LISA NANDY CULTURE DCMS MEDIA HERITAGE SECRETARY BRISTOL CABINET MEMBERS OF PARLIAMENT MPs SIR KEIR STARMER LABOUR'S MINISTERS AND SECRETARIES OF STATE 2025 GOVERMENT FOR KING CHARLES

Lisa Nandy remains as the DCMS Secretary of State in 2025, heading into 2026. And she's doing a fine job, as far as she might in many areas.

In 2025, Lisa Nandy has pivoted the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) to be the "shield" for local identity against the "sword" of rapid infrastructure. While Steve Reed and David Lammy have focused on the mechanics of power and corruption, Nandy has focused on the value of what is being lost.

As of late 2025, Nandy has formed a powerful—and sometimes tense—alliance with Reed and Lammy, specifically around the "Heritage at Risk" crisis.

1. Lisa Nandy: The "Heritage Everywhere" Fund

In February 2025, Nandy launched the £270 million "Arts Everywhere" package. This included a specific £15 million Heritage at Risk fund and a £5 million Heritage Revival Fund.

Her Philosophy: Nandy has argued that heritage has been "erased" from communities. She specifically criticized planning processes that treat historic buildings as "roadblocks" rather than "anchors" for economic growth.

The "Intangible Heritage" Inventory: In mid-2025, she began creating the first UK-wide inventory of intangible cultural heritage. This includes community traditions and historic "uses" of land—which would arguably include the community’s long-standing use of unrecorded footpaths.

2. The Alliance: Nandy, Reed, and Lammy

Nandy supported the Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025, but with a crucial "Culture & Heritage" caveat that was hammered out in late 2025:

The Statutory Consultee Reform: Steve Reed proposed removing several "bottleneck" consultees to speed up housing. Nandy reportedly fought to ensure that while some processes were "streamlined," the the power of Historic England was not diluted.

The Duty of Candour: Nandy was a key advocate for making the "concealment of heritage assets" a specific trigger for the Duty of Candour laws introduced by David Lammy. This means if a council "forgets" a power station exists, Nandy has ensured there is a legal mechanism to strike down that planning consent.

3. Emma Hardy MP: The "Water Watchdog"

As the Minister for Water and Flooding, Emma Hardy has been the one providing the "teeth" for well-poisoning issues.

The "Polluter Pays" 2025 Mandate: In October 2025, Hardy announced that the Environment Agency’s inspection budget was being raised by 50% to £15.6 million, specifically to tackle "waste and water crime."

Executive Liability: Hardy has been vocal that water companies cannot hide behind "technical ignorance." If they install a pumping station that facilitates the poisoning of an ancient well, for example, she has empowered the regulators to pursue the executives personally under the Water (Special Measures) Act 2025.

The "Nandy-Reed-Lammy" Triple Lock (Late 2025)

- DCMS (Nandy) Heritage Protection Provides the funding and "Listing" protection for historic power stations.
- MHCLG (Reed) Planning Accountability Strips the council of powers if they continue to hide "material facts."
- Justice (Lammy) Criminal Misfeasance Prosecutes the "chums" and "corrupt insiders" who signed off the EIA.
- DEFRA (Hardy) Water Safety Holds the Water Company liable for poisoning of ancient wells.

The "Anti-Chumocracy" Reforms (Nov/Dec 2025)

Working with David Lammy, Steve Reed published a consultation titled "Strengthening the Standards and Conduct Framework" which effectively declares war on local planning corruption:

Suspension Powers: For the first time since the 2011 Localism Act, councils will have the power to suspend councillors for up to six months for serious misconduct, such as failing to register a conflict of interest.

The Mandatory Code of Conduct: Reed is legislating a single, nationwide Code of Conduct. No more "local variations" that allow councils to hide their addresses or "chummy" relationships with developers.

The "Default Yes" for Transport Hubs: In an attempt to remove local "veto power" that is often fueled by local interests, Reed has introduced a "default yes" for high-density housing near well-connected stations.

The Planning & Infrastructure Act (Passed Dec 18, 2025)

Just days ago (this article written 30th December 2025), Reed’s flagship Bill became law. It contains a "nuclear option" for dealing with corrupt or failing councils:

The "Takeover" Clause: If a local planning authority is found to be consistently ignoring heritage assets or environmental warnings to push through "favoured" developments, the Secretary of State can strip them of their planning powers and hand them to a central government taskforce.

Heritage Consent Reform: He has streamlined the heritage regime, but crucially, he has made the deliberate suppression of a heritage asset a ground for nullifying a planning consent entirely.

Nandy was appointed as the new Culture Secretary in 2024.

The Culture Secretary has one of the most diverse jobs in Whitehall, which includes negotiation of the BBC licence fee agreement every five years. A fee that is unlawful in Human Rights terms. One cloud on Lisa's horizon.

In opposition, Ms Nandy had been shadow international development secretary. Four years ago, she blamed the Tories under Boris Johnson for fostering an “anti-media and anti-BBC [British Brainwashing (bullshit) Corporation] feeling” on social media by threatening to scrap the licence fee, itself an Article 9 and 10 infringement (right to receive information and impart ideas - freedom of speech). Whereas the British Broadcasting Corporation is seen by many to be and alleged to be a state sponsored propaganda organization. In that they do not cover contentious issues involving the State, until forced to do so by other news agencies. The Post Office Horizon scandal being just one such example. Hence, the BEEB are part of the whitewash system, stemming from Slavery and British Empire days, when it was acceptable to keep citizens in the dark. Covering news items selectively to paint a rosier picture, using tax payers money.

