The Stage

ACE independence threatened by Whitehall, warns Frayling

Published Thursday 24 February 2005 at 10:40 by Jeremy Austin

Arts Council England chairman Christopher Frayling has used his first public speech at the Royal Society for the Arts to warn that the principle of arm’s-length funding has been undermined to the extent that ACE is now considered as merely an extension of Tessa Jowell’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport.

Suggesting that the system had been reduced to “Venus de Milo proportions”, he warned this would bring with it an erosion of artistic independence, a gradual dismantling of a “coherent framework for arts policy” and a lack of influence in the decision-making process by arts practitioners.

“Lately, I have to say that I have sensed the distance between the arts council and government is narrowing. While it was the Conservative government of the eighties that first introduced the mantra ‘culture should serve the economy’, since 1997 New Labour has added a whole new list of priorities - still on the basis of instrumental outcomes,” he said. “The DCMS is becoming more ‘hands on’. Our independence is less well understood - and commitment to the benefits of the arm’s-length principle may be slowly ebbing away.”

Frayling cited a number of incidents that he believes are indicative of the changing attitude in Whitehall, including the letters received from the various secretaries of state when announcing the allocation from the Comprehensive Spending Review. In 2000 the letter from the then culture secretary Chris Smith was three pages long. In 2004 Tessa Jowell’s ran to seven pages and included ring-fencing of sections of the arts council’s budget.

He also revealed that the arts council is expected to make efficiencies of 2.5% across its budget despite, he claims, the organisation being on target to cost £7 million less to run in 2006 than it would if his predecessor Gerry Robinson’s reforms had not been undertaken.

Continuing, Frayling said: “We like to think of the arts sector being made up of arts organisations and artists. I was fascinated to learn that they are, in government-speak where this exercise is concerned, ‘second-tier’ organisations, that they are to be treated as mini Whitehall departments.

“Put all these together - plus the fact that the DCMS has developed an alarming tendency to replicate our structures - and there can be little doubt that the arts council is increasingly seen as an extension of the DCMS. As a part of government.

“In other words, in the eyes of the government, the National Theatre is an extension - a second-tier extension - of the civil service. When that has happened, the length of the arm has become very short indeed, almost Venus de Milo length.”

Chris Smith was among the audience members attending the lecture. He used the question and answer session, chaired by Newsnight presenter Kirsty Wark, to answer some of the points raised by Frayling.

While he agreed that the arm’s-length principle was important, he said there were times when government involvement could be beneficial to the arts. And he added that Frayling’s comments, many of which he believed to be right, “must not just be directed at the DCMS because, on the whole, the DCMS’ heart is in the right place” but at the Treasury.

“On each of the spending reviews I was involved in, I had to go to the Prime Minister to overrule what the Treasury had put in place. I was successful. It is the mind of the Treasury that has to be changed,” he said.