Olympic Games 2012: Heritage and Arts Funding

My Lords, I join all those who have congratulated the noble Lord, Lord Baker, on obtaining this debate and thank him for giving me a particular opportunity that I would like to seize. I will not engage in discussion of the Olympics versus art because I personally believe that there must be room for both. I am more interested in talking about the residual impact of possible cuts in funding to the arts, and will focus on one area in particular. I am encouraged to do so by a statement by the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport that, "““the work of the Koestler Trust is essential to humanising our prison and detention system … Arthur Koestler’s vision was far ahead of his time””." What was Arthur Koestler’s vision? He was a political prisoner on three occasions and recognised the power of the arts in building self-esteem among prisoners to encourage them to be involved in work, education and training and to help them to lead more positive lives by motivating them to participate in the arts. The Koestler Trust, which was founded in his name, is the UK's national charity for awarding, exhibiting and selling artwork by offenders. In last year's exhibition, there were 4,330 entries in 53 different art forms submitted from prisons, young offender institutions, secure units, high security psychiatric hospitals, probation and youth offending teams and immigration removal centres. I declare an interest as the former chairman of the trust. If you want to know about the impact of this on an individual, a former award winner who is now a professional artist said: "““The Koestler exhibition took my work and a part of me out of the confines of the prison. You need to be an inmate to comprehend what this means””." That was the situation until last year. On 23 January this year, the Koestler Trust received a letter from the social inclusion and offenders unit in the Department for Education and Skills, which read: "““As we signalled to you last year … this year is the last in which we will make grants available to individual voluntary community sector organisations””." The trust had received a grant of £45,000 every year for the past 25 and more years to help it mount the exhibition, which amounts to about 15 per cent of the trust's costs. It was paid by the Home Office until responsibility was passed to the Department for Education and Skills. The department went on to say that the Government had published a next steps document, which makes no mention of the arts. The National Offender Management Service’s arts strategy has been awaited for over a year. DfES officials confirmed that the Koestler Trust’s work is unlikely to meet the criteria for its funding because it is run on a national basis and now all funding has to be obtained on a regional basis. It ended with the following platitudinous remarks: "““I would like to thank you very much for the work you have undertaken on our behalf and the contribution it has made to the development of this important policy of gender. We believe that the voluntary and community sector has a very important role to play and along with our partners we will continue to work with them to deliver our strategy. I know that we still have work to do together and look forward to receiving the final report from the work you have undertaken for us this year. I am sure this will be helpful to the cross government group overseeing development of the arts strategy””." There was no mention of what preventing reoffending and helping prisoners to gain the self-esteem to do that meant in terms of protecting the public. What worries is that the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and the Arts Council, which I would have expected to take a lead in tackling this national problem, unfortunately have been very quiet on all this. I do not believe that the delivery of the arts should be funded merely by the Department for Education and Skills; therefore, my plea to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport is to realise the long-term and residual damage caused by this move, which could be avoided. I have to question what the Government expect will be achieved for other purposes in taking the miserable sum of £45,000 away from something which achieves so much. Have the Government ever considered using their own resources to run a competition to encourage prisoners in the creative arts and to mount an exhibition of prisoners’ work, bearing in mind what the Koestler Trust has done on behalf of this Government and former Governments over the past 50 years?