Cultural policymakers declare £581k in additional earnings

Members of Parliament involved in the oversight of cultural policy have collectively declared more than £581,000 in additional earnings since December 2019, analysis by Arts Professional has found.

Using data made available by Sky News and Tortoise Media’s Westminster Accounts database, Arts Professional reviewed the accounts of 19 MPs involved in cultural policy, including members of the Department of Media, Culture and Sport Select Committee.

Our analysis also features Labour and Scottish National Party’s culture ministers, and Chairs of prominent All Party Parliamentary Groups (APPG).

READ MORE:

• Who’s who in cultural policymaking?
• Frazer becomes Culture Secretary amid DCMS break-up

The 19 cultural policymakers we found data on* must declare their additional financial interests by law. They are split into three categories: earnings from other employment, donations (which can be from private and public donors), and "gifts or other benefits".

Earnings from other employment

Of the total £581,730 declared by the 19 MPs, more than two thirds (£396,290) comes from earnings from other employment, split between 12 of these MPs.

Most of the highest-profile cultural policymakers, including newly-appointed Culture Secretary Lucy Frazer, DCMS Parliamentary Under Secretary of State Stuart Andrew, and Shadow DCMS Secretary Lucy Powell, have not declared earnings from other employment.

DCMS Minister Julia Lopez was the outlier, declaring £2,350 in additional earnings, the majority from work with YouGov.

The highest figure of additional earnings comes from Steven Brine, Conservative MP for Winchester and member of the DCMS Select Committee, who declared £97,790 in additional earnings from seven different sources.

Conservative MP for Chatham and Aylesford Tracey Crouch, APPG Co-Chair for Arts, Health and Wellbeing and former DCMS Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, declared £93,000 in additional earnings, including £82,080 from British Racing’s Horse Welfare Board, of which she is an independent member.

Of the 12 cultural policymakers declaring earnings from additional employment, Arts Professional made no links to earnings from employment within the arts and culture sector or the creative industries.

Donations, gifts and other benefits

Donations, gifts and other benefits from arts organisations make up slightly more than 10% of all additional earnings declared by cultural policymakers.

Arts Professional analysed a total £185,370 in donations, gifts and other benefits given to cultural policymakers since December 2019, with £24,130 coming from organisations within the arts and cultural organisations.

In comparison, £25,420 came from donations, gifts and other benefits from sports organisations.

Arts and culture organisations were responsible for a total of 20 donations, gifts and other benefits, with 15 coming from organisations within the music industry.

PRS for Music and Channel 4 are the organisations that appear the most often in cultural policymakers’ declarations, having given gifts and other benefits to three MPs each.

The largest single donation was £4,000 to Labour MP Kevin Brennan from the Musicians Union. Brennan is also the cultural policymaker with the largest amount of donations, gifts and benefits from arts and culture organisations – declaring £9,340 from 10 organisations within the sector.

Second is Labour’s Shadow Culture Secretary Lucy Powell, who declared £2,620 from the BPI, £2,600 from PRS for Music and £2,470 from Channel 4, all as gifts or other benefits.

Wider context 

According to Sky News and Tortoise Media’s analysis, the average MP has received £16,090 worth of other earnings, donations, gifts and other payments and benefits.

Nine of the MPs in our research fall above the average, with the other 10 falling below. 

The MP that declared the most in our research – Steven Brine – ranks in the top 5% of declared earnings, with just 32 MPs declaring more.

Culture Secretary Lucy Frazer has declared £10,000 in total, made up of five donations of £2,000, three of which came from private donors and two from property businesses.

Her total declared interest puts her in the bottom 38% of all MPs, with 405 declaring more than her. 

Donations to APPGs

Sky News and Tortoise Media also collated the amount each APPG has received in donations, services and gifts since December 2019.

There are currently almost 750 active APPG’s in parliament. Most of those focused on supporting areas of arts and culture have received relatively little by way of donations.

APPG for Music has received £9,000, from UK Music, while APPG for Music Education has received £13,5000, consisting of £9,000 from the Incorporated Society of Musicians and £4,500 from the Independent Society of Musicians.

The APPG for Theatre has received £24,000 – £12,000 from each of Society of London Theatre and UK Theatre – while both the APPG for Visual Arts and APPG for Arts, Health and Wellbeing has received £10,500.

The APPG for Opera, chaired by Robert Neill, along with the APPG for Arts and Heritage and the APPG for Children’s Media and the Arts all recieved nothing.

The outlier is the APPG for Creative Diversity, which has received £269,500 in donations from nine sources, including Google, the Paul Hamlyn Foundation and several higher education institutions. The total amount ranks the group just outside the 10 most funded APPGs in parliament.

*The Westminster Accounts interactive database discloses the additional earnings of MPs only, so our findings do not include the additional earnings of cultural advocates and policymakers that are Peers in the House of Lords or politicians working for the devolved governments.