The Stage editor Alistair Smith’s recent editorial on the State of the Arts report highlights several crucial points, not least that over the past 14 years we have not only seen a decline in funding but also that “resources have been shifted away from the grassroots and towards larger cultural organisations, often commercial ones”, and that while tax relief has been crucial to the creative industries, the big beneficiaries have been the commercial screen sector and commercial theatre sector – not the indie sector so significantly represented at the fringe and upon whose creativity and labour British theatre is built.

The State of the Arts report does not actually tell us anything we did not already know, but, goodness, it is super useful to have it all in one place, particularly as it signals so clearly the drop in prospects for the arts unless there is further investment from the new Labour government. Before anyone says: “But there is no money left” – there is. If Labour really wants to support a sector with proven wings that can genuinely contribute to helping the economy fly and attract international attention, Rachel Reeves does not need to find the missing £22 billion to do it. She can use the loose change down the back of the Treasury sofa. The investment will be repaid in so many ways.