Tag: Speeches

Laura Farris – 2023 Speech on Arts Council Funding for England

The speech made by Laura Farris, the Conservative MP for Newbury, in Westminster Hall, the House of Commons on 18 January 2023.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill) on securing this debate. I recognise all the things that he referred to in his opening remarks—a lack of transparency, accountability and engagement with the sector—in a decision that was reached on a treasured regional theatre in my constituency, the Watermill Theatre. It was truly a bolt from the blue for it to learn that there has been a 100% cut in its funding for the next three years.

One thing that has been frustrating in the process since then is the fact that the Arts Council did not really substantiate its decision with reasons, and it was so reluctant to produce written reasons when we invited it to do so. I had to remind the council that it is a public body and susceptible to judicial review. When the decision came, it was impossible to discern why the Watermill did not meet the relevant criteria. It had met them all in every previous round of funding and was not alerted to the fact that any criteria had changed. The Arts Council was unable to explain why, if it was a regional decision based on levelling up, the other theatre in Newbury, which we also love, was successful when the Watermill was not. Eliciting the final decision was like getting blood out of a stone, and when it came it simply set out generalities, such as the assertion that the Watermill lacked ambition.

The Watermill is an 18th-century watermill that has been converted into a theatre. I cannot improve on the description written in The Mail on Sunday, which said:

“What a location! Forget the glitz of the West End: try walking up a country lane, past waddling ducks, to this lovely little theatre in a converted mill.”

Its aesthetic beauty as a venue is absolutely treasured by our community, but we also treasure the quality and diversity of its productions. It is not just a standard repertory theatre that takes shows on tour: it produces its own work and pumps it around the country. It most recent touring production of “Spike” went from the Watermill to Blackpool, Glasgow, Cardiff and Darlington. It is also an artery theatre through which West End productions come and other productions flow on to international destinations, including Broadway.

The theatre takes its commitment to diversity and improving access seriously. It is in the heart of a tiny village, so in 2022 it did a rural tour. “Camp Albion” took its productions to villages, which are often completely neglected in the consumption of the arts. Overall, the theatre reaches 20,000 people annually through its various community engagement programmes, including children with autism, deafness and many other special needs. It has a deep commitment to the Arts Council’s outcomes, which the council even acknowledged in its decision letter.

We have been confronted with a deeply disappointing decision. We have found it incredibly difficult to know what mandate the Arts Council was working to, or why. I find it difficult to avoid the conclusion that this was capricious decision making, which undermines the status of the Arts Council as a guarantor of our national arts output. If the council is watching, I respectfully request that it reverse its decision because it has devastating consequences for the future of the Watermill Theatre in Newbury.

January 23, 2023
Jonathan Gullis – 2023 Speech on Arts Council Funding for England

The speech made by Jonathan Gullis, the Conservative MP for Stoke-on-Trent North, in Westminster Hall, the House of Commons on 18 January 2023.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill) on securing this important debate. Culture is so important. I was delighted to spend time before the Christmas break at Springhead Primary School in Talke Pits, which worked closely with the Royal Shakespeare Company and the New Vic Theatre to stage a First Encounters production of Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night”. Seeing kids as young as reception sat engrossed throughout that play, having learned about it in advance, was very special indeed. Mr Anderson, the headteacher, is doing a fine job.

My mother always told me that I should learn to read the room, but perhaps I am about to go against that—although I am sure that will not shock many Members here. I want to congratulate Arts Council England on its investment in the great city of Stoke-on-Trent. This £6.8 million investment, from 2023 to 2026, has taken us from having one national portfolio organisation—the New Vic, which is actually in neighbouring Newcastle-under-Lyme—to now having eight such organisations. They include the fantastic Portland Inn Project, based in Stoke-on-Trent North, which will have a profoundly positive impact.

Because of that investment, Stoke-on-Trent City Council, under its leader Councillor Abi Brown and Councillor Lorraine Beardmore, the relevant cabinet member, has been working tirelessly to look at how we can improve that partnership working further. Arts Council England has made Stoke-on-Trent a priority place and become a key member of the Stoke-on-Trent creative city partnership, which shows how the relationship continues to evolve. Indeed, it seems to have got the message that levelling up means making sure that places such as Stoke-on-Trent can celebrate their culture, history and heritage. We note that the levelling-up White Paper contained a Government promise that Stoke-on-Trent and Manchester would receive a special focus, to make the most of our cities’ industrial heritage.

