Tag: Ed Vaizey

Below is the text of the speech made by Ed Vaizey, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport at the Southbank Centre in London on 23 March 2016.

It’s been a great privilege to have been arts and culture minister for six years – and on occasion to have been the heritage minister as well. It’s a wonderful job that has taken me all over the country and enabled me to experience many of our great cultural treasures and some outstanding events. Be they national and grand or local, small and exquisite, each has immense value.

Fine art, heritage, music, dance, libraries, museums, theatre and other cultural pursuits describe and raise the human condition. They are valuable in and of themselves. But they also contribute in other ways: to our economy, to our education, to our health and wellbeing. They make places great and give them an identity.

We have remained ambitious for culture – even during a very tough economic climate – and we have achieved, in my view, a great deal.

We increased the share of National Lottery funding for the arts and heritage.

We introduced tax credits for theatres and orchestras, and now we will do the same for exhibitions.

We encouraged resilience in the sector and worked with our partners to roll out endowments and capacity-building schemes, in recognition of the vital role of philanthropy.

We maintained free entry to our national collections and increased freedoms for museums. Recently, we secured £150 million to move collections out of storage in Blythe House and enable greater public access.

We introduced the Cultural Gifts Scheme.

We created music education hubs, expanded In Harmony, and introduced a range of cultural education programmes.

We established the new English Heritage charity which runs a wide range of historic properties and in which we invested £80 million.

Last year, we secured a good deal for the arts and heritage in the Spending Review that was welcomed across the sector.

The role of our libraries has changed over the last 50 years and is continuing to evolve with society’s digital expectations. That is why we created the Libraries Taskforce.

Attendances and participation have continued to rise. Over the last Parliament, we saw a third of heritage assets removed from the ‘at risk’ register for the right reasons. We continue to see phenomenal success and creativity, led by an outstanding generation of cultural leaders. So I think we can be in good heart.But of course there are challenges right across our cultural landscape. We want to address those challenges. We want to maintain our ambition.

That is why we are the first government in fifty years to publish a White Paper on culture, one that offers a comprehensive assessment of that landscape.

The great Jennie Lee was the last – and indeed only – arts minister to publish a White Paper. I am honoured to follow in the footsteps of someone so distinguished. Elected to the House of Commons at the age of 24 when she was too young actually to vote, she played a pivotal role in the foundation of the Open University and expanded the Arts Council so that it did more work in the regions, along with creating art institutions at the South Bank Centre.

Jennie Lee’s White Paper is short and to the point – no more than 20 pages and a hundred paragraphs. It is challenging – to the arts themselves. It is aspirational – the beginning of a process, rather than the end. And many of the themes it identified in the middle of the 1960s are as relevant today, in the middle of the second decade of the 21st century.

The biggest challenge Jennie Lee identified in her White Paper was ensuring that the arts should not be the preserve of a privileged few. Despite enormous changes to arts and culture in this country since 1965, the same concern animates our own White Paper.

There are now many families for whom a trip to the theatre, a historic house, or a museum is second nature. But this is far from universal. Many of our institutions do great work in this area. But the challenge is to make that work sustainable, to make the engagement permanent, and to really try and reach those who are the hardest to reach.

So the Government will challenge all cultural organisations in receipt of government funding to do more to reach out to people of all circumstances and backgrounds. Arts Council England will regularly report to government on the progress being made.

A Cultural Citizens Programme will be launched in places that have especially high deprivation and low cultural engagement.

Starting in September, ACE will help institutions to engage young people from disadvantaged backgrounds by immersing them in the work they do and introducing them to the people that run those institutions.

We will pilot the programme in three areas – the North-West, North-East and West Midlands – and hope that by the end of the third year it will be operating in up to 70 places and reaching 14,000 young people. I hope that many of them will end up forging a career in culture – and that all of them will be enriched and inspired in a way that stays with them for life.

We also need to do much more on diversity. ACE has already made a start on this. But we need much more diversity in the leadership of our arts organisations, much more diversity among those who work in them, both on and off the stage. We will make it clear to arts organisations that we want to see real and tangible progress in diversity – that is a legitimate expectation of anyone who applies for public funds.

Cultural activity should be nurtured in every corner of the country. There is a great debate, as there was in Jennie Lee’s time, about the balance of funding between London and the rest of the country.

This debate is presented in stark terms, when the reality is far more nuanced. Nevertheless, we want to build on what ACE is already doing, in rebalancing its funding between London and the regions, with schemes such as Creative People and Places.

So we will introduce a new Great Place Scheme, which will bring national arts and heritage Lottery funders together to work with councils, cultural organisations and universities to make culture a core part of local authority’s plans and policies.We will initially pilot this in twelve areas, at least four of them rural. Historic England will provide advice on how to use planning and development to bolster local culture.

Culture should never be considered an add-on or a fringe activity, when a whole host of organisations would benefit from a closer relationship with culture. The Great Place Fund will be a catalyst for delivering comprehensive and sustainable strategies.

The North East Culture Partnership has done sterling work in this field already – and can be an inspiration to others. Its Case for

Culture has brought together more than 1,000 people and organisations – including twelve local authorities and five universities along with business, sport, education, tourism and cultural bodies – to work towards major cultural development over the next fifteen years.

Today, at my behest, the Leadership for Libraries Taskforce has launched a consultation on our vision for public libraries in England that sets out a bold and dynamic direction of travel for the next five years. I very much welcome your comments and feedback through the consultation process to help shape the final Ambition document by Summer 2016.

Our historic built environment is a unique asset. We have announced £3 million of new funding for the Architectural Heritage Fund and we are supporting Historic England in launching Heritage Action Zones. And I am delighted that Bernard Taylor has agreed to lead a review of Church buildings. This will examine new models for opening these buildings up, bring their history to life and sustain them for future generations.

Our museums are a huge draw and extremely popular. It is clear from all the work we have done that they face specific challenges and merit a separate review.

It will consider three main themes: firstly the framework for different kinds of museums, secondly those museums that are directly sponsored by government, and thirdly local and regional museums. The review will touch on multiple issues, but with a particular focus on shared services, storage, digitisation and resilience. We want to see many more objects brought out of storage, and made available, in an informal setting, to the public.

And we want Britain to be a world leader when it comes to the digitisation and dissemination of our great collections. As announced in the Budget, we will bring in a new Museums and Galleries tax relief from April next year, and will begin our consultation on this in the summer.

We want all our organisations to increase their resilience and long-term sustainability. More than £60 million of funding is available to help cultural organisations improve their resilience.

I’m also tremendously excited by the new virtual Commercial Academy for Culture, which will use existing networks and forge new ones, in order to build a strong centre of commercial expertise. And we will pilot an innovative new matched crowd-funding scheme to support the cultural sector’s use of this rapidly growing fundraising tool.

While our White Paper recognises the importance of the local, we also understand that there are global treasures, and that we need to play our part in protecting them.

Culture is a key part of this government’s international development work, and we are signatories to several international cultural conventions and have taken a lead as members of organisations such as the Council of Europe and UNESCO.

We are committed to helping protect World Heritage Sites and subject to legislation this country will finally ratify the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict and its two Protocols.

Last year the Government hosted a highly successful cultural protection summit at which experts of all stripes discussed what more we can do to protect cultural assets. A £30 million Cultural Protection Fund, managed by the British Council, will make a serious contribution to these efforts.

This White Paper is an unapologetically ambitious exercise – far- reaching in scope and driven by a fierce determination that the great gifts that cultural engagement bestows should be available to all.

All of us who are responsible for cultural institutions must not only make clear that everyone is welcome, but do all we can to encourage them in.

That is my mission. Thank you.

Below is the text of the speech made by Ed Vaizey, the then Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries, at the Oxford Media Convention on 25 January 2012.

Delighted to be opening the tenth Oxford Media Convention. In 2002, I wasn’t even yet a Parliamentary candidate, and people in my constituency were campaigning for dial-up internet access. Nobody knew what a smartphone was, and very few people had digital television,

So we have come a long way.

