“We applauded, but also looked with envy, when the PM announced an additional £100m for sport in schools recently, because we knew that an equivalent sum to encourage new talent in the arts would yield extraordinary returns. We have seen 10 years of spectacular achievement by artists and writers and steady progress in making their work available to new audiences. It would be tragic if all this were to be threatened, even squandered, for want of the modest sum that it would take to maintain the real value of current support for culture and the arts.”