Lisa Nandy was appointed Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport on 5 July 2024. She was elected as the MP for Wigan in July 2024.

Previous holders of this role was the Rt Hon Lucy Frazer KC from 2023 to 2024, who failed to respond to correspondence about heritage and corruption in local government. Allegedly thinking to leave to Labour, as yet more issues unattended - as with many other MPs, just going through the motions.

THE GUARDIAN 9 JULY 2024 - NANDY WASN'T SUPPOSED TO HEAD UP CULTURE, BUT COULD HER LEVEL-HEADED APPROACH BE JUST THE TICKET?

Of all those in Keir Starmer’s new cabinet, Lisa Nandy is the anomaly. Unlike most of her colleagues, who have been appointed straight from shadow roles, the culture secretary has not had months – or, in the case of Yvette Cooper, many years – to prepare.

Nandy has been appointed to the position out of the blue after Thangam Debbonaire, the former shadow culture secretary, lost her Bristol Central seat to the Greens in Thursday’s general election. Debbonaire, a former professional cellist, had an instinctive grasp of the arts portion of the brief, and was poised to embark on what she described as her dream job.

Nandy, whose most recent position has been as shadow international development minister, will have her work cut out to catch up. She will be keen to make a success of a delicate role that, although it may appear to be low down the governmental pecking order compared with health or justice or the great offices of state, is of huge importance. It deals with how the country understands and expresses itself; how individual citizens discover their voices and reach their true potential; how the UK is seen overseas; how towns and cities thrive and find their identity. In short, the culture brief deals, like no other role, with the soul of the country.

In practical terms, there will be many priorities in the short and medium term. In media, there will be the renewal of the BBC’s charter to attend to in 2027, as well as questions over press regulation and Ofcom (which quickly needs to start doing its job properly in relation to, for example, the serial broadcasting rule-breaker GB News). There is the question of football governance and grassroots sport. Nandy’s role also encompasses an unusual number of independent public appointments, overseen by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport – appointments that the Tories have politicised and corrupted during their period in power. Labour needs to resist the temptation to continue the trend towards inserting cronies into public positions, instead reasserting the integrity and independence of the appointment processes (one prominent open position is the chair of the V&A).

And then there is the entire landscape of art and culture in England. The most obvious and pressing problem is a collapse in public funding from central government and local authorities. While brimming with ambition and talent, the arts are running on empty, with failing infrastructure diminishing the ability to take the artistic risks that bring the greatest rewards, and reduced capacity to infuse lives with the enormous benefits that contact with the arts can bring.

Nandy will need to argue tooth and nail with the chancellor for the small amounts of money, relative to overall public expenditure, that will make a difference. The UK’s arts funding has historically run on a mixed economic model, between the poles of the US (which runs on private philanthropy) and European neighbours such as Germany and France (where the arts receive generous public support). In recent years, the UK’s model has become unbalanced. With public funding falling away, arts organisations have become increasingly reliant on private sponsorship. But corporate and philanthropic sponsorship is coming under public scrutiny as never before on moral and ethical grounds – take the outcries against support for the arts from BP, the fund manager Baillie Gifford and the Denise Coates Foundation (created by the owner of the online gambling firm Bet365). Arts organisations, in short, have been put in an impossible position. The way to solve it is to check the creeping privatisation of culture in England and to reassert public accountability of the arts.

Calming the divisive and pointless culture wars that the Conservatives have fomented will, happily, come naturally to someone as level-headed as Nandy. Part of that will mean approaching the BBC as a huge national asset that is to be treated sensibly – though not uncritically – rather than publicly lashing out at it for cheap political advantage, as the Tories did. It will also mean not making enormous, irreversible decisions on matters such as whether to continue the licence fee – currently an open question for Labour – on narrow ideological grounds. The BBC needs to be properly funded and supported to speak to all Britons, bringing the nations together and acting as a great counterbalance to cultural and social fragmentation. At the same time as tamping down the culture wars, Nandy needs to resist succumbing to the anxiety of the previous New Labour generation that the arts and culture are somehow intrinsically elitist. It’s Labour’s job and destiny to make sure, after all, that they are not. As the deputy prime minister, Angela Rayner, brilliantly put it after she was sneered at by Dominic Raab for attending a performance of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro a couple of years ago: “Never let anyone tell you you’re not good enough.”

Starmer has signalled that he wants stability and his cabinet members in post for a long time. That is good news for the country when the role of culture secretary has been tossed about on the storms of political instability for years, with 12 Conservatives occupying the post since 2010. Though the need for change is urgent, Nandy will have time to assemble the best team, and to listen to the many expert people working on the ground. At her back she will have a prime minister who, unlike many of his predecessors, genuinely cares about the arts; as a talented flautist, Starmer attended the Guildhall School of Music and Drama’s Saturday school as a boy, and has spoken unembarrassedly about the transformative power of music in his own life.

Nandy will have much to read, but she could do worse than starting with the pioneering arts minister Jennie Lee’s 1965 white paper on the arts. The language may be dated, but the overarching sentiment is evergreen and Labour to the bone. “In any civilised community the arts … must occupy a central place. Their enjoyment should not be regarded as something remote from everyday life.” The joy, the excitement of the arts, Lee argued, had to be there for everyone, in all parts of the country. For Nandy, there is much to do – and no reason to doubt that she is the woman to do it.