But one theme that perhaps links the two dates is the continued success of what we now call – thanks to Chris Smith – the creative industries.

Let me begin by saying what a privilege it is to represent the creative industries in Government. It’s a commonplace nowadays to talk about the success of the creative sector in the UK, but it’s a commonplace because it’s true.

You know how successful you are but it is always good for a Minister to rehearse your success in public.

As I might say if I were presenting the BAFTAs, “let’s pause and look back on a successful year”…

In the last twelve months we’ve seen:

– UK films – from Harry Potter to the InBetweeners top the UK box office for 20 weeks in the UK;

– the King’s Speech become the most successful independent movie in history, earning £46 million in the UK and £266 million worldwide;

– Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, made in the UK, earning more than any other 2011 release (over £73 million in UK, which is the third highest ever);

– The highest ever amount of UK film production activity growing by 7% to £1.16bn;

– UK acts charting at number 1,2 and 3 in the same week in the US for the first time in 25 years, with Adele’s album, 21, the best-selling digital album of all time;

– UK TV formats dominating television schedules all across the globe, accounting for two in every five global programmes;

– and of course Downton Abbey continuing UK success at the Globes; exports of UK television content are worth more than £1.3 billion per year;

– the BBC’s global reputation for excellence cemented, with BBC Worldwide supporting the creative industries and increasing international sales by 9.6% in 2010-11;

– the UK consolidating its place as the European hub for video games, with 35% of video games software sold in Europe being developed by UK studios, with almost half of the world’s top 100 development studios based in the UK;

– UK-based games companies taking the lead in online markets:Jagex’ online multiplayer;

– Hand Circus’ iPhone App; Playfish’s social network games;

– VFX company Double Negative winning an Oscar for Inception;

– the VFX hub in Soho is home to four of the largest VFX companies in the world;

– one of the most innovative and successful advertising industries in the world grow despite the recession: 2010 revenue growth of 5.9 per cent to £15.5 billion, with forecasts of 1.4 per cent growth in 2011 and over 5 per cent in 2012. A recent PwC report predicted that the size of the UK advertising industry would grow 4.8 per cent in the next four years to £17.7 billion;
– one of the most successful and creative fashion capitals anywhere in the world continue to flourish, with Burberry a UK company increasing its sales by a quarter;

– and the largest of the UKs creative industries, the UK publishing industry, adapt and remain one of the most successful in the world for the breadth, depth and quality of content it creates, as well as the multiple ways in which that content is brought to market.

Publishing in the UK has a turnover of £19 billion.

Before I talk about the future, I hope you’ll indulge me further as I also want to highlight some of the achievements of my Department.

In the last 18 months we’ve established the Creative Industries Council and Creative England; merged the UK Film Council and the BFI and increased Lottery funding for film; brought forward revolutionary plans for local television; settled the licence fee until 2017; secured S4C’s future; launched our plans for digital radio switchover; put in place ambitious plans for broadband, both mobile and fixed; continued to implement the DEA and make progress on copyright infringement; implemented the e-privacy directive; launched the e-accessibility plan; persuaded the DfE to revolutionise the computer science curriculum …I could go on.
I want to take this opportunity to thank the officials in my Department who have worked to make this happen, as well as some of the organisations we work with, particularly Ofcom, which I think does an outstanding job.

Anyway, I’m now beginning to sound like I am delivering an Oscar acceptance speech. So. The future.

We know we have some of the tech savviest consumers in Europe: two-thirds shop on the web; one in four already have a smartphone; and soon one in four will have a tablet too. So again it’s become traditional to predict the end of big media, and the dominance of new internet companies. Throw in a prolonged downturn, and the doom mongers seem to hold all the cards.

But hold on a minute. This afternoon you’ll hear from Channel 4 how they have turned around from where they were a few years ago, angling for licence fee money; the BBC is launching the Space, a hugely significant cultural event; ITV has hugely ambitious plans focused on content; more and more international companies like Discovery are investing in UK content.

In the last two years, linear television viewing has increased by almost 8 per cent;86 per cent of people who can time-shift still choose to watch linear television; 9 out of 10 us together still consume a billion hours of radio a week.

The future’s not binary. It’s evolutionary. In a digital age, content is crucial.

It may seem odd to say this given the concerns we have around digital copyright infringement, but my view is that technology provides huge opportunities for the content industry in the UK. Technology may change the platform through which we view or hear content. But it will not remove the desire for the consumer to access great content. Our viewing habits will evolve – but they will not change fundamentally. And in a digital age, the chance to monetise content through advertising may well increase, as enhanced and targeted advertising commands higher prices.

In a world in which much is changing, but more will stay the same than perhaps we think, Government’s role is to provide regulatory certainty, and the right infrastructure for business. The publication of the Green Paper is imminent, but let me focus on just a couple of issues.

Infrastructure

To give us the infrastructure we need, we’re investing more than three-quarters of a billion in digital infrastructure – rural, mobile and urban – that will give us the best broadband network in Europe by 2015. This adds to BT’s investment of £2.5 billion as part of the most rapid broadband investment in the world. And Virgin Media has recently announced it is investing to double the speed for its existing customers.

The largest part of the Government funding is £530 million to extend superfast broadband to 90% of the UK and to ensure universal availability of standard broadband. We have asked local authorities and the devolved administrations to match this funding, to give total public funding of around £1 billion, which we expect to be supported by a further £1 billion of private investment.

Our aim is to complete this roll-out by 2015. This gives us a very tight timetable. We have asked local authorities to submit draft Local Broadband Plans by the end of February and to have these signed off by the end of April, so that they can complete procurement by December. I can announce that today we will have signed off the broadband plans for almost a third of the total areas in England, which is fantastic news.

As well as broadband, we’re looking at how spectrum policy can underpin innovation. In a world of mobile data, spectrum is the new railway. Ofcom has announced its plans for a 4G spectrum auction later this year. We’ve committed to releasing 500MHz of spectrum over the next ten years – more than double the amount being made available in the 4G auction. And we’re monitoring the trial of the use of white space in Cambridge to see how we can use this to stimulate innovation. All in all Ofcom estimates the net value of unlicensed spectrum might be as high as £100 billion over the next 20 years.

In short, we want to create the conditions to ensure that effective use of spectrum can continue to support economic growth and innovation, which is why it will feature heavily in the forthcoming Green Paper.

Content Regulation

As well as infrastructure, we need to put in place the right business conditions to support UK creative industries and encourage inward investment. We will address the regulatory environment across the board in the Green Paper, but today I want to focus on public service broadcasting.

Despite digital television, we still believe the obligations placed on public service broadcasters are important, to ensure a vibrant production sector throughout the UK. But the quid-pro-quo, of free, scarce spectrum, is not what it was.

So we need to find new ways to reward public service broadcasters who invest in UK content, and also to perhaps broaden our definition of what a public service broadcaster is.

One idea we are keen to explore is the potential for Government to encourage investment in UK content through the Electronic Programme Guide.

At present the EPG, though statutory, is governed by a Code of Practice policed by Ofcom. The main PSBs are meant to be given appropriate prominence, but the broadcasters have some discretion, and Ofcom does not have the power to prescribe or guarantee a position. Further, current regulations only apply to linear television.

In addition, many non-PSB channels invest in UK content that could fall within the traditional definition of public service content – obvious examples are news, current affairs, children’s television, documentaries and quality drama. So we need to look at whether the prominence rules could be used to reward those who invest in that kind of content.

So we have commissioned research on this issue, and we will seek further views in the Green Paper. It’s important that any new regime is sufficiently flexible and does not prejudice the UK’s huge success in attracting inward investment.

While we might look at one or two areas where we think regulation might help, I want to make it clear that we believe very firmly in self-regulation where possible. We have seen how the implementation of the e-privacy directive has caused huge problems for business. And we have now seen draft proposals from the Commission on amendments to the data protection directive, which will need careful scrutiny.

