argument, and the answer, as all wise men know, is not "Either/or" but "Both/and". It is in the middle of this argument that organisations like Air and Space seem to me to hold a special place. They deal with the dedicated artist who may not make enough concessions to the world outside. But they do so at the lowest end of the expenditure scale. There is no room for criticism of over-expenditure here. Everything is stretched as far as it can go and further. The work done by Air and Space and Art Services Grants, as the umbrella organisation, is widely appreciated. I give two small examples. The British Council and other organisations regularly bring visiting foreigners to briefing sessions on the work done. The co-ordinator visits art schools all over the country to talk to art students about the cold life they are going to have to venture out into.

It may seem that I have been describing a paragon of an organisation. No organisation is perfect, and this is no exception. I believe genuinely, however, that Air and Space can be seen to be filling an indisputable gap in the centre of the visual arts world and that any injury done to them and organisations like them by present plans, whether by dogmatic ideology or carelessness, would be regretted by everyone concerned. In this complicated field, it is inevitable that declared principles should find disagreement as well as agreement. What is important is that action should be consistent with theory. There seems to be a danger of this not happening. The fate of Air and Space seems to be evidence of this possible gap in the centre through which organisations of the worthiest kind can fall.

5.52 p.m.

Lord Strabolgi

My Lords, it falls to me to wind up this excellent short debate. We are very grateful to my noble friend Lord Jenkins of Putney for initiating it. I only regret that it had to be a short debate; and with my Chief Whip sitting behind me, I hope one day that some time will be given for a full debate on the Arts Council. I agree with much of what the noble Lord, Lord McAlpine, said about it, and also with some of the criticisms and strictures that have been made this afternoon, although there is much good work that they do. Of course, one applauds the new management, which I think is preventing them from some of the more foolish activities, such as pole-bearing, awards for leaf sweeping, electrocuting goldfish, and so on, which have been given in the past.

I should like first to turn to one matter in the report that has not to my knowledge so far been dealt with. I refer to Annex 1 of The Glory of the Garden which deals on page 43 with the major areas of population, and which should be read in conjunction with paragraph 29. The shaded areas that can be seen on page 43 apparently are those that have been designated by the Arts Council for strategic arts support based on population. The report admits that most of the eastern seaboard has been left out of account; and that on grounds of geography, Plymouth, Ipswich and Norwich have been included as strategic areas. There are two conspicuous white areas on the map. One is Cumbria which is thinly populated. The other is Humberside and Lincolnshire, in which Hull is a major city eminently suitable to serve as a regional centre. Yet it is part of a white area. The travel to work population of Hull and its surroundings is about 400,000. It also serves a further 100,000 across the Humber Bridge. This population is larger than those of the Plymouth, Ipswich and Norwich areas. The city of Kingston upon Hull has many cultural assets, initiated and supported by the city council which has a very good record of support for the arts. Its annual 1981–82 expenditure per head was £2.75 compared, for example, with Oxford, which was 23p. The total expenditure on the arts this year will be over £1 million. It has an excellent art gallery, the Ferens Art Gallery. It has a concert hall in the City Hall. It has a very interesting whaling and fishing museum. It has Wilberforce House, the birthplace of William Wilberforce, where the slavery display was remodelled last year for the celebration of the 150th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade. It has this and much else.

My father was privileged to represent one of the Hull constituencies for many years in another place. I was in Kingston upon Hull recently. It was made clear to me almost immediately upon my arrival by the civic authorities that they were surprised and dismayed at being omitted from the Arts Council's list of strategic areas. I was glad to hear when I was up there that the noble Earl the Minister had also visited Humberside recently. I think that he knows, even if the Arts Council do not, what I am talking about. If the Minister can persuade the Arts Council to reconsider their policy so much the better. We might then get an improved map and a more appropriate designation.

I hope, too, that the Minister will try to persuade the Arts Council to reconsider their present policy on classical music—that is, classical music apart from grand opera—as this is not receiving, in my view, sufficient recognition and financial support. There is first of all the proposal for an Eastern Symphony Orchestra. The Arts Council suggest Nottingham as a base. Did they consult with the director of the county's leisure services? As has been said, only two-thirds of musicians' wages come through an orchestra. The rest are freelance earnings, ranging from teaching to recording contracts. The Nottingham region, I understand, do not want a single orchestra. They want variety, such as they have now—the London orchestras, the Hallé, foreign orchestras from Amsterdam and Leningrad, and others like the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and the Birmingham Symphony.

