The Government pays the piper, but it should not call the tunes

In his autobiography, to be published next month, the arts administrator Sir John Drummond claims he is not "primarily a creative person". He is too modest. Indignation has long been his art form, and the latest work in a distinguished oeuvre was unveiled this weekend - a cadenza of scorn for the Government's cultural policies which showed he has lost none of his inventive brio. The outburst at the Edinburgh Book Festival by Sir John, a former head of Radio 3, the Proms and the Edinburgh Festival, demonstrated that he is an artist of conservative posture and that his compositions sound quaintly old-fashioned.

In his autobiography, to be published next month, the arts administrator Sir John Drummond claims he is not "primarily a creative person". He is too modest. Indignation has long been his art form, and the latest work in a distinguished oeuvre was unveiled this weekend - a cadenza of scorn for the Government's cultural policies which showed he has lost none of his inventive brio. The outburst at the Edinburgh Book Festival by Sir John, a former head of Radio 3, the Proms and the Edinburgh Festival, demonstrated that he is an artist of conservative posture and that his compositions sound quaintly old-fashioned.

Stylistically dated or not, Sir John's remarks raise the question of the relationship between a government and culture. For Sir John, there is a link between personal taste and public policy. His attack on the Prime Minister, for instance, rested largely on Mr Blair's middlebrow choices when he appeared on Desert Island Discs - though Mr Blair has not yet forced Ivanhoe back on to the National Curriculum, nor made "Rule Britannia" a compulsory element of concert programmes. We are governed by people, Sir John went on, with "no natural sense of culture".

This is snobbish nonsense, of course. Regardless of Mr Blair's own cultural preferences, few would dispute that in Chris Smith, he has appointed a culture minister with empathy for many strands of artistic endeavour. But even if it were true, would it matter? Governments may have the power to damage culture by creating a climate of contempt for those who generate it or by their funding policies. But it does not follow that they have a matching power to improve culture; indeed, there are real hazards when politicians, believing themselves to be modern-day Medicis, have the arrogance to dictate about art.

The proper question to ask of a government in this area is not how much good is it doing, but how little damage. And so far, this government deserves modest praise. Sir John dismissed the recently announced increases in arts funding as a "charade to mask its utter philistinism". If so, it is a fine charade. By the year 2004, the Arts Council will enjoy an increase of over 40 per cent on its current funding. Too late, argues Sir John - by then there will be nothing left to receive it anyway. But this is poetic licence, and inconsistent with the facts. Theatres have already received their allocations into 2002, for one thing, and new money begins to kick in the following year.

The reality is that there is an artistic renaissance in Britain at present, and the Government, together with the lottery billions, is helping to foster this. (Although it is worth noting that public money does not necessarily lead to artistic or commercial success, as witnessed by the numerous lottery-funded film flops.)

However, Sir John also notes in the book he is promoting that when the Arts Council was launched, the then Minister of Education, Ellen Wilkinson, announced: "Only the best is good enough for the working man." You would be unlikely to hear an echo of that confident democratic élitism from Mr Smith today. For him, élitism is less a prize to be shared than a dragon to be slain - and he is thought to be seeking to have more say in the dispersal of funds than has traditionally been the case.

Mr Smith should remember that, even if government pays the piper, it is ill-equipped to name the tune. If not, he still has the chance to prove Sir John right.