The city has responded to that with a clear vision and strategy to establish an international ceramics centre, which will tie together world-class collections, celebrate the growth of contemporary craft ceramics and expand on our fantastic advanced ceramics sector. At the heart of that vision is a plan for our main museum, the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery, based in Hanley, working with Staffordshire and Keele Universities, as well as Stoke Creates, to secure a £5 million investment from the Arts Council’s cultural development fund to create new spaces through a new research centre and to redesign the layout of the fantastic ceramics that we have to display. That work will build on the city council’s £4.7 million Spitfire Gallery development, which houses the city’s Mk XVI Spitfire. Obviously, the Spitfire was designed in Butt Lane—where I am proud to live as a resident—by Reginald J. Mitchell, a great local hero, without whose efforts we would not have won the battle of Britain. The plan also builds on the £1.5 million relocation of the archive service from Hanley library.

We know that the decision is due in March. I am sure that Arts Council England is listening, and I am sure that the Minister will want to see Stoke-on-Trent get some more, because he has learned that once we get a taste of funding, we always want more. I look forward to more coming our way in Stoke-on-Trent. The clear notice from me is that a promise has been made and must now be delivered. We need major investment to continue to deliver new jobs and more high-skilled opportunities for people who want to study, understand and come to visit our great city, and to enable Stokies to be at the cultural heart of our great country.

January 23, 2023
Kevin Brennan – 2023 Speech on Arts Council Funding for England

The speech made by Kevin Brennan, the Labour MP for Cardiff West, in Westminster Hall, the House of Commons on 18 January 2023.

I echo many of the comments that have been made. I thank the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill)—

Sir Robert Neill

Just honourable.

Kevin Brennan

I thank the noble Gentleman, or whatever he is, for securing the debate. I also thank the former arts Minister, the hon. Member for Gosport (Dame Caroline Dinenage). She appeared many times before the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, and she was a very refreshing Minister to have in front of us. I thank her for the candid and supportive way in which she carried out her duties as a Minister and for the work she did during covid to keep many cultural institutions going. I also thank my hon. Friends, including my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), who has campaigned assiduously on this issue.

I mentioned the Welsh National Opera earlier, because when this debate about Arts Council England started, it focused—understandably, perhaps—on the decisions around the English National Opera, but in some ways, what was done around the Welsh National Opera was even more invidious, or at least as invidious, because it signalled that this was not a rational, strategic decision-making process by Arts Council England. Like the hon. Member for Gosport, I would normally express support and admiration for the way that Arts Council England goes about things. However, rather than being a strategic, well-thought-through plan for the arts, it resembled more an emotional spasm of some sort, as a result of wanting to do something very quickly to meet the perceived needs of the Secretary of State at the time, the right hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Ms Dorries). We are now told by the former Secretary of State, Ministers and Government Members that that was not what the Secretary of State wanted all along, which makes the whole affair all the more strange.

One thing that is perhaps good about this whole incident is that it gives us an opportunity to highlight the fact that the Welsh National Opera is an opera company for Wales and England, despite its name. It is value for money because we have a proper national opera company with an international reputation that can serve both England and Wales, including, when it goes on tour, the parts of England that are not often well served by other cultural institutions. That is an integrated system for opera across England and Wales.

Arts Council England decided to cut a third of the funding that it provides to the Welsh National Opera for its touring work in England. That includes many different parts of England, such as Liverpool; the west midlands, which is the part of Arts Council England that looks after the Welsh National Opera in terms of its administration; the west of England, in places such as Bristol; and Southampton, Oxford and elsewhere. It is right that these touring opera companies form an essential part of our regional theatres right across the country.

When Arts Council England appeared before the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, I was interested to know what its decision-making process was, so I asked Darren Henley whether he had consulted the Arts Council of Wales prior to the decision being taken to cut the funding to the Welsh National Opera. He waffled for a bit, and I had to interrupt him to get him to answer the question, at which point he said:

“They were aware just before the announcement was made, but we didn’t consult them in the announcement”.