May I also ask the Minister what effect the new orchestra project would have on the finances, through audience dilution, of the present regional orchestras? I am not opposed per se to the creation of a new orchestra, but I think that this would be much better than forcing one of the existing London orchestras to move. I deplore the fact that the London Orchestral Concert Board has been told that a £280,000 grant is to be withdrawn. I also deplore the fact that grants are being withdrawn amounting to over £430,000 (which really is not much compared with the amount that goes to Covent Garden) from the Eastern Authorities Orchestral Association, from the English Sinfonia, the New Opera Company, and from all those excellent regional festivals, such as Harrogate, King's Lynn, Leeds, Stroud and York.

All this should be seen in relation to the £10 million a year received by Covent Garden. No wonder, as has been said, the report is called The Glory of the Garden! While I am all for centres of excellence, opera is not the only musical art form to provide centres of excellence, fashionable as it may be. I agree very much with what the noble Lord, Lord Somers, said about the four orchestras. They are not just London orchestras. They are international orchestras, all carrying the flag for Britain—perhaps I should say batting for Britain—in towns abroad. Yet these orchestras receive in total less than half what a regional European orchestra receives. Therefore, I do hope that the noble Earl is going to try and persuade the Arts Council to do rather more for classical music, as compared with the Royal Opera House and the Coliseum, because, as I have said before in a debate, this is really the Cinderella of the arts.

6 p.m.

The Earl of Gowrie

My Lords, a document has come into my possession which seeks to place this debate in context: Enter Lord Jenkins, stage left. 'How goes the battle for the arts tonight?' 'Uncertain; no one knows who's lost or won'. Strabolgi (with his pads on): 'So many names, so many mouths now shut: Howard of Henderskelfe, Nugent, gartered Rhodes, Young Birkett, the brave squire of Livingstone: Vaizey has cast his lance, and Gibson gone. But cheer, my Lords, the list goes on and on: Fresh Broadbridge to the charge; Auckland and Somers, McAlpine of West Green, Lane-Fox and bosky Beaumont, All plunge into the fray, seeking their foe. Enter Lord Gowrie, bloodied but unbowed. 'They tie me to the rack, night after night, But bear-like I must stay the course and fight For money, grants and loans, subventions, gold, The manna of the arts, our army's pay; Raise high the claims, deny the other's hold, Until my bones are white; my name is Grey'. Whatever the relevance or otherwise of that note from the Box, I am delighted to have this opportunity again to debate recent initiatives on arts matters, and I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins, a very distinguished predecessor of mine, on his choice of Motion. I should like also to echo congratulations to my noble friend Lord Eccles.

I think we should start without indulging in false modesty when we contemplate the state of the arts in Great Britain today, though I must say to the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins, that I would most fiercely contest his suggestion that this is the sole area in which Britain stands high in the world. Nevertheless, it is true that the arts are thriving in both the public and private sectors. In theatre, dance, painting, literature, music, films and many of the crafts, our standards are among the very highest in the world. Our television is generally acknowledged to be the finest anywhere. And the "business of the heritage", if I can so describe it, is booming as never before.

Abroad, too, British arts are a success—more so at present, I dare say to the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, than our football or cricket. English National Opera are in the middle of a highly-acclaimed American tour. The Royal Shakespeare Company have recently completed a most successful European tour. The Royal Opera House and our major ballet companies also tour abroad with great success. We may spend less per head than our European friends and competitors, as my noble friend Lord Howard reminded us, but we certainly get superior value for money. I would point out to my noble friend Lord McAlpine that a very great deal of this success is, of course, achieved without a penny of subsidy.

This is perhaps the moment at which to mention that, amid all this good news, we have suffered a great loss with the death of the Poet Laureate, John Betjeman; the loss is of someone whose originality and influence, not least on conservation of the heritage, as well as on poetry, spread throughout the English-speaking world. Yet it is enormously encouraging that we have so many good, younger poets in line for the succession: and only recently we had the great honour of William Golding being awarded the Nobel Prize. Our young playwrights and musicians dominate Broadway. These are not, surely, the achievements of a nation whose culture is in decline, but of one whose success rate is high and which is capable of much further development, including, I should like to say to my noble friend, Lord Vaizey, much further "cheerfully irresponsible" development.

Faced with such achievement, the proper posture of the Minister is that of the traditional servant, which, after all, is all that the word means—respectful, not servile, able to turn a blind eye to the sometimes wayward behaviour of his masters and mistresses and eager to help and to serve. Remembering, therefore, that we have much to be proud of, I think one of our starting points must be the Eighth Report of the Select Committee of another place on Education, Science and the Arts. This was a thoroughly researched and comprehensive report, which we cannot ignore—even if we do not accept every one of its recommendations. It has been mentioned in the debate tonight.

