The Bishop of St Albans spoke in a debate on support for the performing arts sector in the UK on 30th March 2023, advocating for a long term settlement of grants to support the arts and emphasising the cultural and social value of the arts sector:
The Lord Bishop of St Albans: My Lords, I too am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, for securing this debate and share the concerns of many other noble Lords about the challenges facing BBC musicians and the need to support small venues and touring programmes. The case has been made eloquently.
I am also grateful for the Library briefing, but I note that it begins—as has already been quoted—
“In 2022 music, performance and visual arts contributed an estimated £11.5bn to the UK economy.”
Have we really reached the point where we primarily describe the arts by the financial contribution that they make? Can we not imagine a world where the House of Lords Library produces briefings which say that, in the past year, 39,000 people had their minds opened and changed because of the plays they saw at the National Theatre; scores of people entered into the grim reality of migrants because they went to something at the National Theatre and then came back and signed up to some campaigning organisation to support them; and 40,000 people felt that they touched eternity in that breathtaking silence at the end of the Rachmaninoff “Vespers”? Can we not somehow talk about enriching the human soul? That is surely what it is about. We cannot and must not measure the performing arts primarily in financial terms but in the way that they expand our imaginations, unlock our sympathies and confront us with alternative realities that take us out of our comfort zones and demand that we engage with them.
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The Lord Bishop of Southwark [V]: My Lords, will the Minister please comment on what is being done to support the huge supply chain of talent, materials and suppliers for live events and performances?
The Lord Bishop of Worcester: My Lords, given that engagement with the creative industries can have such a positive impact on society in so many ways, does the Minister agree that it is crucial for the Government to seek to encourage a much greater involvement of those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds in the creative industries, so as to enable those industries to represent and engage with the whole of society? Does she further agree that this is a matter of urgency, given the vulnerability of such groups at present to Covid-19 and other health risks, as well as to unemployment? 
On 24th June 2019 Lord Black of Brentwood asked the Government “what steps they are taking to address the decline in the number of students taking music A-level”. The Bishop of Chichester, Rt Revd Dr Martin Warner, asked a follow-up question:
On 11th June 2019 the Earl of Glasgow led a short debate on the question to Government, “what assessment they have made of the operation of the theatre market in (1) London, and (2) elsewhere in the United Kingdom; and what steps they are taking to ensure that theatre is accessible to as wide an audience as possible.” The Bishop of Coventry, Rt Revd Dr Christopher John Cocksworth, asked a follow-up question:
The Church of England in Parliament 
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