I put it to him and to Members here today that it is a dereliction of duty for a decision that has profound implications—as we know, it has resulted in Liverpool being denied any opera whatsoever—to be taken in that haphazard way.

There are no SNP Members here, so I think we are all Unionists in this room. The hon. Member for Blackpool South (Scott Benton) was born in Newport, and he understands the importance of the Union. Arts Council England did not consult the Arts Council of Wales on a decision that has a profound implication for the future of that opera company and the whole system of opera around the country, and that undermines the whole so-called levelling-up agenda that we were told this decision making was about.

I profoundly believe that creativity is a good thing in and of itself. I profoundly believe that this country’s greatest strength, or certainly one of its greatest, is its creative industries, and that we are one of the few countries in the world that is a net exporter. Our creative industries are a huge earner for our country and culturally enrich us all. Quite frankly, as a white, heterosexual male from a working-class background, I am sick of people speaking on my behalf, and talking about wokeism and all the rest of it. The arts and culture are profoundly important to enriching our lives, and we should all stand up for them, whatever our backgrounds.

Let us hope that this was just an emotional spasm. I say to Arts Council England: please, get your act together and start thinking about these things. The arm’s length principle is important, but it does not mean being so arm’s length as to not even consult the Arts Council of Wales. That is not what the arm’s length principle is about, so Arts Council England should get its act back together, and let us return to some sense around this issue.

January 23, 2023
Damian Collins – 2023 Speech on Arts Council Funding for England

The speech made by Damian Collins, the Conservative MP for Folkestone and Hythe, in Westminster Hall, the House of Commons on 18 January 2023.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill) on securing this important debate. He was right to remind us that when the Arts Council was established, its principal role was to promote art for art’s sake and to promote excellence, and through doing so to give people the opportunity to experience excellence in the whole range of arts, from figurative and decorative to performing arts, and provide people with the opportunity to develop their talents. That should be something that is accessible to the whole country, and that is why the Arts Council was created. It is also perfectly legitimate that the Arts Council, which is in receipt of a large amount of public money, should be challenged and scrutinised over how it allocates those funds and the strategies that it deploys.

Scott Benton (Blackpool South) (Con)

My hon. Friend may be aware that two leading arts commentators have published a pamphlet calling for the Arts Council to be abolished. Their reason was that it has been taken over by “highly-politicised staff” whose left-wing “woke agenda” is generally failing to support the arts. That came on the back of a case last year in which £3 million of taxpayers’ money was provided to a company that published posters stating that “straight white men” should “pass the power”. Does my hon. Friend agree that decisions such as this will raise legitimate questions among the general public about the level of oversight of some of these Arts Council decisions?

Damian Collins

My hon. Friend makes an important point. There should be a clear strategy for allocated funds. It is right that the Arts Council is an arm’s length body and free to make decisions based on artistic merit that some people will agree with and others will not.

However, there is a clear strategy for how that benefits the whole nation, not parts of it. London receives a large amount of money because we have larger national institutions here. They demonstrate the benefit that they bring to the whole country, be that through touring exhibitions and performances or through the other cultural institutions around the country operated by the Tate, the V&A and so on.

It is important that there is a clear strategy and the Arts Council is held to account for it, because anyone who is in receipt of public money should be held to account. It is right that the funding strategy works for the national portfolio organisations on a three-year settlement, because organisations need to be able to plan for the future. While we welcome the additional year’s money that has been granted to the ENO for the coming year—it means, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst has said, that the 2023-24 season can go ahead—it gives no certainty beyond that and does not enable the ENO to make any further investment decisions. Even if the Arts Council had said, “We want the ENO to try to increase revenue from other sources,” that is not a compelling bid to take forward when the public money that the ENO relies on is no longer guaranteed. Who would match fund against public money that might not be there in just over a year’s time?

There needs to be a degree of certainty. There will always be more demands on the Arts Council than it can fulfil, and there will always be people it has to let down, but that is why having a clear strategy, plan and understanding with the organisations that it funds is so important. It cannot be right to take a major national institution such as the ENO that has been funded in a certain way for many years and pull the rug out from under it with very little notice; I understand that the ENO had 24 hours’ notice of the decision.

