ACE chair Dame Liz Forgan has called for the arm’s length principle of funding for the arts to be upheld in the face of a deepening row over the appointment of a new chair for Arts Council London.

Speaking at a Theatre Management Association conference last week, she said the principle had kept the arts independent for more than 60 years.

“It keeps the arts free of political interference in the content and nature of creative expression” she said. “It protects politicians from being held accountable for the occasionally outrageous, offensive or otherwise troublesome work of artists.

“It is looked at jealously by artists in some countries that do not have these arrangements…(and) is seen as an emblem of good practice all over the world.”

Her remarks are being seen as a thinly veiled reference to the controversy over the appointment of Lady Sue Hollick’s successor as chairman of London’s regional arts council.

She had been embroiled in a row involving the Culture Secretary, Ben Bradshaw, refusing to accept a nomination for the chair of the London Arts Council by London Mayor Boris Johnson. She had been co-opted onto a shot listing panel which included the mayor’s noisome, Veronica Wadley, but who Dame Liz said in a leaked letter to Bradshaw was not as well qualified as other candidates, and the panel left her off the shortlist. Wadley was nevertheless put forward on Johnson’s insistence and appointed after a Greater London Assembly interview, but the appointment was not accepted by Bradshaw who accused the mayor of political interference, which Johnson has refuted.

She has now named Ajay Choudhry, artistic director of Rented Space Theatre and CEO of the digital media company Enqii. It is not a political issue, she said, but a matter of good management of the arts.