Olympic Games 2012: Heritage and Arts Funding

My Lords, the debate focuses on the arts and cultural heritage, which are close to my heart. It is most timely, because it leaves the Government with time to do something about it. I thank my noble friend Lord Baker for introducing it in his usual forthright and inimitable style. I feel a certain sympathy in advance for the Minister who is to reply, especially as he was under attack yesterday at Question Time on the same subject. My starting point is the recognised importance of our cultural heritage. In this, our great musical institutions, orchestras, ballet, theatre and, of course, museums have all succeeded in enabling us to hold our heads high in the world, despite scarce and diminishing resources. I declare my interest as a former trustee of National Museums Liverpool. Liverpool is, of course, famous for football and horseracing, but it also enjoys a reputation for music—it has the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, as well as pop—for theatre, and for its famous Walker Art Gallery and Merseyside Maritime Museum. The Merseyside Maritime Museum also embraces a slavery museum, which we talked about last week. The city also has Tate Liverpool—the Tate of the north—and other specialist museums and galleries. As a member of the delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, I point to the Churchill Museum, which is not far from here, in the Cabinet War Rooms, which last year won the Council of Europe museum prize for using new technology and brilliant design to drive its message home. What has been achieved despite increasingly difficult and diminishing funding is wholly admirable, and many more examples have been quoted today. As the noble Lord, Lord Luce, said, the role of museums and the arts in complementing our education system, particularly in the light of the national curriculum introduced during my noble friend Lord Baker’s stint as Secretary of State for Education, is vital. Since the lottery fund was introduced in 1994 to support projects that would not otherwise be funded through general taxation, it has performed a very useful role. But I believe that people who buy lottery tickets do so on the basis that they are providing alternative and additional funding for the arts; they do not just hope to win the big prize or to make up for deficits in government funding. I also find it very difficult—I think other noble Lords have also said this—to understand how other countries can provide government support through direct government funding or tax and other incentives, and we cannot. Therefore, can the Minister give us any encouragement that more thought will be given to alternative methods of providing finance or that there will be more support for something like Arts & Business, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, referred? My concern is that the Government give greater priority to sport than to our cultural heritage and the arts. For example, two days ago a Question was asked concerning Liverpool’s role as European Capital of Culture in 2008. Comparisons were made with the special funding provided for the extra policing of the Commonwealth Games in Manchester. In defending the Government’s decision not to provide similar extra funding to Liverpool, the noble Baroness, Lady Scotland, said: "““Liverpool asked for this honour and was lucky enough to get it””.—[Official Report, 15/5/07; col. 120.]" That is perfectly true, but the implication of that remark was, ““So they’re on their own””. Is this a question of sport versus the arts or is it a question of London versus Liverpool? The astronomical growth in the projected cost of the Olympics should not come as a surprise. I have to confess that I was also one—obviously in a minority here today—who felt that Paris would have been quite close enough for the Olympic Games. Nevertheless, since our bid did succeed, I believe that we have to make the best of it and, as a London council tax payer, I am prepared to pay that extra whack. But I do not wish to see the arts suffer as a consequence. I look forward to hearing more about the plans for the cultural Olympiad, to which my noble friend Lord Coe and others have referred, about which announcements are shortly to be made. Having attended the cultural Olympiad in Barcelona three years ago, I hope that we will be able to build on that success and that there will be adequate funds to do so. More immediately, I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say.