So we need to take a step back, and consider what it is we want to achieve. If viewers can access content in many different ways, top-down regulation won’t work on its own. We need to do two things – give viewers the tools to protect their kids from inappropriate content, and give viewers the guidance they need to choose what they want to watch.

We’ve seen this operate with some success already: the PEGI ratings for on-line games; the BBFC’s work in classifying websites; and UKCCIS’s work in encouraging ISPs to make parental controls available to their customers.

And given that data is now king, it is absolutely right that consumers should have a say in how their data is stored and used – so that means transparency, education and the right of redress where appropriate. Self-regulation, and engagement from industry in this area, can help reduce the burdens on business and ensure that you can continue to innovate.

Conclusion

These are just some of the successes and challenges facing this sector. It is a unique moment of change for the media, as we enter a new phase of the digital revolution, one that is transforming our lifestyles and touching deeper into personal and public life than ever before.

Predictions aren’t easy. We’ve got some very difficult balances to strike, but I’m confident that with your help, we can find the right solutions and keep British creative industries at the forefront of the new digital economy that’s emerging.

Below is the text of a speech made by the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Ed Vaizey, to the Local Government Association Conference on 7th March 2013.

Ladies and gentlemen,

I’d like to thank Flick Rea for her kind introduction and for inviting me to speak at your annual conference, bringing together so many of you who work so hard to promote British culture, heritage, tourism and sport.

These are not easy times to be in Government, at either national or local level. Faced with a crippling budget deficit, we are faced with difficult choices, some of which are painful to make. But we have to cut our cloth.

But unique challenges also bring unique opportunities. While we must all learn how to do more with less, it offers us the chance to think differently about how we go about delivering. Yesterday’s model may not necessarily be the right template for tomorrow.

That said, our creative and cultural sector is in rude health. The success of last year’s Olympic and Paralympic Games and the Cultural Olympiad demonstrated to the world the richness of what it is to be British in the 21st Century, with all its quirks and eccentricity.

That’s why our creative and cultural sector is such a vital element in delivering economic growth, by encouraging economic investment through tourism and business. We have seen this at the Sage and Baltic in Gateshead, the Turner Contemporary in Margate and the Liverpool City of Culture. These are perfect examples of local regeneration being driven by culture.

So in tough economic times, the Government is committed to safeguarding and nurturing our investment in culture, heritage and sport.

In order to do this, we restored the share of arts and heritage funding from the National Lottery from 16% to 20% each. This increased chunk, combined with growing Lottery sales, means Arts Council England is now projected to receive £262 million in 2015, that’s over £100 million more than it received prior to May 2010.

The Heritage Lottery Fund too, is now projected to receive £379 million in 2015, £160 million more than prior to 2010.

And Sport England’s projected income will be £235 million compared with £134m prior to 2010.

This all means that almost £3 billion will go to the arts over the lifetime of this Parliament, a billion in Lottery funding combined with almost two billion in direct Government funding.

But state support is only one side of the coin, so to speak. Arts, culture and heritage cannot exist in isolation at a time of unprecedented economic challenges. As I said a moment ago, we must seize this opportunity to take a fresh look at how we deliver.

That’s why the Government is supporting the sector to develop a stronger emphasis on philanthropy, including the £100m Catalyst Fund with Arts Council England and the Heritage Lottery Fund.

We’ve also introduced a reduced rate of inheritance tax from 40% to 36% for those estates where 10% or more is left to charity, to encourage legacy giving to cultural organisations. This was also the focus of one of three reports published by the Government at the end of 2012, alongside proposals to boost fundraising capacity outside of London, and exploring the scope for harnessing digital technology.

The pursuit of philanthropy is not a sticking plaster solution. It is about the pursuit of a long-term strategy to strengthen the financial resilience of the cultural sector.

In the case of endowments, this might take a century to bear full fruit, and it is for that very reason we must get cracking, to promote a broader culture of giving.

It is our ambition that that the four strands; philanthropy, earned income, commercial revenues, and state funding; brought together, will in turn attract other sources of investment.

I see so many excellent examples of how this partnership approach, combined with fresh thinking, is delivering results.

The Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of Matilda is a perfect example of how edgy, innovative and publicly-supported art can flourish into a critical and commercial hit.

It took seven years of development by the RSC to create Matilda. Public subsidy enabled the company to take the risk on two brilliant writers, new to musicals. Today, total sales now exceed £24 million, with the advance standing at £4.5 million. It is the latest in a long line of valuable cultural exports that emerged as a result of public investment.

That’s why I can assure you that culture and the arts are important to the Government. It seems ridiculous that I would have to state such a self-evident truth. I believe it is regrettable to observe some of the scaremongering, suggesting our arts and cultural sector is somehow “at risk.”

So where does all this rubbish suggesting: “The Arts are in Crisis,” come from? Let’s look at the facts:

This year’s Arts Development UK survey, looking at local authority arts spending, found that the average local authority budget for the arts is a fraction under £385,000 – an increase in cash terms on last year’s levels.

Every £1 spent by local authorities on the arts brings in an extra £3.83 of additional funding. That suggests leverage funding of almost £1.5 million per local authority.

Local authorities remain one of the major funders of arts in England and Wales, with an estimated spend of £134 million on direct arts services.

During the five years of this parliament, Arts Council of England will put more than £90 million into the 28 English regional producing theatres.

And in 2011 a £45 million Strategic Touring Programme was launched, to bring arts to people all around the country not just those in main centres.

Plus the £37 million Creative People and Places fund will focus investment in parts of the country where involvement in the arts is below average.

And just yesterday I announced that 11 areas of the UK are bidding to become this country’s City of Culture in 2017.

British culture in crisis? I don’t think so.

In this context I welcome the LGA’s publication on the relationship between arts and growth. It demonstrates that where local authorities recognise this relationship, investment at a local level has been maintained. Arts and heritage and its links with tourism are fundamental to supporting growth.

To give you an example of this: Milton Keynes Council invested £197,000 in the 2012 Summer of Culture and International Festival, which in turn levered an additional £1 million from participating organisations. The total economic impact is estimated to be £6.4 million.

Another is the 2010 economic impact study of the Anvil Arts Trust in Basingstoke, which runs The Anvil, The Haymarket and The Forge. I highlight this one not simply because it is in the Secretary of State’s constituency, but rather because it gets most of its funding from the local council, which found that the Trust generates a gross economic impact of £6.2 million. The study went some way to help councillors understand the importance of Anvil Arts as a sizeable economic entity, generating income and jobs.

And in their year as European City of Culture, Liverpool received 9.7 million additional visitors to the city which in turn resulted in over £735 million in additional visitor spend. Derry-Londonderry hope to have 2800 tourism jobs by 2020 as a legacy from their year as the first UK City of Culture.

Yesterday I announced the 11 cities and places which have put themselves forward to be the UK’s City of Culture in 2017. They are the ones that “Get It”. It’s only a shame that more don’t.

The recently signed partnership between VisitEngland and Arts Council England will result in both organisations jointly championing England’s cultural offer, enabling us to better co-ordinate activity, and supporting destinations with the potential to grow their economies by nurturing local culture.

Last November I met the Local Authority Heritage Champions at Painters Hall, and was particularly impressed at the work they do to ensure that heritage is underpinning their local authorities’ plans.

They are yet more examples of innovative thinking and working in partnership, to deliver real economic benefit.

Our rich heritage is rightly a source of great national pride. Our heritage is our hallmark and makes the UK distinctive in a globalised world. It is a tremendous draw for visitors too: 40% of leisure visitors to the UK cite our heritage as the major drawcard, a sign of our heritage delivering very real economic benefits. The heritage tourism sector is worth £12.4 billion a year to the UK, not only in entrance fees, but in pounds spent in shops, hotels and restaurants. That means jobs.

A fine example is Wakefield which has become a major visitor destination for Yorkshire. The area offers excellent attractions including the Hepworth Wakefield, the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, the Theatre Royal, the National Coal Mining Museum for England and the National Trust’s Nostell Priory. These attractions combined received over a million visits in 2011/12, delivering £323m to the local economy, and creating 9,000 jobs.

