The arts for art's sake?

Tessa Jowell wants a debate on funding for culture, writes Louise Jury. But will it change Whitehall's attitude or is it just more of Labour's muddle?

They are questions more likely to have been posed during the Enlightenment than the modern political age, dominated as it is by the soundbite and the photo opportunity. What does it mean to be human, and what role should art, and the Government, play in the attainment of this higher state?

They are questions more likely to have been posed during the Enlightenment than the modern political age, dominated as it is by the soundbite and the photo opportunity. What does it mean to be human, and what role should art, and the Government, play in the attainment of this higher state?

But Tessa Jowell, the Secretary of State for Culture, will pledge tomorrow to roll back decades of Whitehall antipathy by asserting that culture and the arts are fundamental human rights.

In a reversal of the post-war obsession with using culture as a tool of social policy - in tackling crime, boosting educational standards and regenerating rundown cities - Ms Jowell will make a surprising plea for art for art's sake.

And she will lay claim to the ideals of Sir William Beveridge, architect of the post-war welfare state, later expounded by Jennie Lee, the first minister for the arts, who argued in the 1960s that culture is as important to the full development of human beings as health and wealth. "It's an argument that has lain dormant but should be made," she said yesterday.

Ironically, Ms Jowell's initiative comes just after a report by the Institute for Public Policy Research concluded that the art-for-art's-sake argument could not achieve results, particularly when spending priorities were tight. The IPPR demanded better "objective evidence" to show that art projects mattered.

Ms Jowell retorted by quoting Oscar Wilde: " 'A cynic knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.' You can't boil down what culture does for this country to a set of sums."

MPs are waking up to the fact that cities such as Birmingham and Liverpool are being brought to life by culture. Labour must lead from the front in advocating arts as a public good in itself, she said. "There is a parody of culture which is prevalent, that these are issues of interest only to a disconnected elite. But it is the enthusiasm and hunger that people have for culture that is driving this."

She intends to kick-start a national debate at a breakfast meeting tomorrow with arts leaders, including Tony Hall of the Royal Opera House, Christopher Frayling of the Arts Council and Nicholas Kenyon, who runs the BBC Proms.

The arts are not just "a pleasurable hinterland" for the public to fall back on after the "important things - work and paying tax" are done, she argues in a 19-page pamphlet.

"It is at the heart of what it means to be a fully developed human being. Government should be concerned that so few aspire to it, and has a responsibility to do what it reasonably can to raise the quantity and quality of that aspiration."

Such assertions are likely to surprise an arts community which has found Labour's attitude to its cause as muddled as the previous Conservative government's was neglectful.

While spending on the arts has doubled since 1997 and scrapping entrance charges to national museums has boosted attendance by millions, some MPs are still inclined to lob the elitism charge at expenditure on opera or orchestras. Arts leaders have felt despair that the Prime Minister has seemed so unwilling to be seen in their museums and theatres. But they will be encouraged that Ms Jowell says "intelligent public subsidy" is vital if the arts are to take their place at the heart of national life. Audiences will be developed only through "determined policy initiatives," she says.

Her pamphlet begins with a tribute to William Beveridge and his challenge to the country to "slay the five giants of physical poverty - want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness". As Britain is the fourth largest economy in the world, Ms Jowell says it is time to slay a sixth giant - "the poverty of aspiration which compromises our attempts to lift people out of physical poverty. Engagement with culture can help alleviate this poverty of aspiration."

She also expresses particular exasperation that the arts are too often debated in terms of access vs excellence when no one does the same in sport. "It is unthinkable that sportsmen and women would see striving for Olympic success for a small number of the gifted as anything other than complementary to the growth in grassroots, weekend-leisure sport."

Funding for the arts has risen from £198m when Labour came to power in 1997 to £411m next year. But education and health are expected to win the lion's share of the forthcoming spending round.

In recent years, some arts groups have complained privately that the emphasis on using arts as a tool of social policy has skewed the funding system so that it has been possible to find money for education or community outreach work but not for staging the core play or exhibition that is to be taken to schools and the general public.

Tessa Jowell took over as Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport after the last election, replacing Chris Smith, a highly cultured MP who had held the post for the whole of Labour's first term.

Ms Jowell has described herself as being more like most members of the public in her interests and attendance. But sources suggest it was not a lack of interest but the pressing matters of the Wembley Stadium debacle and the communications legislation in her early years in office that prevented her taking stock of the arts before this.

She admits she was inspired by reading Jennie Lee's biography last summer. "I was struck by the gusto with which she was an advocate for the arts. She didn't feel that she had to justify the arts in any other than their own terms."

Jennie Lee, a feisty Scot, was arts minister from 1964 to 1970, and was popular with the arts community. Ms Lee, who was married to the NHS founder, Aneurin Bevan, also established the Open University.

Leading article, page 24