The comment has been made that the Government's response to the report was negative or dismissive. This is quite untrue. Many of the recommendations have been implemented. For instance, the committee recommended that the Arts Council should fund new important developments in the arts by matching private sponsorship from its own funds. The council has responded to this suggestion in its strategy review. I think the influence of the Select Committee's report on the strategy review has been underestimated. In particular, it has influenced the review's references to the funding of regional drama.

I, too, have responded recently by announcing a new sponsorship incentive scheme of my own, to top-up business sponsorship by providing £25 for every £75 raised in new sponsorship over £7,500. It will be funded directly from my office, so that it will be additional to the Arts Council's announced allocation. It will be administered through the Association for Business Sponsorship of the Arts. I would mention to the noble Lord, Lord Broadbridge, that sponsorship, being part of the marketing efforts of companies, is a deductible expense.

The Select Committee recommended the publication of more statistical information about the arts, and I have been able to respond to this. The Policy Studies Institute, with help from the Government, the Rowntree Memorial Trust, the Scottish Education Department and the Arts Council, has produced an admirable collection of arts statistics—Facts about the Arts—and a second edition is being prepared.

The committee also wisely recommended that the Arts Council should demonstrate its confidence in the regional arts associations by devolving more clients to those bodies and to local authorities. The council, in its strategy review (of which more in just a minute) has taken a big step in this direction. It felt that it could not go all the way with the Select Committee—the council's central expertise is valuable, surely, and should not be dissipated—but I feel that it has got the extent of devolution about right.

On the national museums and galleries, the Select Committee recommended that changes should be made to enable them more easily to retain earned income; and that changes should also be considered in their relations with the Property Services Agency on building matters. We recognise that concern, and I have instituted major reviews in both these areas.

These are only some examples of recommendations which have been acted upon; others are listed in our reply to the report, published in January. Of course, unsurprisingly, we have not been able to go all the way with the committee. On tax issues we have already made significant advances, though I confess I should like some more; and I can assure my noble friend Lord Dundee that I shall put my back into trying to achieve a bit more.

As to the old question (dare I say the old chestnut?) of a Cabinet Minister for the arts, an important change which this Government have made is to establish the Office of Arts and Libraries as a free-standing Ministry. I report on its affairs directly to the Prime Minister, and I can and do attend Cabinet meetings, where I argue all arts issues in my own right whenever arts matters are discussed. As someone involved in wearing another hat on questions of machinery of government, I think it would be rather an absurdity to do more than that, given the arm's-length principle and given the fact that the Arts Minister, in any Government, is not involved in the day-to-day administration of everything that is going on.

Let me quickly invite the House to consider what the existing Office of Arts and Libraries has achieved with the most modest of bureaucratic resources. We really are a lean and hungry little Ministry. Since this Government took office, we have maintained and improved on the overall level of arts activity, always within the necessary constraints of available resources. We have created and endowed the National Heritage Memorial Fund to preserve and acquire items of outstanding national importance. We have set up the Victoria and Albert and Science Museums on an independent trustee basis this year and we have improved the machinery of controlling the export of works of art.

On funding, we have increased the total centrally-funded arts budget this year by 9 per cent., which is a substantial real increase. Within that, we have increased the money available to museums for conservation and building maintenance. As has been said, the Arts Council's grant has for the first time reached the £100 million mark. We have found money from the contingency reserve for the deficits of the opera companies, and particularly—and I say this to my noble friend Lord Polwarth—for Scottish Opera.

That is a good record and it is a collective record. I am grateful for the kind things that have been said even by the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins. However, that said, if monetarism means that all aspects of state spending must be made in the context of what the nation can afford at any given point, then I must say that I am an avowed and passionate monetarist.

We have strengthened the Museums and Galleries Commission, which is now administering a capital grant scheme for the benefit of local museums. Work has begun on the first phase of a new British Library at St. Pancras. After many years of aching discussion, the Public Lending Right scheme has been introduced—in my view an overdue remedy of injustice. So we have, indeed, made changes—changes which have benefited both the living arts and the bodies concerned with preserving our heritage. Let no one think that those two things do not feed upon each other; they are essential components of the same culture.

