conservatives and culture
Opportunities delivered on a plate
test the stamina of rising Tory star
Shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Jeremy Hunt MP, has been tipped by the
media as a future Leader of the Conservative Party. His recent interventions across the CMS
portfolio have given him an opportunity to raise his public profile.
An opposition party inevitably has an uphill struggle when it comes
The Department is often seen by critics of the
to present its own policies. It has to wait for the party in power to
Whitehall machine as a catch-all for activi-
ties which do not fit neatly into other Ministe-
lose direction and bring voters to the point of despair before the
rial portfolios; a convenient training ground,
merits of the alternative case hit home. Elections are indeed lost
however, for an aspiring high flier to gain Des-
by governments rather than won by the opposition.
patch Box experience before moving centre
stage to a higher profile Department.
That point aside, there is probably some scope
for the opposition to draw clear blue water
between itself and the party in power where
Understandable view of DCMS
the major policy and spending departments Jeremy Hunt MP, the Shadow Secretary for
are concerned, Changing the way in which State of Culture, Media and Sport, who was
children are taught and examined, for exam- appointed to the post in July 2007, recognised
ple, or the method of financing NHS hospitals, that the perception of DCMS as a catch-all
may provide the differentiation which brings was understandable.
the policy initiative back to the opposition. He identified another characteristic which
But along the Front Bench from the high- logically brings the three streams under a sin-
profile ‘spending department’ spokesmen, gle umbrella. “They all have a direct impact
there is probably less scope for the Shadow on the quality of life outside the work environ-
teams to raise the temperature of political ment. More significantly, they achieve this
debate. In Culture, Media and Sport (CMS), for with minuscule levels of funding.
example, where budgets are comparatively “The Arts Council, for example, has a budget
small, and agendas less contentious, none of which stands at 0.5% of government spending,
the three strands would be expected to stimu- Between them, the three components of CMS
late controversy on the front pages of the are the lowest-spending areas of government
broadsheets. activity.”
Overspending on the 2012 Olympics would Unlike many central government depart-
be one of the few areas for contention, but that ments several times its size, the Department
saga is now so much part of the political fab- for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) embraces
ric that it rarely breaks through to the news industries which help give Britain a broader
sections. economic base and contributes significantly
34
The Informed Executive
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