So in growing our economy, our heritage and history give us an edge. And having an edge can sometimes make the difference between winning and losing.

But innovation and fresh thinking is delivering results in other parts of the cultural sector also: our libraries, where digital technology is being exploited to support economic growth and development.

Now, libraries; or the public library service to be precise, are another area which are occasionally deemed to be “In Crisis.”

So let’s look at some examples. Libraries in Northamptonshire are hosting Enterprise Hubs offering business start-up advice, job clubs and training workshops which are supporting the economic growth and development of the county.

In fact the concept has been so successful, the council is planning to extend the concept by setting up a ‘hatchery’ space in their libraries, providing business incubation for up to one year.

To help encourage young entrepreneurs they are allocating one of the Library business spaces to under 25s.

I’m delighted our library service continues to thrive and modernise. Local Authorities invested £820 million in libraries last year. Birmingham, Liverpool and Manchester are all making major investments in their central libraries, and Birmingham’s will soon be the largest library in Europe when it opens this year.

In the spirit of fresh thinking, the Public Service Mutual model is offering another way to maintain the delivery of library, and other services. In York, work is underway developing the first staff-led, public service mutual in library and archive services, with help from the £10 million Mutuals Support Programme.

It’s an impressive undertaking: York’s libraries and archive service has around 120 staff and a budget of £2.4 million a year, providing 17 libraries, as well as archive and local history services. The project is developing a final business plan and aims to get council approval to spin out in June, and we will be sharing what can be learned from the project with other providers.

To support this growth, the Government has appointed a specialist adviser on libraries to work with local authorities and Arts Council England. I encourage you to engage with Yinnon Ezra over the coming months to consider different approaches to library service provision, and new ways of thinking about sustainability.

The Arts Council has established a £6 million fund to support culture in libraries. We have published the CIPFA comparative profile reports for the first time. We are piloting automatic membership for school children and young people.

And we are supporting a pilot £1.2 million project to turn six libraries into ‘incubators of innovation’ – to see them roll-out business support to towns and villages.

Libraries “In Crisis”? Again, I don’t think so.

But there can be no finer place to discuss arts and heritage than here in Chester with its rich cultural history.

Since becoming a new authority in 2009 Cheshire West and Chester has developed a clear plan to make the area economically and culturally richer by using culture as a catalyst to drive economic, social and community regeneration.

They will utilise the cultural offer to enhance the attractiveness and distinctive nature of market towns and rural area within the Borough, with a vision to deliver a new theatre and library complex, a Roman museum, and improvements to the visual arts infrastructure.

It’s yet another example of ambition and innovation delivering both cultural benefits and economic growth. And yet another example of the arts in the UK waving, not drowning.

Thank you.

The below speech was made by the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Ed Vaizey, at the Cable Congress held in London on 5th March 2013.

Good morning everyone.

I would like to thank the organisers of the 2013 Cable Congress, and in particular the UK’s very own Virgin Media, for inviting me to speak today.

Before I begin, I must also say how pleased we all are that the 2013 Cable Congress is taking place here in London. We pride ourselves on the strength of the UK’s online economy, and it is, I think, appropriate that the Congress is taking place in one of the world’s most connected cities.

You will, I’m sure, be hearing at length about investments and new technologies from experts in the field. I would like to say a few words about this Government’s priorities in the online and telecommunications fields, what we are doing to support the tremendous investment in broadband, and where we go from here.

If I were to summarise the priorities, I would need only one word: Growth. Our number one aim is to get the British economy moving again and support the businesses, both large and small, that will drive this. And I believe that the digital, creative and communications industries have a key role in this.

We want to see continued investment in Britain’s online industries, but we also need to ensure that the whole British economy enjoys the digital services and connectivity it needs to innovate and expand into new markets. A truly connected Britain that is open for global business the cornerstone of our ambitions for growth.

The UK is already a world leader in the online economy, with the internet contributing over 8% of GDP. Our flagship businesses are tapping into global markets, and our consumers enjoy excellent choice and services when choosing their broadband and phones.

However, the pace of technological change is such that we cannot afford to stand still. We are doing well, but I want us to do even better.

Continued private investment is key to achieving this, and nowhere more so than the field of superfast broadband. If we are to build a world class connected Britain, investment in our broadband infrastructure must keep up with both technological innovations and the ever increasing requirements of business, and consumers.

While we are on the subject of investment, I should mention the planned takeover, subject to shareholder agreement, of Virgin Media by Liberty Global. First, I am of course delighted that this will bring a new major company headquarters to the UK. Second, I welcome the prospects this will bring to continue investment in Virgin Media’s cable network here in the UK. As I said earlier, this investment is what keeps the UK’s online economy moving forward. This represents a great opportunity for the broadband market in the UK and, in particular, the rest of Europe. This can only be good for creating a world-class connected Britain.

Firms like Virgin Media and BT lead the way when it comes to investing in our broadband infrastructure, and I must applaud the work they are doing and the capital they have committed. Virgin Media’s investment in doubling customers’ speeds is future proofing the network and opening up new opportunities for our online companies, and is only one part of its multi-billion pound programme.

BT is rolling out its optical fibre network deeper into the local market than ever before, and has developed new products like its fibre on demand packages. The UK market also supports many smaller firms, often investing significantly to deliver ultrafast services to local communities. The pace of change is impressive – BT is making fibre available to 100,000 new homes and businesses per week, and combined with Virgin’s upgrade figures, take-up of superfast services in the last quarter alone was well over 650,000.

In mobile broadband, we are seeing vital investment by mobile operators, first by EE with their launch of 4G last year and now by other operators in readiness for their nationwide rollout of 4G services later this year. It is this commercial investment that has driven innovation and growth within the sector, and we as Government are doing everything we can to support this work.

Our aim is to remove the barriers preventing investment and innovation, and demonstrate that Britain is one of the best places in the world to do business online. So we will remove barriers and red tape. We cannot allow rollout to be delayed by planning refusals, or confusion when carrying out street works, or by long running legal issues over access to private land.

Our goal is to provide certainty, to ensure the money invested in rollout is used to take superfast broadband further and not wasted on delays and disputes. It is important that the regulatory framework governing the telecoms sector is fit for purpose and competitive. While this of course sits with Ofcom, we are committed to ensuring the market fosters competition, supports multiple, innovative providers, and results in greater consumer choice.

We have also taken significant steps to support mobile broadband. The successful 4G spectrum auction, whose winners were announced two weeks ago, is a vital part of this. We directed Ofcom to proceed with the auction, and brokered agreement with the mobile operators to allow this not only to happen, but to happen 6 months early. Similarly, we are planning for the future by overseeing the release of significant bands of public sector spectrum to the market.

The pace of change in the world of mobile is very fast, and we are determined to ensure Britain is ready for the challenges ahead.

The Government is also intervening in areas where commercial investment is not viable, through a major investment programme of £1.2 billion of public money. Through this investment, and working in partnership with industry, we will see much faster speeds, millions more homes and businesses able to enjoy these speeds, and a market which boasts high competition and low prices, particularly compared to our European neighbours.

On this latter aspect, the UK’s broadband market is already in rude health. Ofcom’s European scorecard, which was published today shows that the UK currently benefits from low prices and a high degree of competition in the broadband market, and that the UK has the best deals available for consumers across a selection of pricing bundles in the major European economies.

It is important that rural areas are not left in the slow lane when it comes to broadband access. We are bringing superfast access to 90% of UK premises, and a minimum of 2 megabits per second to everyone else. Rapid progress is being made on the rural programme: 11 projects have now signed contracts, and are either in progress already or about to start work. The remaining projects are entering procurements at a rate of one per week, and all should have completed their procurement phase by this summer.