It would be perfectly legitimate for the Arts Council to say, “We must review the way opera is funded, and we want a strategy for that. We might want to look at how other revenue can support the opera, but we are going to do that during a transition period. What we are not going to do is create a cliff edge whereby the required funding is not there.” As hon. Members have said, not only has the decision had a direct impact on the ENO as an organisation, but the cuts have had a knock-on impact on arts and opera in the regions, which the Arts Council is there to support. That is the best evidence of the lack of a clear strategy. The Father of the House, my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley), raised that in his intervention.

The Coliseum is subsidised by the ENO to the tune of about £2 million a year. If the ENO cannot support the Coliseum as a building, who else will go into it? Who will pay those costs? Will we be left in the invidious position of using public money that should go into supporting performance arts to subsidise a building that nobody can use? That, again, demonstrates the lack of clear strategy. My constituency has organisations that benefit from national portfolio funding, not least Creative Folkestone. Less than 20% of its funding comes from the Arts Council; it has a diverse form of income, and that is right, but the extra money that it gets from the Arts Council enables it to do more, to do better things and plan for the future.

At the end of this sorry saga, we need to get to a position where the ENO can plan for the future and invest in the future. If that is against a strategy to do more in the regions and more to reach diverse audiences, it needs a fair funding settlement to enable it to develop that strategy. We must recognise, too, that with major cultural institutions such as the ENO, what we see on the stage is, in some ways, the icing on the cake. There is a long tail of people who rely on that institution being there—the people who will develop their talents and may go on to work in other companies, the regional companies and tours that will be supported by that, and the people who are involved in costume design and set design—and a great variety of projects that are there to support people. My hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Dame Caroline Dinenage) mentioned the fantastic Breathe project that the ENO ran. All those things are lost if the ENO has no secure future. While yesterday’s announcement is welcome, there has to be a longer-term plan, otherwise we will simply be back in this position in a few months’ time.

January 23, 2023
Alex Cunningham – 2023 Comments on the Abolition of the TeesFlex Bus Service

The comments made by Alex Cunningham, the Labour MP for Stockton North, on Twitter on 23 January 2023.

I’m hearing today that Mayor [Ben] Houchen is axing the TeesFlex bus service – I’d ask if it was true but he ignores my letters and has blocked me from social media.

January 23, 2023
Nadhim Zahawi – 2023 Statement on his Tax Affairs

The statement made by Nadhim Zahawi, the Chair of the Conservative Party, on 22 January 2023.

Twenty-two years ago, I co-founded a company called YouGov. When we set it up, I didn’t have the money or the expertise to go it alone, so I asked my father to help. In the process, he took founder shares in the business in exchange for some capital and his invaluable guidance.

Twenty-one years later, when I was being appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer, questions were being raised about my tax affairs. I discussed this with the Cabinet Office at the time.

Following discussions with HMRC, they agreed that my father was entitled to founder shares in YouGov, though they disagreed about the exact allocation. They concluded that this was a ‘careless and not deliberate’ error.

So that I could focus on my life as a public servant, I chose to settle the matter and pay what they said was due, which was the right thing to do.

Additionally, HMRC agreed with my accountants that I have never set up an offshore structure, including Balshore Investments, and that I am not the beneficiary of Balshore Investments.

This matter was resolved prior to my appointments as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and subsequently chairman of the party I love so much. When I was appointed by the Prime Minister, all my tax affairs were up to date.

January 23, 2023
Daisy Cooper – 2023 Comments on the Personal Conduct of Nadhim Zahawi

The comments made by Daisy Cooper, the Liberal Democrat MP for St Albans, on 23 January 2023.

The gear-change from ‘nothing to see here’ to ordering a major ethics investigation in just a few days, puts Sunak’s own judgment in the spotlight once again.

If Sunak won’t do the decent thing and sack Zahawi, the least he can do is suspend him for the duration of the investigation.

January 23, 2023
Rachel Hopkins – 2023 Speech on Arts Council Funding for England

The speech made by Rachel Hopkins, the Labour MP for Luton South, in Westminster Hall, the House of Commons on 18 January 2023.

It is a pleasure to speak under your chairship, Mr Bone. I congratulate the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill) on securing this important debate. I absolutely echo his comments about access for all to the best of the arts. I am a passionate champion of arts in Luton and across the country. Participation in cultural activity develops social capital, and enables local people to lead happy, healthy and prosperous lives.

