Last Thursday, the London 2012 organising committee announced ambitious plans for a cultural Olympiad to showcase our arts and cultural sectors to the world. Based on our bid to the International Olympic Committee, the UK’s cultural Olympiad will be bigger than any other before it, and there will be many opportunities for individuals and communities to be involved.
I thank my hon. Friend for his reply. I am sure that he will want to join me in congratulating the South Bank centre and the Royal Festival hall on their magnificent reopening overture weekend, which really brought in the community. Events included every primary school child in Lambeth singing gospel, gospel choirs from all over the south-east singing with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and an outdoor ballroom dance, in which I participated with my young son. Does my hon. Friend share my disappointment, however, and that of the chief executive, Michael Lynch, that, in a city in which more than 4,000 people received bonuses of more than £1 million last year, it has been so hard for the centre to fund-raise for the refurbishment from the City boys and girls?
I join my hon. Friend in congratulating the South Bank centre on the most fantastic of openings. It was really inclusive to the wider London community and resulted in record numbers of people participating, including many who had never visited the centre before. She raises a serious question, however, and she is right to suggest that, at its heart, our arts ecology is based not only on public subsidy and the self-revenue that many of our institutions raise themselves, but on private and commercial giving. There is new money in the City, and all those in the arts community, working particularly with Arts & Business and similar organisations, want to find ways of tapping the money that has come into the City in the past few years.
Last week, the Secretary of State described the cultural Olympiad as
“absolutely central to our vision”.
Her views happily coincided with those of Dr. William Penney Brookes of Much Wenlock who is, I am happy to say, at last gaining recognition as the true inspiration for the modern Olympics. Apart from the funding for the opening and closing ceremonies, how much funding are the Government providing, and for which activities, to celebrate the cultural Olympiad?
This is the biggest cultural Olympiad that has ever been proposed in an IOC bid, and I ask the hon. Gentleman to look at the proposals. Obviously, over the next few years, we will expect to see proposals coming forward from different parts of the regions. We have also said that there will be an international Shakespeare festival and an exhibition for which all our museums will join up. We have also said that there will be a legacy trust to provide up to £40 million of funding for events over the period. We also want to see private investment coming in.
Notwithstanding the £40 million legacy trust, which is welcome, the organising committee is clearly saying in its document that there will be only start-up and limited funds for the second and third tier events, and that it expects existing arts bodies to fund those events. However, the Arts Council is facing a cut of £112 million over the next few years, and Grants for the Arts is also being cut. I find it difficult to understand how these two proposals sit together; perhaps the Minister will explain that to me.
The cut in funding is from 2009. My hon. Friend should also remember that most arts organisations are receiving funds from the core grant, which has gone up 75 per cent. over the last period. We should be proud of that. I am sure that he would agree, given that his constituency is in the east end of London, that it is absolutely right that the young people in one of the poorest areas of London should benefit from lottery money in this way. We all have to play our part in ensuring that the Olympics are a success.
May I help the Minister to answer the question from the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Mr. Gerrard)? He has referred to the £40 million legacy trust, which is welcome, but will he acknowledge that the figures from his own Department illustrate that the cut to the budgets of those lottery projects responsible for culture, the arts and heritage amount to more than £470 million up to 2012?
The Minister says, “Rubbish”, but those are figures from his own Department showing the total cuts. Is it not surprising, therefore, that we read in the document launching the cultural Olympiad that one of the projects, Artists Taking the Lead—
That is an example of the Liberal Democrats not being able to add up. Let me take the hon. Gentleman through this. In the first tier, the money for the opening and closing ceremony will come from the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games budget, which is now £2 billion. We have also announced the legacy trust. We hope to see private and commercial investment, so I am pleased that Lloyds TSB has announced that it wants to sponsor the “live sites”, and that Youth Music has announced a £9 million investment in a music extravaganza involving young people. That is notwithstanding core funding. The hon. Gentleman knows that, and he ought not to persist with making up numbers as he goes along.
I am sure that my hon. Friend is as pleased as I am about the successful opening in Greenwich yesterday of one of the principal Olympic venues: the O2, which will host both the gymnastics and basketball finals and provide a remarkable entertainment complex with music and other artistic activities. Is not that a symbol of the success of this Government in driving forward projects that will enrich the capital’s cultural and sporting future, in contrast to the negative views of the Olympics from the Opposition?
I thank my right hon. Friend for that contribution. Our capacity to develop and take forward venues in the way that we are demonstrating was precisely what impressed the International Olympic Committee.
The Minister may be aware that part of the Dundee city art collection was recently on display at the Fleming galleries in London. He will also be aware that there are a large number of high quality civic and municipal collections around the country. As part of a value-for-money exercise, are there any plans to bring parts of those collections to London for display during the Olympic games, not only so that they can come out of storage and stop being a secret, but to promote all the areas from which those collections come?
That is a good idea, and I hope that the international museums exhibition proposed by our national museums might include it. Discussions have taken place with the Scottish Arts Council, and I shall refer the hon. Gentleman’s proposal to it. That is precisely the kind of grass-roots proposal that we would hope to see the legacy trust and others fund.