THE SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
Miss Jennie Lee, nowadays Lady Lee of Asheridge, earned herself a great reputation for the amount of state largesse (or taxpayers' cash) given to the arts during her time as Minister with special responsibility for the arts. Although not previously renowned for her knowledge and experience of any of the arts, she swiftly became renowned for her generosity. Her principal distributor of the cash was the Lord Goodman, chairman of the Arts Council. Lady Lee and Lord Good- man are, consequently, and understandably, greatly loved in the best cultural circles.
Money, and the promise (written or moral) of more, flowed pretty freely, as the Conservatives are discovering, to the Ex- chequer's cost. During the Lee-Goodman regime great expectations, naturally enough, were encouraged. With what looks in retro- spect to be careless rapture, many of the various cultural clients of the Arts Council gaily entered into financial commitments beyond what had been formally authorised.
In the words of Sir Bruce Fraser, the Comptroller and Auditor-General, in sen- tences which deserves much more attention • than they have so far received, 'the [Arts] Council had, by 1 April, 1970, in addition to formally committing the unspent balance of 080,000, entered into what were described in its internal records as "unavoidable moral
commitments" totalling £879,000 and "other moral commitments" totalling. £1,011,000.
Moreover, further requests for assistance
described as "high priority applications" had been approved to a total of £774,000 by
departments within the Council and were awaiting the decision of its Housing the Arts Committee. It also appeared that the terms in which the Council had written letters to applicants in respect of projects included in the list of unavoidable moral commitments were not significantly less binding than for those listed as formal commitments and had been so interpreted and acted upon by the applicants.'
Previous page