Financial security has rarely been more important for our arts and cultural organisations, having weathered the challenges of the covid pandemic and a decade of funding cuts to the arts. Cultural industries in the UK are a success story: in 2021, the gross value added by the creative industries was £104 billion.

The role of the Arts Council is very important and its funding decisions are critical to encouraging creativity across the country and in all our communities. In Luton, we have a rich and thriving arts and culture sector. It enriches our town’s cultural diversity, encourages investment and supports social mobility and inclusion. Arts culture and creativity are central to the Luton 2020-2040 vision for a place where everyone can thrive across all our communities, and the Arts Council plays a critical role in that.

Last year, brilliant Luton organisations, Wardown House Museum and Gallery, Luton Carnival Arts Development Trust, Tangled Feet theatre and Music24 community music group, each received funding as national portfolio organisations. Revoluton Arts is an excellent example of the impact of the Arts Council creative people and places funding in Luton. It is a people-powered project that cultivates grassroots creativity in Luton and puts on high-quality creative events, particularly focused on increasing the participation of diverse communities.

We do not have a large professional theatre or venue in Luton to attract symphony orchestras, large scale theatrical work or indeed opera, but we have an excellent music service team and a music hub, and brilliant schools that want their children to experience the best cultural, artistic and musical activities available. That is the reason I was disturbed by the original Arts Council decision.

Arts Council funding of English National Opera helped to bring opportunities to our young people and led to a strong partnership between ENO and Luton music hub. The partnership created excellent opportunities for Luton’s young people. English National Opera brought its opera squad to Lea Manor High School, albeit in in Luton North, and there have been trips from Luton to the London Coliseum, both back-stage and to the opera. The partnership had expanded post-pandemic with the Finish This… programme in which more than 500 Luton children from key stage 2 became English National Opera composers for a term, and created their own musical colour worlds in response to ENO’s specially commissioned piece, “Blue, Red, Yellow…”, by Omar Shahryar.

The list of excellent work goes on and on, but the fact is that the music hub’s partnership with English National Opera brought opportunities to young people in Luton that simply would not have been achieved otherwise. It is proof that the impact of English National Opera is beyond the borders of London. It is showing diverse, working class, young people in Luton that opera singers look like them and the sky is the limit on their aspiration, but the Arts Council’s decision cuts off that aspiration.

I welcome the announcement yesterday that Arts Council England agreed that it will invest £11 million in ENO in 2023-24, but because opera plans significantly further ahead, a 12-month commitment is very short term. Last November, the Arts Council said it would ringfence £17 million for three years of transitional funding. If we take the funding for year one, can we assume that leaves about £2.7 million a year for the following two years, compared to the Arts Council’s previous annual funding of £12.8 million?

A funding cut of that size is shocking because English National Opera has exceeded many of the success criteria set by the Arts Council in terms of young audience growth, increased diversity and representation, the ability to reshape opera and maintenance of financial stability. The cut is accompanied by the recommendation that the organisation relocates from London to Manchester by 2026. I agree with others that does not make strategic sense, given that Opera North already has a presence in Manchester. The Arts Council needs to provide an opera strategy so we can see its intent. Further discussions with the Arts Council and English National Opera must lead to a fair funding settlement and ensure that ENO can continue to deliver the very best that it has to offer.

January 23, 2023
Caroline Dinenage – 2023 Speech on Arts Council Funding for England

The speech made by Caroline Dinenage, the Conservative MP for Gosport, in Westminster Hall, the House of Commons, on 18 January 2023.

It is a great pleasure to serve under your stewardship, Mr Bone, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill) on securing this important debate. I will start by talking about the very difficult period during which I was culture Minister in the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. It was throughout the whole covid period, and I did not get out much; I did not get to go to many operas, ballets or performances, but I did get to work very closely with the Arts Council.

