Why have we had so many Culture Secretaries?
The revolving door of ministers is damaging the sector.
Last year, jokes about the number of Prime Ministers we'd gone through were very much in fashion.
That’s not to mention the Department for Education; Secretary of State Michelle Donelan, now two Cabinet posts further along, only lasted a day heading that department before resigning to mount a coup against the man who had appointed her less than 48 hours before.
Donelan’s brief appointment did at least elicit some amusement when it was revealed that, despite the brevity of her appointment, she still had pride of place on the wall of the Department of Education. Let’s also not forget that her appointment was to replace Nadhim Zahawi, who left to become the shortest-serving Chancellor since... well, the next one.
This revolving door of ministers in more senior departments is something of a novelty, but it's been a longer-running theme in others for some time now.
It was briefed in The Times yesterday that Dominic Raab, if sacked or forced to resign as a result of the bullying claims claims made against him, could be replaced by one of three female ministers. One potential successor is Culture Secretary Lucy Frazer, who has served in that role for... 72 days.
If I were to argue that the Secretary of State role at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) had been treated particularly lackadaisically in the last few years, you might point to the recent chaos at other departments as outlined above - but this is actually a much longer-running issue.
For Labour’s last period in government (1997-2010), there were six Culture Secretaries - and only three in the 10-or-so years that Tony Blair served as Prime Minister. By comparison, since the Conservatives took power in 2010, there have been 13, averaging out at one per year. Take out the relatively stable Coalition period, and that works out as 10 Culture Secretaries over the last eight years.
This matters. It’s bad for the stability a department needs to produce and execute long-term policy well, and it’s bad for the cultural industries trying to make sense of everchanging government policy (such change is inevitable when ministers with different sets of priorities and philosophies are coming and going).
The government’s relationship with the BBC is a good example; its funding settlement has been left in dire straits, as various Culture Secretaries have flip-flopped between freezing the licence fee and allowing it to rise with inflation. This problematic approach is compounded by the fact that ministers using the DCMS to climb the greasy pole of ministerial office are likely to be doing their best to appeal to the grassroots Tory party, largely opposed to the BBC as an institution and to public service broadcasters in general; if the BBC is seen to be suffering, the minister dealing with it is likely to be rewarded for that.
There is other, quite serious legislation that has been affected by this disarray (that’s not to say that the BBC isn’t, by the way).
When Lucy Frazer was handed the DCMS job, it was due to Michelle Donelan taking on the newly created Department for Science, Innovation and Technology. Tech had hitherto been part of the DCMS brief - when the ‘D’ stood for ‘Digital’ - and so legislation such as the Online Safety Bill (OSB) had been under this remit.
The OSB is desperately needed legislation - and it’s been a long time coming. The government had first pledged online protections for young people in their 2015 manifesto:
“…we will stop children's exposure to harmful sexualised content online, by requiring age verification for access to all sites containing pornographic material…”
Eight years on - and two Conservative manifestos later - and we’re only just getting to a point where we can say effective progress has been made. The constant flip-flopping of Culture Secretaries (and, last year, Prime Ministers and the leadership contests associated with that) has been far from helpful for the Bill's progression, and the wellbeing of children and young people has been irrevocably harmed by that.
Nadine Dorries’ stormy tenure as Secretary of State has been particularly consequential. In addition to the Online Safety Bill - needing heavy rewriting after her departure - one of her focuses was the ownership of Channel 4, which she was determined to see privatised come what may.
Aside from the fact that Dorries didn’t seem to understand how the channel was funded in the first place, there was more than enough evidence to show that privatisation wasn’t supported amongst the public.
It was almost inevitable that her successor would have to row back on the policy, but one wonders just how much damage was done before that. What would potential investors in British film and television think about doing with their money when seeing the British government handling its stake in the industry in such a haphazard way?
The cultural sector is enormously valuable to the country in terms of livelihoods and our general wellbeing. That’s not to mention the economic side: government figures released in 2020 found that the cultural industries contributed c. £224 billion to the UK economy in 2018, accounting for 11.7% of the economy, making it one of the country’s biggest economic assets.
There’s a folk tale ascribed to Winston Churchill that when asked to consider cutting arts funding to support the war effort during World War II, his response was: "then what would we be fighting for?" It may not be a true quotation, but it speaks to something about the importance of arts and culture in our lives.
It's time that the government took the DCMS - and therefore the cultural industries - more seriously, and not simply as a toy to pass around politicians climbing the ministerial ladder.