Arts organisations will have to start proving their value if they are to continue receiving government grants, a debate in London last night was told.

A National Campaign for the Arts-hosted debate on whether the government can afford to continue subsidising the arts fractured into debates about entrance fees and high and low art, but there was agreement across the panel that arts organisations and government-funded artists will have to be more clear in communicating the value of their work.

All panellists, including playwright Bonnie Greer, journalist and National Trust chair Simon Jenkins, Royal Society of the Arts chief executive Matthew Taylor and Taxpayers’ Alliance co-founder Matthew Elliott, agreed that the arts are destined for budget cuts whenever the post-election government starts to look at treasury books.

But Jenkins warned the arts sector against pleading against funding cuts, arguing that the sector is in fact in very good health and that the sector provided “tangential” services, rather than essential services such as those provided by schools and hospitals.

He argued that arts organisations should become more self-sufficient not through philanthropy, which he argued could be corrupting, but through ticket sales. “Anything that is regarded as worthwhile should be paid for,” he said.

Most of the panel disagreed with Jenkins’ argument that the user pays. Greer, however, agreed that increased reliance on fundraising may undermine the independence of arts organisations, citing the situation in the US where “you have to pay to play” and where influential donors can censor individual artworks and artists.

Certain ‘mandarins’, she added, within arts funding apparatus “may have to go”, to make way for a younger, less “subsidy-fat” generation of artists and arts managers.

The RSA’s Taylor argued that arts needs to be more savvy about communicating its “multiplier effect”, its ability to attract private investment, its ability to encourage consumer spending and the overall growth and worth of the industry to the wider UK economy.