I have to start by paying tribute to the Arts Council and to the leadership of Darren Henley and Nick Serota, who worked incredibly hard with the brilliant team at WHDCMS, led by Emma Squire, throughout the covid period. They were responsible for allocating a significant share of the £2 billion culture recovery fund. The recovery fund board was appointed swiftly, and ensured that vast sums of money were allocated very fairly and effectively at enormous pace and scale, which meant the difference between survival and closure for some of our most vital cultural institutions. Thanks to their remarkable diligence and deep understanding of the arts and culture ecosystem across the country, we avoided many of the issues that some other parts of Government faced when they were trying to dish out vast sums of cash.

As the responsible Minister, I can tell Members that once the money starts rolling out, we really do gird our loins about the potential negative media stories that might come down the track, but they did not come. There were some great attempts from some quarters of the media to excite people about some of our funding decisions—the wonderful drag queen Le Gateau Chocolat was exceptionally grateful for her slice of the cake—but on the whole, there was very little error in a massive piece of work that was done at pace and scale. The work of the Arts Council was a bright light during an otherwise very dark period, and I have lost count of the number of institutions up and down the country that have told me they felt they were saved by the culture recovery fund.

I do not envy the Arts Council its job. Trying to allocate limited funds is always a challenge, now more than ever, in desperate economic times and against the backdrop of a Government who are passionate about the potential of arts and culture to drive economic prosperity and levelling up to all corners of the country. Over the next few years, Arts Council England will invest £446 million per year in 990 organisations—the largest national portfolio ever, reaching more organisations than ever before. It was the most over-subscribed round ever, with 1,723 applications; if all of those applications had been successful, the investment would have been over £2 billion.

Among the 990 successful applications were 276 new organisations. One of those is the Hampshire Cultural Trust, which will now receive £500,000 a year. It is the first time that it has been a national portfolio organisation, and I see what a tangible impact it has on my Gosport constituency, which is an area with deep pockets of deprivation and has been long underfunded by successive Governments.

Our heritage is one of our secret weapons, but, up until now, we have not been able to harness its potential to drive investment, build communities, create opportunities and promote excellence. The newly reopened museum and gallery has been reimagined as a cultural hub, breathing new life into our high streets. The money will allow them to animate already outstanding heritage spaces and organise community-based festivals and events. It is making a difference on the ground and it will continue to do so.

The UK’s cultural sector is among the best in the world: I would say that it is the best. It represents 12% of our service exports, and its potential for our soft power is so often undervalued and underestimated. We have a huge responsibility. The Arts Council has a huge responsibility to ensure that we continue to nurture and grow it.

Culture has the power to drive forward regional economies, build communities and improve health and wellbeing. Arts Council funding has historically been focused on London and we need to ensure that culture is thriving in every pocket of England, but we will not level up the rest of the country by levelling down London. We need to harness the potential of the great cultural powerhouses of London. We must spread their tentacles and sprinkle a bit of their magic across the country in the same way as some of our museums and galleries have driven footfall.

Recently, Dippy the dinosaur went on a tour. It went to the Tank Museum in Bovington. It popped up in the nave of Norwich Cathedral, reaching a whole new audience and inspiring a new generation. The ENO has done exactly the same thing with ENO Breathe, which is its wonderful, game-changing response to covid. It is operating in 85 trusts across the country, including my own. There were some bizarre and ill-judged decisions in this funding round and I think we can all agree that the decision to both relocate the ENO and cut its funding was an ill-judged one. I am pleased that there has now been some movement on that, but there is more to do to secure its future.

Andy Slaughter

I entirely agree with what the hon. Lady has said about the ENO, but it is a one-year reprieve. After that, what it pointedly said is that it wants to

“continue to make incredible opera available for everyone, in English, with hugely subsidised tickets, completely free for Under 21s and with 10% of all seats available for £10”.

It is working in schools and hospitals as well. That will be gone in a year’s time and, over the next three years, it will lose over 400,000 people seeing opera in that way. Surely that cannot be right.

Dame Caroline Dinenage

That is absolutely the point. The ENO not only plays a huge role in the cultural status of London around the world, but the work that it has done to attract a whole new audience and to make opera accessible to all is nothing short of remarkable. I was lucky enough to attend what they call a “relaxed performance” of “It’s a Wonderful Life” just before Christmas. The place was packed with children, people with disabilities and neurodiverse people. It was just incredible to see opera being accessible to so many and building the audiences of the future.

