Robert Neill – 2023 Speech on Arts Council Funding for England

The speech made by Sir Robert Neill, the Conservative MP for Bromley and Chislehurst, in Westminster Hall, the House of Commons on 18 January 2023.

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the funding decisions of Arts Council England.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone, and I am very grateful for the opportunity to return to this topic. It is also good to see the Minister in his place in Westminster Hall. As he will know, this topic has been ventilated before, but I think this debate broadens the issues.

As time has gone on, those of us who follow this issue have had more and more grounds for concern, not just about individual funding decisions by the Arts Council but about the process by which it makes them. That process lacks transparency and, I believe, accountability, and there is a lack of engagement with the sector at a time when funding reductions are being made. Those may be necessary in the overall economic climate, but they have been made in a distributional way that has taken no account of economic, social or other impacts—or, above all, of the overall responsibility of the Arts Council.

When the Arts Council was formed, it was set up

“to give more people opportunities to enjoy and benefit from great art and culture”—

I think it still has that phrase on the banner on its social media. It did not regard itself as an organisation about changing the nature of art or culture; it was about making excellence available to the greatest number of people. That was the vision of Keynes when he set it up and of people such as Jennie Lee when she was Arts Minister. In fact, I think Jennie Lee rightly said that it was important that everyone, wherever they were and whatever their circumstances, should have the opportunity of accessing the best in the arts rather than something cut-price or dumbed down. I rather fear that of late the Arts Council has lost its way in relation to that mission. Some of the specific funding decisions in the latest round highlight how it has gone wrong.

The Minister and others will know that I have raised in particular the issue of the removal of English National Opera from the national portfolio. That would have had the effect of creating 600 redundancies, and—for all the mealy words used by the Arts Council to begin with—it would have effectively meant the closure of the company. The idea that it would have been possible to relocate a 100-year-old company to a base in Manchester—more on that in a moment—at about 12 months’ notice was so risible that one wonders what experience and real understanding of the sector the bureaucrats in the Arts Council who drew up that decision ever had.

I am glad to say that discussions, hard work by English National Opera’s team and engagement with the Arts Council has led to some movement. I welcome the fact that there has been a willingness to listen and that funding has been secured, albeit with a reduction—a reduction perhaps on much the same level as those for other arts institutions. That will enable the 2023-24 season to continue next year. I hope that there will be better transition funding for the future. However, that is as yet uncertain. We have had a step forward, but at the moment English National Opera—a major international company that does co-productions with the Metropolitan Opera in New York and is a major draw for audiences—has had only a reprieve, rather than being saved in a form that is recognisably that of a high-class, top-rate opera company. That is not good enough.

Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)

I am grateful to the hon. Member for giving way, and I congratulate him both on securing this debate and on his speech. I also welcome the concession made in respect of English National Opera. However, does he agree that the latest Arts Council declaration still leaves more than £50 million worth of cuts to London’s arts budget over three years? That not only has a devastating cultural impact but, as he suggests, an economic impact; I am thinking of employment and the vital revenue that pours into London from tourists and others who seek to attend these marvellous cultural institutions.

Sir Robert Neill

That is certainly true; as a London MP, I am conscious of it too. Of course there is more than one issue at play. One is the distribution—where the money goes. Secondly, there is the question of which institutions and sectors are worst affected by what happens. It does seem that the performing arts have been particularly hard hit. When I look at the trustees of the Arts Council, there seems to be a lack of experience in the performing arts as opposed to the visual arts. We should perhaps return to the composition of the board and management and whether relevant experience of those sectors is there.

Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con) rose—

Sir Robert Neill

I give way to the Father of the House.

Sir Peter Bottomley

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. Whether one’s experience is in the performing arts or the visual arts, everybody knows that it takes three to four years to put on a good opera of international standard or to put on an exhibition of paintings of international standard, with the co-operation of everybody involved. It seems peculiar that Ministers did not say to Arts Council England, “We understand that and, if you need to make changes, you need to make them over a six-year period, not a six-month period.”

Sir Robert Neill

My right hon. Friend makes a fair and valid point. When this matter has been debated in the past, Ministers have argued that this is an arm’s length body over which they have little control. With respect to the Minister, I am not sure that that entirely holds water. The Arts Council has said that a former Secretary of State, in its phrase, “instructed” it in relation to the distribution of some of the moneys.