The Government’s investment is already delivering faster connections for consumers – I visited North Yorkshire in December to unveil their first active fibre cabinet, and last week saw the unveiling of the first Welsh cabinets in Bangor. It is worth noting that the Devolved Administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland will all benefit from significant central government investment in their broadband infrastructure, delivering a key part of driving UK growth and investment.

Similarly, our £150m urban broadband programme – working closely with local authorities and the private sector – will ensure that our cities can compete with the best in the world. You just need to look at the success of Tech City here in London to see how establishing a digital hub with world class connectivity and expertise can spur today’s innovative idea into becoming the online business of tomorrow.

But we cannot create a world class connected Britain just by laying more fibre in the ground or building new base stations. It is also crucial that we get as many people as possible online enjoying the benefits presented by better connectivity, and also encourage British companies to expand and develop their internet-based operations. Ultimately it is users that will turn infrastructure investment into growth.

We are therefore ensuring that demand stimulation is incorporated into our Government-funded projects. The tireless work of Martha Lane Fox and Go ON UK, for example, has been vital in getting more people online and demonstrating how people’s lives can be changed for the better by embracing the digital world. We are exploring ways to encourage high speed takeup as part of our urban programme. And demand stimulation remains a key focus of all our local rural broadband projects, with a particular emphasis on SMEs.

It’s worth reflecting that, in a recent report on Britain’s broadband, the think tank Policy Exchange found that 79% of British businesses have a website, but only 36% allow online payments. So not only do we need more businesses online, but more businesses with the skills, expertise and confidence to branch into online sales and exploit the global marketplace.

But we are also well aware that doing more online presents challenges as well as opportunities. Embracing e-commerce will open up new markets, but also represents potential risks, for example around online fraud or website security. For consumers, the fear remains of personal data loss or online scams. This is why we are ensuring that the regulatory framework protects online businesses, customers and other users, while supporting a competitive and innovative market.

Then, there is content. While our brilliant, innovative creative industries are driving growth in this sector – generating over £36 billion every year – the Government is ensuring that we provide them with support by way of tax breaks for animation, video games, high end TV and the film industry.

Finally, let me repeat a point I made earlier: in building a world class connected Britain and supporting our internet economy, we are doing well, but the Government wants to ensure we are doing even better. This Government is committed to delivering the broadband infrastructure and services we need to compete with the best in the world.

Our rural projects are moving rapidly from procurement to spades in the ground, the spectrum licenses are in place to allow the rollout of 4G services this summer, and our reforms to cut the red tape facing providers are already underway. It is crucial that Government, regulators and commercial providers continue to work together to achieve our goals to increase demand and encourage innovative broadband usage. We have invested heavily in improving our infrastructure – let’s now make full use of it.

By working closely with the industry, I’m confident that we can realise our ambition of Britain as a world class connected country, a strong market for consumers, and a great place to do business.

Thank you.

The below speech was made by Ed Vaizey on Wednesday 23rd January 2013 in Oxford.

The Communications White Paper – Challenges and Successes of the last year

I am delighted to be back and speaking at the Oxford Media Convention again this year.  I know that you will cover a lot of topics today, including Leveson, media plurality, the protection of children on-line and 4G spectrum and the changes that will bring.

What I would like to do this morning is set out some of the issues the Government intends to address in our forthcoming White Paper, to give you some insight into the issues that we think are important. Some of these issues, you will be glad to hear, overlap with your discussions later today, so we should be on the same wavelength.

But before I get into that, I wanted to reflect briefly on the UK media.

This has been one of the most challenging years.  We have had Savile, Lord MacAlpine, the Leveson Report, the spotlight has been on failures. I want to talk about the success of the British media. The BBC covered the Olympics superbly. Channel 4 transformed forever the way the Paralympics are seen.  The Mail Online became the most visited English language newspaper website in the world.  There was record inwards investment in British film and television from the likes of Disney, Warner Brothers and Discovery.  Skyfall became the highest grossing film of all time at the UK Box office.  British consumers broke the £1 billion level in digital downloads.  And the UK advertising industry continued to lead the world in pioneering new ways of digital advertising.

So there is a huge amount to be proud of, and I am proud to represent this sector in Government.

Framing the Paper

And it is on that note that I want to tell you about the White Paper that will come out later this year. The White Paper, when it is eventually published, will be the culmination of almost two years of discussions with industry and other stakeholders.  I want to thank everyone who has contributed to this discussion: in seminars, in responses to our discussion papers, on twitter and on the blog.

There is a clear message that has come out and that is the industry wants evolution rather than revolution.

There simply isn’t a great clamour for wide scale reform.  People have told us that, for the most part, our regulatory framework is working well. Industry isn’t being choked by regulation – something borne out by the huge success of recent years.  And consumers are embracing new formats and technology with more enthusiasm than almost anywhere else in the world, so regulation doesn’t seem to be stifling innovation.

So what are the issues we want to address? The White Paper will focus on three key areas: connectivity, content and consumer issues.   I’m not going to tell you the detail what the White Paper will say – I wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise – but I am going to sketch out the issues that we face in each of the key areas and how we are approaching them.

Connectivity

First, then, I want to talk about connectivity and the infrastructure that underlies the entire communications sector, sometimes literally.  We have set our goal for the UK to have the best superfast broadband network in Europe by 2015.  We are investing £830 million in digital infrastructure to achieve this, money which will support the roll out of high speed broadband in rural communities, key cities and mobile not-spots.

The issue of mobile infrastructure is particularly important right now.  One part of this that you won’t have been able to avoid hearing about is the introduction of 4G – indeed you are discussing it later today.  We already have 4G services from EE and the spectrum auction, currently taking place under the watchful eye of Ofcom, will set the ball rolling for the arrival of 4G in the spring from a choice of operators. This will maximise the value and benefit of this scarce spectrum resource.

But rolling out 4G isn’t enough. Spectrum has many uses and there is a real need for more spectrum to be freed up and for the spectrum available to be better used. It needs to be used more flexibly; it needs to be allocated and re-allocated faster; it needs to meet the requirements of emerging technologies. In short it needs to support businesses to let them deliver for consumers.

We already have the world’s most ambitious programme to release public sector spectrum.  But the White Paper will look ahead, and focus on mechanisms to ensure that we have the spectrum we need to meet the challenges ahead.

Content

But great fixed and mobile connectivity is nothing without great content.  That puts us in the UK in a fantastic position. Whether it is Television, Film, Radio or Video Games, the UK is leading the way in creating innovative, successful and entertaining content. I was delighted when I saw the report from the Commercial Broadcasters’ Association, showing that investment in UK TV increased by a third in 2012.  Broadcast has set out the ‘Big ambitious and bold plans’ including major investment in UK content. It talks about:

“Sky establishing itself as a UK commissioner en par ‘with the big boys’”

‘Significant investment’ from UKTV … in new domestic shows “

“The launch of ‘London-based commissioning hubs’  by Discovery and National Geographic “

“Fox UK stepping up UK commissions … with an investment of £5m.”

Investment in content continues apace. We want to support this investment.

We want this level of success and investment not just to continue but to increase.  That’s why we are introducing tax breaks for High end TV, animation and video games to sit alongside the tax breaks already in place for the film industry.

That is why we want to provide certainty to those investing in content. That is why we have renewed the Channel 3 and Channel 5 licences, to maintain the content requirements for our Public Service Broadcasters, protecting the delivery of the world class content that we value so much.

But this isn’t enough.  We want the content market – the complex ecosystem of different organisations across the content production chain – to stay dynamic, flexible and responsive.  We want a mix of businesses of various sizes and with difference specialisms. We want it to be competitive. So we will have to look at the impact of convergence on markets. We want to make sure that, where previously distinct markets now overlap, the regulations are appropriate and that historic regulatory differences don’t inhibit competition.

We also want to see a solution to the current situation on so-called retransmission fees where Public Service Broadcasters and Licence Fee payers have paid large amounts to satellite providers for the content to be carried. We’ve looked very carefully at arguments on both sides and recognise that this situation has evolved over time perhaps in a way we didn’t intend.