Let me turn now to the two major changes which have dominated this afternoon's debate. First, there is local government reorganisation, which was notably raised by the noble Lord, Lord Rhodes. I am most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Birkett, for saving me a little time by, I hope, correcting in his speech, the false impression—and I do not blame him for this—obtained by the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins. The fact of the matter is that the new funding is new baseline funding. What I was resisting was the idea that the base-line should be increased annually by a factor of £34 million.

As the House will know, I have been able to announce that £34 million in additional central funding will be made available in 1986, and equivalent sums in subsequent years. Indeed, £17 million of this will be to meet the costs of the major museums and galleries. The British Film Institute will get £1 million and, for the performing arts, £16 million will be made available to the Arts Council. This sum of money does not represent the full amount spent on the arts at present by the GLC and the MCCs, although it is not far from it. It falls about £4 million short. This is quite deliberate because I believe very strongly that local arts activities should attract local support. The borough and district councils will, therefore, be expected to play their part after abolition, particularly in the case of local arts bodies within their own boundaries. The overwhelming majority have indicated that they want to do so. But no performing arts body in the GLC and MCC areas will be precluded from applying to the Arts Council for subsidy out of this additional £16 million.

The noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, has rightly drawn our attention to the recent recommendations of the Select Committee of another place on local government reorganisation and the arts. I have had discussions with them, and the Government will certainly be responding at a later stage to the Select Committee. I am confident that the additional funding that we have made available will ensure that the healthy arts estate in our metropolitan centres will continue to flourish.

I turn at great speed to the Arts Council's major and significant strategy review, The Glory of the Garden. I hope that the House will understand that it is not simply constraints of time which prevent me from commenting on particular decisions that the Arts Council have made. My noble friend Lord Nugent of Guildford and the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont, have criticised some of those decisions and I must say that in my individual capacity I would criticise some too. That is the essence of the arm's-length system and it is the essence of grasping the nettle as the noble Lord, Lord Balfour, said. One could add, of course, that nettles are things that good gardeners need to grasp from time to time.

However, I do not think that London will suffer by the slight shift in direction towards the regions. I could point out to Londoners, of whom I count myself one, that central government funding will be taking on some very expensive bills and that that will liberate resources for other organisations. Nevertheless, our great cities throughout the country are the natural centres for our major theatres, orchestras and the like. The Arts Council are now turning the spotlight on 12 other strategic centres, where extra investment can strengthen our national network of arts bodies. They can attract the audiences—and let us not forget the spin-off in terms of jobs and other service industries which such development brings with it. They can also look outwards, with drama and opera companies touring their regions from a secure base—and I endorse the remarks of my noble friend Lord Dundee about touring.

Many of your Lordships have drawn attention to particular aspects of the strategy which have caused concern. I should like to make just two points. The financial context is that the Government are cormmitted—saving major international disasters—to maintain public spending on the arts; but major increases cannot be banked on. If money is to be freed for new development and new investment—as I believe it should be—savings do have to be found. Secondly—and this is the really important point—the proposals are not immutable. The council have made it clear from the outset that all representations that they received would be fully and seriously considered, and this process of consideration is going on. I think that it is right for the council to try to challenge or to tease out more local funding, whether private or public, as a method of plurally funding the arts and of getting all of us to put our backs into their continued success.

In conclusion, I have listened most carefully to the points made by your Lordships today, and representatives of the Arts Council have been here to note what has been said about their own strategy review. My job, and I think theirs as well, is to encourage liveliness and new thinking in all areas of the arts while protecting the best among what is already in being. It is a very difficult balance to hold, but it is an exciting job to have to do and I am most grateful for it. Today's debate has helped me and it has helped the Arts Council and, in general, it has been an immensely valuable contribution to the task.

6.18 p.m.

Lord Jenkins of Putney

My Lords, the noble Earl the Minister has been kind enough to leave me one minute in which to thank all those who have taken part in this debate, including of course the noble Earl himself. When he began his speech it occured to me that there was an additional client for the Laureateship. It might solve a few problems if that particular idea were taken up. I am only prevented from pursuing the matter because I have my own client for the job in Mr. Gavin Ewart. I must mention that because Mr. Larkin has been mentioned in another place and so apparently it is all right for us nowadays to say who we want in the job. However, I will not pursue that matter.

I wish most sincerely to thank all of your Lordships who have taken part in this debate and to express the hope that this is only the beginning of a series of debates in which we shall further examine in greater detail all those aspects, which concern us all, of this most important subject which I believe has been examined in this Chamber tonight in a manner which perhaps—although they took longer over it—was in no way inferior to the debate which took place last week in the other place. My Lords, I beg leave to withdraw my Motion for Papers.

Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.