That is a legitimate policy decision and stance for any Secretary of State to take, but it proves there is a power to instruct and intervene. That should not apply to the day-to-day running of an arm’s length body, but Ministers have an ability and right to set strategic direction and to ensure that there is proper governance and oversight and, at the end of the day, basic equity in how its operations and funding decisions, involving large sums of public money, are taken.

Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for securing this debate. On the proper functioning of the Arts Council, there is a specific consultation at the moment on music provision across the country. A concern is that the timeline of the consultation was announced in December 2022, and the first real engagement with stakeholders begins and concludes in January 2023. Ministers and the Government have a duty to ensure that the consultation is proper and thorough. Centres such as mine, Dynamics CIC in Medway, that offer outstanding music provision will be severely affected if it is not done properly and thoroughly, in a way that respects outstanding provision, rather than pulling things together geographically for financial reasons.

Sir Robert Neill

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point. It highlights the interesting fact that this is not just a London issue. There are institutions outside London that have lost funding for no apparent reason. That is the difficulty: the lack of any apparent evidence base or transparent and proper process for these decisions. There is a lack of any proper consultation or impact assessment.

I have seen freedom of information responses rather perfunctorily provided to individuals by the Arts Council, in a process that appears to be like drawing teeth. Mr Bone, you and I have had experience of such things from public bodies in the past. It appears that no full impact assessments were made on individual changes, even though some of them will close institutions. Equalities impact assessments were made, but not the full impact assessment expected when dealing with many millions of pounds of public money, and the possibility of an institution ceasing to operate, with redundancies caused thereafter.

Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, and I congratulate him on this debate. This is at best half thought-out, and at worst an act of Luddism. I suspect that what we have seen with the revised proposals for the ENO, which do not save it in the long term, is just an admission that the Arts Council has got this wrong. Let me give him this quote:

“Sacrificing this particular golden goose for a bit of glib London-bashing will do little to improve cultural provision in the regions and would be an act of sabotage for one of our country’s greatest assets.”

That was the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) almost 10 years ago, the last time this was done, and it has not changed.

Sir Robert Neill

I am sorry to say that is true. I do not object, in truth, to the idea that we should spend more arts funding across the rest of the country. I am not an opponent of levelling up as such, but I have always taken the view that that should not be at the expense of London. Decimating London is counter-productive, because much of the talent that performs in the rest of the country is London-based and London-trained, because that is where the critical mass of the arts world is. It is where the conservatoires and colleges are.

James Morris (Halesowen and Rowley Regis) (Con)

One of the critical issues is defining what we mean by “levelling up the arts”. In relation to opera, this is not just about physical location. As a west midlands MP, I want more of my constituents to enjoy opera, but does that not mean that we need to define more clearly what levelling up opera might mean? That is what we lack in relation to the funding decisions: there is no overarching strategic view.

Sir Robert Neill

That neatly brings me to the next point, which is perhaps the most important. We have mentioned that the funding cut to the ENO would have been a woeful and destructive action. It still might happen: had Dr Harry Brünjes and Stuart Murphy, the chair and chief executive, all their team at the ENO and all the great artists—people such as Bryn Terfel and others, who started the petitions—rolled over to Arts Council England’s decisions, there would be redundancy notices at the London Coliseum this week, and 600 professional people would have been out of a job thanks to Arts Council England’s incompetence. That is no way to run an organisation, and Arts Council England should be ashamed of the way it went about it all.

It is significant that the former Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Ms Dorries), went public on social media, saying that the way Arts Council England has carried out her intended policy of levelling up arts funding was not as she intended, and has the effect of undermining it. That is the view of the former Secretary of State, who ought to know because it was her policy. The ineptitude of Arts Council England has undermined and discredited the Government’s policy intention, which the Minister and I could probably quite happily sign up to in principle. That is another reason why the Minister ought not to simply say, “I can stand back from this,” because the Government’s own policy is being failed by an arm’s length body. That is really important, which is why we need a proper strategy.

We need a proper strategy for opera. Opera is a major part of the British music scene. Some people think it is a bit of a foreign thing, rather like John Gay’s “The Beggar’s Opera” in the 18th century and Handel. It is not. It is fundamental.

Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)

On the point about having a strategy and some sort of strategic thinking, one of Arts Council England’s decisions was to cut funding to the touring side of the Welsh National Opera, which tours extensively in England, including to places such as Liverpool, Birmingham, Southampton, Oxford and so on. On the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, we found out that Arts Council England had not even talked to the Arts Council of Wales about that decision before making the cut, which obviously puts that opera company under threat. The net result, along with the Glyndebourne cut, is that there is no opera in Liverpool at all. What has that got to do with levelling up?