I welcome the steps Sky have taken so far to reduce retransmission fees to a much lower level. But we want them to go further, taking into account the undoubted value that PSB’s offer to satellite platforms and their viewers, so that there’s a level playing field – zero fees either way.

This would mirror the arrangement that is currently the case for PSBs and cable platforms, where no charges are made – an arrangement that we want to see this preserved. We’re looking closely at how we can help achieve this without allowing other kinds of services – which offer no support to PSBs and therefore ultimately no advantage to consumers – to benefit.

We’re not going to rush into a regulatory solution because we think there’s no reason the market shouldn’t be able to work out a fair equitable solution as things stand, but if the industry can’t find a way to stop imposing this cost on Licence Fee payers and PSBs, we will look at our options for intervention.

Consumers

The final area I want to turn to is consumers, one that I think is particularly important in an environment where new technologies, platforms and services are emerging all the time. We want to make sure we continue to have a regulatory system that provides adequate protection for consumers.

New products of every kind are providing great new opportunities for consumers: goods that people want, services that allow us to connect, socialise and work in ways that until recently we wouldn’t have thought possible. But with this comes new challenges.  The regulations that are currently in place could never have envisaged the services that we now take for granted. So we need to update regulations where necessary to fill in these gaps, but also to update the framework, to allow the flexibility to respond to these challenges as they emerge, rather than all at once every ten years.

And, of course, action by industry itself has an incredibly important role to play. One area that I personally feel very strongly about – and where action is being taken – is in making sure that children are protected from harmful content.

Now I know you’ll be discussing these issues later this morning.   I think it is important to stress that real strides are being made through the UK Council for Child Internet Safety.  UKCCIS is a pioneering body – it was one of the first organisations of its kind in the world – bringing together the key players in child internet safety and working with industry to give parents the tools they need to protect children: ISP delivered parental control solutions, device level solutions, and greater support and education than ever before.

So real progress is being made, but we certainly aren’t making the mistake of thinking the work is done. We are working with industry to implement our new system, where every parent will be prompted to protect their child online. Protection will automatically be on if parents don’t make choices. No other Government has taken such radical steps before. And once this is in place, Britain will have the most robust internet child protection measures of any country in the world – bar none.

To support this, next week I will be meeting with key Internet Service Providers, the Internet Service Provider Association, Reg Bailey and Claire Perry, MP – the Prime Minister’s advisor on preventing the commercialisation and sexualisation of children. We want to review what has been achieved so far – and there is a lot – and to make sure ISPs do more, particularly in terms of raising awareness of parental controls.

There are other issues of consumer protection, the biggest issue in my postbag from the public is probably silent calls, unsolicited marketing calls and spam text messages.  Whilst direct marketing is a legitimate industry there is a need for better enforcement of the regulations to stop unwanted calls and texts. We have given enforcement bodies the teeth they need to do their work – through the powers to issue fines of up to £2m for silent calls and £500k for unsolicited marketing, changes that we introduced over the last couple of years – and it is good to see Ofcom and the ICO are using these powers.

But much more needs to be done. The split of responsibilities between the Telephone Preference Service, Ofcom and the Information Commissioner’s Office is confusing. The regulators need to bite, and bite hard, so that there is effective enforcement. So we want to give greater clarity to consumers about who to turn to, and critically I want to see more effective enforcement by the regulators to move with greater precision and speed in targeting rogue players.

The final consumer issue I want to touch on is personal data. Data is absolutely crucial to the success of on-line businesses.  It is absolutely crucial that we strike the right balance between the protection of consumers – making sure that they know how their data is being used – and the ability of business to use this data to deliver products and services that people want.  We took exactly this approach when I fought hard to ensure that the e-privacy directive achieved its aim of flagging cookies to web users, without stifling innovation.

We now face the same challenge with the EU Data protection proposals. We welcome the call to update these provisions. But we want to work hard with our colleagues.

I will work hard with our colleagues at the Ministry of Justice to ensure our approach to negotiations reflects the concerns of industry. At the same time it is important that industry can show that it understands the concerns that have been expressed about user privacy and make real efforts to work with our colleagues in Europe to address those concerns. Simply balking at the proposals on the table is not good enough, this is not going to go away so we need to work together to ensure what we end up with is practical for business, and delivers real safeguards for consumers.

We are all living more connected lives, relying more on the communications industry to socialise, share, work, shop. And in this context we want everyone to feel confident that they understand and are able to manage their privacy, their interactions, their finance and their data online and across the different platforms. And we want to make sure that where this doesn’t happen people know which bodies they can turn to for support.

Getting the framework right here – the right balance between regulation and industry action – is vital. Not only is it good for consumers, it is good for business and it is good for growth.

Conclusion

We as a Government don’t have all the answers for all the challenges this sector will face over the next decade. In fact I am saying the opposite.

What we need is a regime that is responsive and flexible enough to regulate a fast paced environment. What we need is for these industries to continue to innovate and to take responsibility. This will give us a framework that is able to support growth and support the people of the UK in an increasingly interconnected world. This means the best infrastructure. This means we support world leading content. This means consumer confidence in this brave new world.

I’m looking forward to sharing the Paper with you all, and even more so to working with you to see this realised.

Thank you.

Below is the text of the speech made by the Minister Ed Vaizey to the Future of Library Services Conference in London on 28th June 2012.

I’m delighted to have the opportunity to speak at today’s conference. This is a great opportunity to talk about the thriving library service that we have in England.

• A library service made up of more than 3,300 libraries;
• A library service in which councils invest £900 million a year;
• A library service which continues to innovate and develop;
• A library service that continues to open libraries and refurbish library buildings.

For example: Southwark’s new library in Canada Water is a state-of-the-art facility for the community, and just one of several new libraries in the borough; Oldham’s impressive Fitton Hill Library and Neighbourhood Centre has just opened; and Worcestershire is opening The Hive – the first ever joint public and academic library in the country.

Add to that significant refurbishment programmes – from Nottinghamshire to Newham – and you get a taste of the good news out there.
And Birmingham is planning to open the biggest library in Europe next year, costing almost £200 million.

And thanks to stories like this, we learned from today’s Taking Part survey that library visits remain stable – they are not declining. I know that the library service is facing challenges. But I want to get the good news out, and present a more balanced picture.

Arts Council: a development agency for libraries

As I often point out, libraries are emphatically a local authority service, and are fully funded by local government and run by local government. Nevertheless, they can benefit from having a national development agency to push innovation and best practice.

And our decision to give responsibility for libraries to the Arts Council (ACE) will provide exactly that service.

The move unites cultural policy with library policy for the first time, as was envisaged in the 1950s debates that led to the Public Libraries and Museums Act of 1964. It builds on the work ACE already does – funding important organisations that support libraries, such as the Booktrust, the Reading Agency, and Writing West Midlands to name just a few.

This also includes financial support. The Government and the Arts Council have already invested more than £500,000 to support development work by library authorities.

Today I am delighted to announce that the Arts Council will be allocating £6 milllion from its Grants for the Arts programme over the next two years for library authorities to lead projects working with artists, arts organisations and other cultural organisations on arts and cultural activity through libraries.

This fund will aim to stimulate ambitious, innovative partnerships between libraries and artists and arts organisations. It will help raise the ambition and expectation of libraries, and represents a significant commitment by the Arts Council to their new role.

As well as supporting libraries with funding for programmes, it’s also important that we identify library authorities that may need specific help to address particular issues.

Today I am therefore also pleased to announce an initiative with CIPFA to identify areas where individual authorities might be able to improve.

CIPFA’s new ‘comparative profile reports’ have been developed to benchmark local council services against comparable authorities, or “nearest neighbours” as CIPFA calls them. My Department will be commissioning reports on all library authorities in England, which will be available in December this year.

My Department will use the reports to look for ways in which we can help local authorities.  I must emphasise that this is not an attempt to sanction local authorities and certainly not a return to top-down, inflexible library standards. But if we see wildly diverging opening hours between two similar authorities with similar budgets and infrastructure, there will be an opportunity to ask questions and look at how opening hours could be improved.

