Olympic Games 2012: Heritage and Arts Funding

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Baker of Dorking, on securing this important debate. I have some sympathy with a number of the points that he made, although I could not agree entirely with the detail. I declare a number of interests in the arts. I am director of the Clore Leadership Programme, chairman of the London Cultural Consortium, the Donmar Warehouse and the Wordsworth Trust, and I am on the board of the National Theatre. I am in some difficulty, because I believe on the one hand that huge benefit can and will come to this country and to many people in this country from the Olympics and Paralympic Games in 2012, including from the vast range of cultural activities that will and should take place before and around the games. On the other hand, I absolutely recognise the deleterious impact that the recent decisions about lottery funding have had, particularly on the arts, heritage and, importantly, on community sport. It is difficult to overestimate the impact that these decisions have had on the cultural sector. The noble Lord was absolutely right that the principal impact on the arts is on the grants for the arts scheme, which provides small grants to individuals and small organisations, particularly organisations that are not regularly funded from Art Council England’s mainstream budget. They are already suffering from the decisions that have had to be taken to reduce the grants for the arts programme. I have talked to people right across the cultural sector, and virtually everyone engaged in the arts believes that money has been taken away from the arts to fund the Olympics. That perception is a real tragedy. The Government made a serious error of judgment when they took their decision on this funding. I do not particularly blame the DCMS. I see the hand of the Treasury in this, and I suspect that the DCMS fought valiantly to try to minimise the damage that was going to be caused. This has set the arts against the Olympics. That should absolutely not be the case, because the two should go hand in hand. The original de Coubertin vision was that sport and the arts together would have a great festival. I believe that that can still be the case. In the next few weeks, I suspect that we will hear more about the plans for the cultural Olympiad—the cultural activity around the Olympics and in the run-up to it. There has been enormous enthusiasm in the cultural sector for that concept until now. The decisions that have been taken on lottery money have done great damage to that enthusiasm. I believe that it is possible to rekindle the enthusiasm, but we need to put some effort into doing it. How can all this be put right? I fear that the raid on the lottery cannot now be reversed, at least in the short term. I am sad about that. It was a mistake, and I hope that at some stage the Government will admit that. It is especially so because it comes after the first blow—the introduction of the Olympic lottery, which is already siphoning some money away from the mainstream National Lottery and reducing the money for the good causes. The way to put things right is through the Comprehensive Spending Review, which is due to be announced in the autumn and where decisions will probably be made at an earlier date. At the moment, the DCMS is canvassing on a range of options for funding for the arts and the spending review, which range from the status quo plus an allowance for inflation, to a cash standstill and on to cuts of 5 per cent or even 7 per cent per year. I cannot say what a disaster it would be if, on top of what has happened to the lottery, cuts of any kind—even a standstill is a cut—were to be made in funding for the arts. At the very least, an increase for inflation is needed. Let us remember that these would be rounding figures for any other department of state. They would be small change for the Department for Work and Pensions or the Ministry of Defence, but they are absolutely vital, and make a huge difference, to the all-important arts. In contradistinction to the noble Lord, Lord Baker of Dorking, I would argue that the arts have been a huge success story for this country, and for this Government, in the past 10 years. Recent decisions have put that success in danger. I plead as passionately as I can with the Government not to make it worse later on this year.