The charity, Campaign for the Arts, has also focused on funding, as part of its July 2024 report ‘The state of the arts’ and its subsequent 2025 update.^[11] Similarly to Baroness Hodge, it found that “there have been dramatic falls in arts funding since 2010”.^[12] Looking at the DCMS grant-in-aid funding, the charity reported that in 2022/23, it had totalled £21.93 per person, or 0.17% of total public spending per person in the UK as a whole (£12,549). Adjusted for inflation, this figure was 18% less than in 2009/10. It also said that while tax relief for the creative industries had surged, core public funding for the UK’s arts councils and the BBC had fallen, with investment by local councils having “plummeted”. In 2025, the charity said that its analysis of the government’s spending review had found that per person spending on culture, media and sport was projected to fall further by the end of the decade.^[13]

Looking at international comparisons, Baroness Hodge said that the UK spent less on culture than most of the countries in Europe.^[14] She highlighted that in 2022, public investment in culture in the UK was 0.25% of GDP. This was the lowest across a list of European countries for which there was comparable data, including France, Germany, Italy and all of Scandinavia and was only higher than Greece. The Campaign for the Arts has also reported that the UK ranks among the lowest spenders on culture, both as a percentage of GDP and per person, in comparison to various European countries.^[15]