Or if one authority is spending twice as much on book stock as another, but providing a similar number of books, we can ask if there are ways to improve efficiency in the authority in question.

I should also say that these reports will be publicly available, allowing MPs, councillors and other interested members of the public the chance to see how their local service measures up, and to ask well-informed questions – and also make well-informed suggestions for improvement.

Libraries in the Digital Age

Library buildings are and remain important.  And in the digital age, paradoxically, a bricks and mortar service is still extremely valuable.

The People’s Network put in place by Chris Smith made a big difference to libraries.  Millions of people now use their library to access the internet. I heard recently that the Society of Chief Librarians’ target to get 500,000 people on line for the first time by the end of 2012 was actually passed in April this year.

Now we need to go further. In the age of the smartphone and tablet, wifi is becoming an essential aspect of every-day life, and it is an ambition of mine for wifi to be in every library in England by 2015.  So I’ve asked my officials to explore how best to achieve this, working with colleagues across government.

Working Across Whitehall

Government support for libraries can be more effective if it works across Departments.

We are now working with the Department for Education to provide automatic library membership for primary school pupils, to encourage them to use their local library – a wonderful idea put forward by children’s author Michael Rosen.

In September we will pilot different approaches to test the most effective ways of supporting children and their families to use their libraries and read more widely.

And libraries have been a key part of the Cabinet Office’s Race Online 2012 initiative to get the digitally excluded on-line. Libraries’ staff and volunteers saw 2.5 million people getting online, which is a very real demonstration of the role they play in tackling the digital divide. Arts Council and SCL are currently working with the Post Office to support the Government’s programme to get more people using government services online. This approach will be piloted in Birmingham this autumn.

And the Cabinet Office has recently awarded £127,000 from the Social Action Fund to the Reading Agency to support teenage volunteers in libraries.

So more Departments are getting the message that libraries can help them deliver their services more effectively – whether it’s education, digital literacy or volunteering.

Volunteers and Community Libraries

Libraries have always benefited from the work of volunteers. And volunteers, particularly those who have retired but want to remain active in their community, have also benefited.

I would also like to pay tribute to the growing number of young people who support the Summer Reading Challenge.  Last year there were over 3000 young volunteers and we are expecting a significant increase in that number this year.

This is a really good example of where volunteers add value to a scheme and also where they gain a really valuable work experience.

Volunteers are crucial to the library service.  But let me state again, as I have so often, they are not a substitute for expertise of professional librarians, as well as other people trained in specific aspects of the library service.

I am also pleased to see community supported libraries coming into play, particularly where a local authority is planning to close a building. Community run libraries are contributing to a diverse picture of libraries located within village halls, pubs, shops, churches, day care centres, tourist information centres and enterprise hubs.

Community managed and community supported libraries will never replace the extensive network of council run libraries we enjoy.  But they do provide an important additional element of provision, and an important alternative model which can add to the rich variety of services already available.

It is precisely because of this that my Department is currently working with the Arts Council, LGA, Defra, and DCLG to create a new information resource  for authorities considering establishing community supported or community managed libraries in their areas.  It is important that local authorities and community groups work together to ensure that library assets transferred to communities are sustainable in the long term.

Funding Context

Let me take this opportunity to state once again, that libraries are and will remain a statutory service.  The challenge for local authorities therefore is the provision of that statutory service in a tight financial climate.

The Arts Council’s Envisioning research will help Councils think about what their service should look like in the future. And as a highlight of best practice, the LGA yesterday launched an invaluable publication ‘Local Solutions for Future Local Library Services’ which – as the name suggests – is packed full of useful case studies, some of which I’ve referred to today. It picks up on areas where libraries can improve the delivery of the service – and offers tangible solutions.

Library Closures and service reviews

I have made it clear from the moment I became a Minister that no library authority should contemplate closing libraries unless they have conducted a proper review of their library service.

While some local authorities have put forward controversial proposals since 2010, all of them have conducted a library review, as I made clear to them they would have to do when I took office. I have no doubt that the efforts of library campaigners have also brought about welcome changes in some of the more extreme proposals put forward.

Nevertheless, I am always mindful that libraries are a local service, paid for by local taxpayers.  As far as possible, local democracy not Whitehall diktat should have an impact on how they are shaped. A library inquiry is a power of last resort – it has only ever been used once in fifty years. It is not a tool to be used lightly, or for political expediency

A figure of 600 library closures is regularly quoted in the media – but it is very wide of the mark.  A truer picture of building closures would be about a tenth of that.

But even while there have been closures, sometimes services merge or move to community-management, and it’s important that we are able to have an intelligent debate about this. And it’s also important to remember that many libraries are also opening.

Conclusion

I remain resolutely optimistic about library services. I have never, even in opposition, depicted the library service as being in crisis.

I look to a future where:

• The Arts Council acts as a development agency for libraries;
• Libraries can access funds and support from the Arts Council
• Poorly performing authorities are identified and helped to improve;
• Key initiatives can be taken forward by central government, such as wi-fi or automatic enrolment for school children;
• Government and local authorities understand what a vital resource libraries are across a whole range of activities.

But we must always remember that libraries are a local service – free to serve their local community, to innovate and adapt to local needs.

I hope you will join me in continuing to spread the good news, and to highlight the excellent service provided by so many people throughout England.

Below is the text of the speech made by the Minister of State at the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, held at the State of the Arts Conference in London on Thursday 10th February 2011.

Good morning.

The State of the Arts conference has, in one year, established itself as the most important occasion in the calendar for the discussion of cultural policy. So today is a great opportunity for me to set out where we are now and what Government sees as the challenges ahead.

I want to take the opportunity today to make the case for the importance of the creative ecology – an alliance between the subsidised and commercial arts; the professional and the voluntary arts; and the arts and the creative industries.

I want to argue that arts policy should take this creative ecology into account, in order to see the bigger picture and the wider opportunities. We are a hugely creative nation. We have tough times to face, and we will get through them if we face them together.

But the great strength of the arts is its ecology – subsidised arts feeding the commercial arts, the voluntary arts and the amateur arts ensuring the creative spirit is present in every corner of the nation.

And what creative spirit it is. Whether it’s Rory Kinnear’s Hamlet, Akram Khan’s Gnosis or the Halle’s Mahler season. Or whether it’s Newcastle’s new City Library, Burberry’s collection last year or James Dyson’s beautiful bladeless fan that’s sitting in my office.

We should never forget the UK is still revered around the world for its culture and its creativity. Tough times can make us think the glass is half empty. My view is that our cup is still plentiful.

Funding

Nevertheless, much of the debate about the arts focuses solely on the level of grant funding, so let me begin by talking about money. It’s worth reminding people – and some still seem oblivious to this fact – that last year’s settlement took place against the background of the largest budget deficit in peacetime history.

The economic situation means that we are borrowing £120 million a day; this is more than the British Museum, the Tate and the National Gallery receive in a year; one pound in every four that we spend is borrowed; only Spain and Ireland have deficits greater than ours.

We never pretended that we could maintain arts funding at current levels. No one who was being honest about the state of the public finances could possibly have argued that. And anyone who pretends that it would have been possible is being at best disingenuous. So although I am under no illusions that these next few years are going to be tough, I believe we have done all we can to help.

Despite a decrease in grant-in-aid, an increase in Lottery funding means the Arts Council’s budget will fall by just 11 per cent over the next four years;

Core funding for arts organisations funded by the Arts Council has been protected, and will fall by less than 15 per cent over the Parliament;

Funding for our national museums will fall by just 15 per cent, and the decision to release £143 million in reserves will make a significant difference to many of their finances;

Renaissance funding will fall by just 15 per cent. And the increase in Heritage Lottery Funding will help here as well – more than a third of HLF’s grants go to museums;

Lottery funding for film will increase by 60 per cent, from about £27 million to about £43 million;

In order to help protect the frontline, DCMS is also reducing its costs by 50 per cent.

