Tax return

Make no mistake: the Proms, whose 2015 season was launched last night, would not, could not, exist without the BBC, or the licence fee. Just under half the cost of putting on such an ambitious nightly series of concerts throughout the summer, drawing on orchestras from across the globe, commissioning new work, pulling together programmes that mix popular and safe with little-known and challenging, comes from the sale of tickets, the rest is subsidised by taxpayers. To social-justice campaigners this might seem like an outrage. Why should such an ‘elitist’ series of classical-music concerts, 92 this year, attended by some 300,000 members of the public (a considerable proportion of whom will be tourists), be paid for (in considerable part) out of money (£5 million approximately) raised from those taxpayers who will never enjoy (or want to enjoy) the experience themselves?

It’s the kind of question you can imagine being discussed by the panel of experts —from commercial television and radio, digital technologies and the civil service — that has just been announced to advise the government on the renewal of the BBC charter next year. After all, you could argue that the Proms is maximum expenditure on minority entertainment, ending with the flag-waving jingoism of the Last Night. What it’s so easy to miss is the value of the Proms as an international asset, giving character to British culture beyond football, fish and chips and the royal baby.

The summer season may be a product of what we now disown as Victorian pomp and patronage, Robert Newman and Henry Wood determining in 1895 that they wanted to take classical music to the people by putting on concerts as cheaply as possible. Those first Promming tickets sold at one shilling each.