I agree with the idea of devolving money outside of the capital, but we cannot do it by destroying some of the great cultural institutions that do so much and put us on the map. We must avoid these token gestures. We must also be aware of the regional ecosystems that are already well developed outside London before we start transplanting existing organisations out of London.

The Arts Council was born out of world war two. Here we are again, with the global aftermath of covid and a war, once again, on the edge of Europe. The Arts Council has, once again, a unique opportunity to support the innovation, creativity and resilience that make our cultural industries our British superpower. I hope that we can all work together with them to enable them to harness that opportunity.

January 23, 2023
Harriet Harman – 2023 Speech on Arts Council Funding for England

The speech made by Harriet Harman, the Labour MP for Camberwell and Peckham, in Westminster Hall, the House of Commons on 18 January 2023.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill) on securing this debate. I back absolutely every word he said, and I join him in urging Arts Council England to rethink this funding round, which has no strategy, has had no consultation, is thoroughly destructive, and importantly makes the crucial art form of opera more elitist, rather than less.

As a result of losing a third of its funding, Welsh National Opera has cancelled its 2023 tour to Liverpool. That is more elitist, not less. ENO’s core mission is to make opera accessible, bringing the art form to younger and more diverse audiences. The threat to ENO makes it harder to do that work. Because the Britten Sinfonia has lost its annual grant of £500,000, it will not be able to do its education and outreach work in the east of England. Because Glyndebourne has had its grant cut by 50%, it has announced that it will not be able to tour in 2023. When funding is reduced for opera, it is made more exclusive, not less. Public funding is the key way to open up opera to all. The funding cuts make opera more for the elites, not less.

One further consequence of Arts Council England’s decision, which I am sure is unintentional, is the effect on regional theatres, which I know my hon. Friends will mention. Peter Wilson, who ran the Norwich Theatre Royal, wrote a letter to Nicholas Serota and Darren Henley at Arts Council England, which said that there are

“people who stay loyal to their local theatres, providing the bedrock of serious support because of the regular appearance of challenging first class productions provided by Glyndebourne and WNO…Without them, NTR could not have flourished…And without their support theatres’ Friends lists, their ability to raise refurbishment and restoration funds, and their reputations will diminish. Theatres need high quality mixed programming; first class opera is a crucial part of the mix…Once started, a downward spiral in audiences is inevitable. You cannot possibly want that.”

What he is saying is that the decisions about these opera companies will make unviable and change vital regional theatres.

Peter Wilson continues:

“Glyndebourne, WNO and ENO have high cultural ambitions that deserve to be shared as widely as possible. To emasculate them—to destroy existing ‘skills, knowledge and networks’ so wantonly…will not just make those ambitions unavailable in the near future; it will probably ensure that they will never again be part of the national cultural fabric of which I have been so proud for 50 years.”

Does the Minister know whether Arts Council England considered the effect on regional theatres of what they are doing to these opera companies? Did it even consult regional theatres, which are dealing with the consequences of all this?

This is a very well attended debate, with people from different regions and parties. None of us is whipped to be here. None of us has not got other things to do. All the Members sitting here are those who are committed to the arts. If I was Arts Council England looking at this, I would recognise that I had gone seriously wrong. If the Members who are the backbone of championing public policy on the arts are in Westminster Hall complaining about the Arts Council, it should recognise that it has got things wrong and think again. To say from behind its hands, “Well, we’ve been told by wicked Secretaries of State and DCMS that we have to do this”, is something that I do not accept for one moment. The Arts Council is an independent body, for goodness’ sake—the key is in the name, “independent”—and if people take on responsibility for an independent body, they have a duty to that body to act independently. If they are told what to do by somebody whose business it is not, they should tell them to shove off, or threaten to resign. That is the way it is supposed to be.

The Arts Council has to recognise the scale of the problem. However, we are a forgiving group of people, because we love the arts, and therefore if the Arts Council sees sense, we will not complain about it; we will congratulate it. Really, it should read the writing on the wall. As Peter Wilson writes to Nick Serota and Darren Henley,

“I’ve bumped into you both over 25 years…It’s plain that your lives and careers have been dedicated to making the best art available as widely as possible throughout the UK.”

I say to both of them, “Keep faith with that. Change your mind. We all believe in redemption; it is not too late.”

January 23, 2023