Moral but not legal
In this highly interesting passage, Sir Bruce Fraser continues: 'I therefore asked the Council on what authority it had entered in- to commitments in respect of expenditure on Housing the Arts in excess of the limits specified by DES [Department of Education and Science], on the authority of the Treasury, and recorded in the Estimates ap- proved by Parliament. The Council replied that a promise from a public body like the Arts Council to consider a future com- mitment, as contemplated in the 1965 Treasury letters must have reality and substance and hence must represent an unavoidable moral commitment. The Coun- cil had, however, for such promises used phraseology upon which it could not be sued in a Court of Law, and in its legal com- mitments had adhered to the restriction imposed by the annual limits. The Council considered that it had thus acted within the authority and spirit of the Treasury letter.' (My astonished and appalled italics.)
It should be borne in mind that these `unavoidable moral commitments,' other moral commitments' and 'high priority ap-
• plications' are all additional to the greatly in- creased and properly authorised legal com- mitments. It might not be inappropriate here to quote from the current report of the Secretary-General of the Arts Council, Hugh Willatt, who writes of 'the work of Miss Jen- nie Lee, our Minister for five and a half years, Her leadership and sympathy were, of course, invaluable to us. In those years, and particularly in the earlier part of them, the help which the Council was able to give to the arts in this country was enormously in- creased. The grant in the three years from 1965 onwards increased by 120 per cent. This allowed not only a stabilisation of much that had been created in tentative and rather struggling form (particularly in the theatre) but saw development in new and important areas of which Housing the Arts and Regional Art Associations are but two ex- amples. Yet throughout this time Miss Lee observed scrupulously the principle of in- dependence for the Arts Council in the ex- penditure of its money. She led, encouraged and helped. She never interfered or criticised.' (More of my italics.)
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