Sir Robert Neill

The hon. Gentleman’s point encapsulates why I think the former Secretary of State was right to say what she said: the decision absolutely negates the Government’s own policy. As the hon. Gentleman said, the result of the way Arts Council England has handled this issue is that there is now no opera in Liverpool, because the WNO cancelled its tour. Glyndebourne has cancelled its touring as well—that was touring in the regions of the UK. The WNO toured across the north-west, parts of the west of England, Bristol, Southampton and so on. All those places will now have no opera—not thanks to the policy decisions, but thanks to the way they have been handled and implemented by Arts Council England.

Ministers should not allow the situation to stand, and the same applies to other elements of the arts sector. There is no strategy that informs the approach to prose theatre, to concerts or to museums and galleries. Nowhere is there a fully-fledged strategy, and we certainly ought to have one for opera. In that case, we are talking about £50 million of public money simply going to the opera companies. Think how much more is going to other sectors as well—but no strategy!

When one tries to find the audit trail for this decision, the board minutes that are published are perfunctory in the extreme. None of the board papers is published, and there are considerable redactions to what is published. That is not a level of accountability or transparency that would be accepted in any local authority in this country, and it should not be accepted in a public body such as Arts Council England. It is letting the public down, and it is letting the Government, as the overseeing body, down as well. That is why there is another cause for intervention.

Finally, because I know others want to speak, we need to look at the lack of an economic analysis.

Florence Eshalomi (Vauxhall) (Lab/Co-op)

The hon. Member is making a vital point about the economic impact. These cuts will impact organisations not in receipt of Arts Council funding that rely on smaller grants. However, organisations that have now come out of the NPO portfolio will also be drawing on that funding, such as the Omnibus theatre in my constituency and the White Deer theatre in Kennington. Should the Government not recognise the importance that these smaller independent organisations, working with the big national organisations, bring to our local economies in terms of jobs, employment, training and getting our young people involved in the arts sector?

Sir Robert Neill

It is certainly right that the arts offer real economic opportunity for many young people, and some of those smaller organisations are the breeding ground from which people come. That is true of ENO itself. Many international stars started at the English National Opera, and that is also true of smaller organisations. That reinforces the point I was making: there is not a strategy for any of that. The Arts Council does not appear to have a strategy for anything.

It seems that the funding decisions in this round were to meet a financial envelope. Fine—let us have a proper discussion then with the Department about how we produce a strategy to meet that financial envelope. But none of that was done. That is why we need a much more strategic approach; this is a serious matter.

Looking at the overall potential economic risk, the 2020 report from the Centre for Economics and Business Research found that in a single year—2018; that is the latest we have—the arts and culture industry directly generated £28.3 billion in turnover, £13.5 billion in gross value added, 190,000 full-time equivalent jobs and £7.3 billion in employee compensation in wages and fees: in other words, into the economy. This is big business; for the UK, this is big business that we excel in and which drags in people to visit us. Also, it enables people throughout the UK to have their lives enriched.

What I do not want to see as part of a levelling-up strategy is a cut-down English National Opera or equivalent doing a reduced orchestration, reduced cast and no-proper-chorus version of one of the great operas, be it “Carmen”, “La Traviata” or “Tosca”, in a shed somewhere outside one of our major cities. That is short-changing the people in regional England. They are entitled to see a proper performance like those we get from WNO and the Glyndebourne tour and which ENO would happily do.

ENO has always made it clear that it is more than willing to do more work outside London. Funnily enough, it was planning to do a performance in Liverpool, of all places, before the covid panic, and none of that seems to have been taken into account by Arts Council England. It is short-changing people in the regional parts of England to suggest that they should get a second-rate version of that which is available in London. No wonder the former Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Bedfordshire, was so angry at the way her policy had been misinterpreted—all the more reason for Ministers to intervene.

Let us look at ENO as an example of the economic benefit that one company can bring. It produces £1.75 for every £1 of spend—it actually brings money into the economy with all the knock-on expenditure that comes from people going to the theatre, and that is true across most of the theatrical world. To put all that at risk without a proper strategic basis seems ridiculous. The loss of touring by Glyndebourne and WNO means that some 23,000 fewer people will have the chance to see high-quality opera in this country than before. That is a funny type of levelling up.

