Arts debate

Shadow Minister for Culture Ed Vaizey reveals the principles he thinks should guide public funding of the arts today

11 April 2007 by Jo Saucek 2 comments

I’m going to do what all politicians do – and not answer specifically the question the Arts Council has put to me.  I’m going to range a little wider, if you’ll forgive me.

I welcome the Arts Council’s decision to have a debate on the arts.  We’re undertaking a similar exercise.  John Tusa is chairing our Arts Taskforce, and he’s looking at a whole range of issues – not just public funding for the arts, but also education, structures (yes, that means you, Arts Council, but not just you), private giving, the role of artists and of institutions.  I hope people reading this will contribute – we’ll be mailing out a consultation document soon.

I don’t want to pre-empt John’s conclusions, nor commit myself to something that would be difficult to get into our manifesto or to implement in Government.  But when we’re looking at public funding for the arts, I have two specific thoughts.

First, if it is possible, I think public funding should be settled on as long-term a basis as it can be.  Arts organisations spend a great deal of time planning events and shows in advance, sometimes as long as five years or more.  Yet the fact is that none yet know what three-year settlement they will receive, and won’t know until this autumn.  That’s causing a huge amount of difficulty.  In the scheme of things, arts funding is not huge, and it should be possible to put it on a more secure footing for a longer period.

Related to this, of course, is the Lottery.  The whole point of the Lottery was to supply the arts and heritage with a ring-fenced source of income.  Of course, we could tinker with some of it, in the sense of the balance between capital and revenue grants.  But not with the principle of why the funds were set up.  So we want to return, when it is possible (and of course the Olympics has changed that for the time being) to a position where the original four good causes are back in place.

Secondly, I think that there is a huge opportunity to increase the amount of private giving to the arts.  Nicholas Goodison published a report way back in 2004.  The issue he was addressing was the difficulty in securing acquisitions for museums and galleries.  Many of the changes he proposed were cost-free, and would have made the bureaucracy simpler.  We will try and implement as many of those changes as possible.  But he also proposed tax changes to make it easier for people to give.  In a way, that is public funding, as it means the Treasury misses out on income.  But it could also be expensive, so we’ll have to look carefully at those proposals. 

But even if we can’t propose tax changes, we can show leadership.  There’s no doubt in my mind that if politicians – and Government – take the arts seriously, then those with the power to give will follow.

You’ll notice that not only haven’t I addressed the question directly, I haven’t addressed the question behind the question – namely, should the arts be publicly funded at all?  My friend Stephen Pollard (not a Conservative) has a splendid polemic against public funding for the arts on his blog.  He sees it as wholly destructive.

For my part, there is no debate. The arts should receive public funds, and what is more, they should be far more assertive about their right to receive them.  It’s funny that few people question the right of the film industry to get tax breaks; no one worries about funding for grass roots sports; no one queries the amount of money put behind our Olympic athletes (the Olympics might be another matter).  Yet it’s easy to say the arts should get nothing.  But without the arts and heritage, where would we be?   You know the economic arguments as well as I do.  But do you say often enough how successful and well run most of our major arts organisations are?  If the arts in Britain were a plc, they could hold their heads up against any FTSE 100 company in terms of overall efficiency and return on investment.

So there you have some of my principles.  Yes to public funding for the arts.  Yes to it being on a long-term and secure basis.  And yes to encouraging the partnership between private and public funding.    

Ed Vaizey is MP for Wantage and Didcot. Visit Ed's website and blog here.