And £80 million over four years to be matched by private giving to boost philanthropy

Funding across the arts will be more than £1billion in 2011/12. That’s still a hugely significant sum. It’s broadly in line with the sums of money that have been received over the last fifteen years, since the creation of the Lottery.

It’s interesting to see that combined Lottery and grant-in-aid funding for the Arts Council has only beaten 1997 levels in two subsequent years – and in each of those years by less than one per cent. So let’s not pretend that we are moving from feast to famine.

We have also ensured that we have simplified the landscape. So we have moved responsibilities from the MLA to the Arts Council, to create a single home for the arts, regional museums and libraries, giving the Arts Council a much stronger voice to make the case for culture at a local and regional level. We have created a single home for British film in the British Film Institute. And we are also establishing Creative England to support the creative industries throughout the country.

But at the same time we recognise the challenge faced in other parts of the public sector. I know that one of the biggest worries at the moment is local authority funding. The Government is passionately committed to devolving power to the local level, to locally elected officials and to communities.

On the whole, local government knows the needs of local people far better than a central government department ever can. And while I might not agree with every decision made by every local authority, I absolutely respect their right to make that decision themselves. The last thing the arts need is a Whitehall Minister demanding changes to every decision in a local authority that he or she doesn’t agree with. I know a lot of local councillors and that would be hugely counter-productive.

The challenge for the arts is to work with their local authorities.

Persuade a Council leader that the local library or the local theatre or the local arts centre is a fundamental part, not just of the arts in their area, but their entire community, and that it can deliver more than just an arts service, it can deliver health, education, social services and act as a hub for the community, and you’re three-quarters of the way there.

The good local authorities get this already. For all the bad news I also hear good news in places like Newcastle and Gateshead and Reading, working to join all their services up, thinking of the arts as part of a much wider offer to their communities. The challenge we jointly face is how to help the good ones share that expertise with the ones who are still struggling, and help you to win over sceptical chief executives and councillors right across the country.

The Future of Arts Policy

I have often commented about how fortunate we are in this country to have some of the most inspiring arts leaders and performers in the world. Through our settlement, we have secured funding for our leading arts organisations, free entrance to our national museums, and core funding for our regional museums.

So there is an argument for allowing the arts to get on with it on the basis of their four-year settlement. In terms of who gets what, we’ve already done this. We’ve given the Arts Council their allocation and we trust them to make the right decisions on how best to deploy it. And we trust artists to use that money and do what they do best, create great art that has the greatest impact on the widest audience.

But there are several key areas where we have decided to intervene, in order to make a long-term difference.

Philanthropy

In December last year, we announced our ten point strategy for increasing philanthropy across the country. This will focus on greater public recognition, better long term cultivation of donors, more planned giving, harnessing new technologies to boost fundraising and possible tax changes that will make it easier to give to arts institutions.

DCMS and the Arts Council have announced £80 million of new money for a series of match funding schemes over the next five years, beginning in April 2011.

It’s important that that matched fund is targeted and used to help those organisations that find it most difficult to fund-raise – those outside London, those that are smaller, those from arts forms that traditionally find it more difficult to attract philanthropy. We also want to use that fund to kick-start endowments.

There are two quick points to make here. First, this is a long-term strategy. If you’re talking about endowments, you won’t see the fruit of your work for many years. And secondly, the emphasis we place on philanthropy is emphatically not with a view to replacing core funding.

Leadership and Innovation

The other great opportunity for the arts is in leadership and innovation. The past decade has seen some enormous leaps in how we think about leadership in our sectors. The consistently amazing support of Dame Vivien Duffield and the work of Hilary Carty and the Cultural Leadership Programme have brought the importance of good leadership to the front of everyone’s minds and have inspired a new generation of exciting, innovative cultural leaders.

But not only do we need to keep thinking about where the next generation of leaders comes from, and the next after that, but we need to think about the other kinds of opportunities that we need to grasp to continue to flourish.

The rapid changes in technology provide just such an opportunity. It is vital that arts organisations take advantage of new technology, as a new way to engage with audiences, and dare I say it, even make money.

Through technology, arts organisations can really begin to understand where their audiences come from, who they are failing to reach, to push out content, to become broadcasters and content providers.

Michael Kaiser from the Kennedy Center wrote a piece last week for the Huffington Post about some of the themes I have talked about. In seven simple points he nails exactly why technology has, and will continue to revolutionise the way we go about our lives and what that means for artists and for audiences.

As he stated: “…to most arts leaders I meet, new technologies are viewed as a threat. They are perceived as competitors for our audiences’ time and attention rather than our biggest allies. Arts organizations have been slow to exploit the power of new technology and cling to older, more expensive techniques that are not as effective. We are clearly doing something wrong. We must find ways to embrace the new technologies. We need to apply the creativity we bring to our stages and galleries to the use of these new tools. The business world, entertainment industry and sports world are all doing so. If we don’t make a committed effort, we will fall hopelessly behind and the arts will lose their place in our society.”

I couldn’t agree more. Far be it for me to accuse the arts world of being conservative, but there are clearly opportunities to be had here.

That’s why I’m delighted that the Arts Council and NESTA are establishing a new joint fund to support all types of innovation right across the creative and cultural sector.

The new programme will take the people with the most innovative ideas on leadership, business models, technology, content creation, fundraising and audience development, from right the way across the creative industries, providing seed funding for some of the best and help them share their learning. It will also inform a much wider programme of digital innovation that the Arts Council plan to launch in the spring.

The Arts Council has also announced its partnership with the BBC, working with the BBC Academy with its media and digital experience to support the development of the arts sector’s media production skills.

The partnerships with NESTA and the BBC show where the Arts Council, through a network of new partnerships, can add even greater value for the sector. I want the Arts Council to be an organisation that is a source of advice and expertise for everyone who works or participates in the arts – not just for the organisations it funds, but right the way across the creative ecology.

I want the Arts Council to work with other organisations as well – why not the Technology Strategy Board, the BFI and Creative England? I also want to see them learn from the huge number of other creative organisations who need no encouragement in developing innovative partnerships across the creative industries, but also to help those who lack the resources, the knowledge or the guidance to do the same and who are trapped in what often still looks like a landscape of individual silos.

The work the Arts Council is doing with the BBC, with NESTA and with others is designed to address this, and marks the start of a new focus from government on innovation in the arts.

Cultural Education

As well as developing new technologies and our capacity to innovate, we also need to develop the audiences of the future. Earlier this week Darren Henley published his review of music education. I’m delighted that as a result we have secured funding for music education in schools, with £82.5m committed next year. He made a number of key recommendations which will strengthen music education for the future and we will be setting out our full response to these in a National Plan for Music Education later in the year.

I think the strength of the policy that the Plan will address is that it is more than just about the money. It is the desire to bring rigour and accountability to public investment– a determination to join up random initiatives to create a coherent whole, and not to accept second best.

So it should be with cultural education. We have therefore asked Darren to carry out a second review to look at the best way of ensuring that our children have access to a solid cultural education, bringing together the wide range of opportunities available in the arts, heritage, film and museums.

I hope that you will all engage in the debate about how best to support cultural education and support him in this important work.

Conclusion

Our strategy for the arts is very simple. We want to help all the arts – those that receive subsidy, those that are purely commercial, those that are voluntary and amateur.

We aim to do this

By securing core funding for the arts, as we have done;

By expanding the funding base for the arts;

By reinvigorating philanthropy;

By focusing on how best to support innovation, whether that’s technological, leadership, artistic or business innovation;

By encouraging new alliances between the Arts Council and other bodies across the creative industries;

By helping artists and creative organisations do the same, whether that’s by brokering relationships or sharing expertise;

And by supporting high quality music and cultural education in schools.

I think the next few years provide huge opportunities for the arts, and Government’s role is to support you in taking advantage of them. I’m looking forward to a discussion about how best we can do that.