Sir Peter Bottomley

In addition to the performances, does my hon. Friend agree that it is a betrayal of all those who helped Vernon and Hazel Ellis restore the Coliseum from 2000 to 2004, having bought the freehold and made it into the largest and best theatre in London again? What did Arts Council England think would happen to that building, which has been funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, the National Lottery, English Heritage and the like?

Sir Robert Neill

It may demonstrate the lack of thought in the Arts Council England process. It apparently wanted English National Opera, although no longer based in London, to still run the Coliseum as a commercial venue—a taxpayer subsidised version competing against west end theatre. That does not seem either competent or terribly Conservative, for that matter; it certainly is not a good use of public money.

At the same time, Arts Council England wanted English National Opera to relocate to The Factory in Manchester, a venue that was not built to take unamplified singing—no one had bothered to check. Singing there has to be on a mike. Basic due diligence might have found that one out. The Factory, which, I am told, has been a pet project of some of the senior management of Arts Council England in the past, is a venue that does not have a set of users. It is £100 million over budget. I do not think that forcing a company that has been well established for 100 years or so in London to fill what has become an Arts Council England white elephant was necessarily a very good idea—particularly because Opera North, which performs in Manchester, was not even told. If it had been, it could have said what the audience figures were and probably told Arts Council England that opera cannot be done in The Factory anyway. It is the lack of basic competence, strategic thought and good management that is terrifying in all this. That is why there is a compelling ground for intervention.

Rehman Chishti rose—

Sir Robert Neill

I will take one more intervention and then let others speak.

Rehman Chishti

My hon. Friend mentions the forced collaboration between one organisation and another. That is a quick fix. He talks about opera, but before we get to staging opera we need to ensure that our young people have the right music skills. The Arts Council at the moment is carrying out a consultation on the national plan for music education. It has said that all hubs will cover multiple local authority areas. It has subsequently said that this will be achieved

“via prescribing geographic delivery areas for Music Hubs”.

In Medway we have outstanding music provision in schools. Our neighbours in Kent do not have quite the same standards, but under those proposals one area will be forced in with the other. Surely forcing a merger of an outstanding provision area with another cannot be the right way forward—it will weaken the provision in small organisations such as those in Medway.

Sir Robert Neill

It sounds as if Arts Council England has fallen into bureaucratic speak. What would that mean to any normal person or sensible institution? It defeats me. There is a complete lack of understanding of what happens on the ground, and a complete lack of engagement with the institutions and their audiences—that is the great error in all this.

I do not have time to quote it all, but the playwright Dennis Kelly wrote a very powerful letter to me; it can be googled and found on social media. It was about the impacts on prose theatre—in particular, the Hampstead Theatre and others. There is a lack of appreciation of the impacts on audiences, and an unwillingness to engage with them. The fact is that people travel to many of those London venues from all around the home counties; it is not purely a London thing in any event.

Lest I be tempted to go on indefinitely, I should say that I have set out the case as to why the whole approach to this funding round has been seriously flawed. Egregious individual decisions have been made. Some of those have been rowed back on to some extent, and I welcome that—I am always happy if Arts Council England or others are prepared to listen and to look at evidence. But it needs to be much more comprehensive and to do it in a much more transparent and strategic fashion.

I will quote the former Secretary of State again. She said that when she arrived at DCMS, she was not a great fan of opera—I had a conversation with her about that —but she went. I urge all Ministers who come into the Department to go to opera, ballet, theatre, concerts and to look at some of the galleries and museums that they are responsible for. They should see that as an experience in itself. My right hon. Friend became a total convert; she said, in relation to ENO and the Royal Opera House:

“They have been the front runners in levelling up for a very long time. They leave many in other sectors of the performing arts in the shade in terms of how much they give back and how they try desperately via a number of measures to make opera accessible to all.”

That is exactly what ENO has been doing.

Then there are the insulting comments of the director of music at Arts Council England, who said, “We don’t believe there is any growing audience for grand opera”—a rather bizarre term to use. Anyone who knows anything about opera will know that is a five-act French production by Meyerbeer from about 1860; we do not talk in terms of grand opera any more. I think what she meant was full-scale opera, with a proper orchestra and chorus. How anyone can say that when theatres have been locked down because of covid for many years defeats me. Freedom of information requests have not evidenced any robust statistical basis for that assumption, which is another reason to go back and have a proper strategy.

I hope all that tells the Minister that something has gone badly wrong in this funding round. We cannot just say that Arts Council England is an arm’s length body; we need to do something before serious and lasting harm is done to critical parts of our cultural and artistic heritage.