Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab)

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Sater, for ensuring that we have this debate. We do not talk enough about the arts and cultural industries in our politics, and it is vital that we focus on the issues that she rightly highlighted. For background, the Library note explains that public funding for the arts has, over the last 14 years, decreased by some 18%. Museums, in particular, have been hit hard, with 32% of them experiencing budget reductions. Overall, local government revenue funding dropped by 48% in that period, and Arts Council funding dropped by 18% in England and a whopping 66% in Northern Ireland. BBC public funding dropped by 23% and the national portfolio criteria were changed—public funding there dropped by 10%. Worse than that, libraries experienced cuts of some 53%. So, if we are asking why the arts are in peril as a result of changes in public funding, the answer is clear: the last Government took money away from arts and cultural industries. Our Government’s challenge is to find ways of ensuring that some of that damage is repaired. In that context, the recent Budget is very welcome. The DCMS settlement brought an uplift of 2.6%, and the Treasury committed to ensuring that creative sector funding became one of the eight growth areas, because of the way in which arts and culture drive our economy and make an important contribution to our industrial strategy. As the noble Baroness said, another £3 million was put into the creative careers programme, signposting employment in the sector. The Budget also promised additional grant in aid for arts and culture for the long term, to sustain that sector. Most importantly, increased investment in cultural infrastructure was promised to bring in additional capital for cultural institutions. I do not know a museum that has not complained recently about a leaking roof, and there are plenty of them. Money is tight. So, can we explore other ways of funding? To ensure long-term sustainability, one of those might be the smart fund, which has been proposed by many from DACS. It is a mechanism that compensates artists whose original work is copied or stored on electronic devices. This works in 45 other jurisdictions. A levy of between 1% and 3% on the sale price of electronic devices could fund some 1,200 cultural projects a year, as it does in France. I also recommend to the Government a music venues ticket levy, which might bring in new and very welcome additional revenues, and perhaps help cross-subsidise small venues where talent emerges and where research and development is important. I urge the Government to look again at Nesta and at Arts Council funding, to see where the balance lies, and to find new sources of revenue so that cultural and arts institutions have a more certain funding base for the long term, in addition to what we make available through public funding.