Arts Council grant cut 'selective and unfair'

LORD GOWRIE, chairman of the Arts Council of England, appealed for the Government to restore a pounds 3.2m 'selective and unfair' cut in its grant today.

Writing in the last annual report of the Arts Council of Great Britain, replaced this year by separate bodies for England, Scotland and Wales, he said: 'The Arts Council is engaged not in nurturing the arts but in staffing an increasingly crowded casualty ward. Our task is to work for the restoration of our cut.'

The cut in England's grant is the first since the council's founding in 1946. Scotland's grant was maintained and Wales's was increased.