News Analysis: Tories reveal cultural agenda

The cultural world is hotly discussing the speech delivered by the shadow chancellor George Osborne, last month at the Tate.

There were general expressions of appreciation that a shadow chancellor had taken time to consider the arts and how a Conservative government might enable such cultural organisations to deliver.

The National Museums Directors’ Conference (NMDC) in a statement to Museums Journal, said it welcomed Osborne’s support for museums.

One of Osborne’s points was that the accounting rules for national museums as non-departmental public bodies (NDPB’s), were restrictive and stifled creativity. NMDC chairman Michael Dixon said: “Some amendments to the accounting rules for national museums would be helpful in allowing museums to generate additional private income.”

Osborne’s promise is for the introduction of a Museums and Heritage Bill that gives cultural and heritage NDPB’s a new administrative status.

But Osborne went a step further, pushing the endowments argument for the “largest” government sponsored museums and galleries to build their own money pot and have more freedom over how that money is spent.

He threw in an incentive that a Conservative chancellor would “look at the case” for extended funding agreements. He did of course say, that in current times, government funding would undoubtedly be constrained.

And in these time of financial constraint the talk of partnerships has been pushed up the agenda in an effort to cut costs.

Both the Conservative party, and chancellor Alistair Darling in his pre-budget report last month, placed the spotlight on streamlining cultural bodies.

The current government is already planning to merge the UK Film Council and British Film Institute. What will happen to the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, remains to be seen.

The Conservatives have begun by looking at a possible sharing of resources between the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) and English Heritage. Mooted at the end of October by Jeremy Hunt, the shadow culture secretary, it has since been repeated but was interestingly absent from the Osborne speech.

Could it be that the Conservatives have got cold feet on the matter? This is unlikely.

HLF chief executive Carole Souter confirmed that the organisation has been in talks with the shadow culture team. Souter told Museums Journal: “It is very clear from conversations with them [Conservatives] their main focus is to cut administrative costs.”

When asked whether the HLF was against a merger or more closer working with English Heritage, Souter said: “We are more than happy to engage.”

But she said a lot of discussion had to take place and many questions needed asking. She pointed out that HLF was a UK-wide body with a broad remit and EH, an English organisation.

And it appears that Conservative calculations as to what a closer working relationship would save the public purse was quoted from a four-year old report that analysed the two bodies.

The £7m, in the report, said Souter was the maximum saving calculated on the basis of closer working and not a merger. And she said both English Heritage and the HLF have made “significant savings” since then.

Then Osborne moved his attention to Arts Council England (ACE). He said ACE should make more use of match funding – encouraging a climate of arts organisations raising part of the monies themselves.

But a spokesman for ACE, while welcoming the positive tone of Osborne’s speech and his acknowledgement of the important contribution of the arts to contemporary society, said: “There seems however, to be a misunderstanding of the arts council’s role in relation to the private sector. The arts council does not penalise arts organisations for attracting private funding and sponsorship – quite the opposite.”

The spokesman said that its regularly funded organisations receive a third of their income from ACE, a third from corporate sales, and a third from sponsorship and fundraising. “To say we don’t encourage that is rather far of the mark.”

Meanwhile Veronica Wadley, who London mayor Boris Johnson was hoping would chair the London arts council until the culture secretary Ben Bradshaw stepped in and vetoed it, wrote last month in the Spectator magazine that cuts to the arts by this government could be reversed.

She went on to say that the new vocabulary is of “monetising assets” and “bringing donors into the family”.

- End the Treasury “micromanagement” of the UK’s largest cultural institutions
- Introduction of a Museums and Heritage Bill that would establish new administrative status for non-departmental public bodies
- A US-style endowment system for museums, enabling long-term investment
- Consider five-year funding agreements for sponsored museums
- Insist on a cut in the administrative budget of funding bodies such as the Heritage Lottery Fund and Arts Council England
- Arts council to encourage its funded bodies to find match funding
- Art matters for its own sake. An instrumentalist view of the arts – how it meets wider economic or social goals – isn’t why we visit cultural venues.