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I, too, will be very interested to hear about the Government’s strategy for the future of museums because of the importance they have in our society. Raising the profile of museums and their collections can also be greatly helped by the international award system. I would like to mention in particular the European Museum Prize because, as a member of the parliamentary delegation to the Council of Europe, and as vice-chairman of that institution’s culture and education committee, I have been very involved in the award of that prize. Your Lordships may be aware that that prize is awarded annually. This year’s winner is interesting; it is the Arctic museum in the most northern part of Norway—north of the Arctic Circle—which seems appropriate in this International Polar Year, given all the issues of climate change on which we are focusing. This country has won the European prize from time to time. The National Conservation Centre in Liverpool won about seven years ago. It is brilliant not only at providing the much needed skills and services for conservation and preservation, but at giving access to the public to see how its conservation work is carried out without interfering with the conservation work that individuals are carrying out.
Just over a year ago, the Churchill Museum in the Cabinet War Rooms was awarded the European prize. Everyone who has been there will realise that it was an obvious candidate for the prize not only because of its subject—the war in Europe—but also because of the way the new technology and other displays make it so easy to follow and to go into any aspect of that period in depth. That brings me back to the subject of this debate: free access. When I went to the Churchill Museum with a few overseas friends whom I had invited to see that splendid museum, I was horrified to find how high the entry fees were and to be told at the end of the information on the headphones that the Cabinet War Rooms, which are part of the Imperial War Museum, receives not a penny of government funding. The Cabinet War Rooms is obviously coping very well with the situation because its numbers are going up. I look forward to hearing the Government’s future strategy for museums and would like to know whether they have any plans to encourage museums for which there is no question of direct government finance to help and support sponsors or benefactors who would be prepared to provide funding. If we are agreed that the cost of admission affects the number of people who feel able to go into some of those museums then something must be done, certainly about the Churchill Museum. I look forward to hearing from other speakers in this debate and, especially, from the Minister about what further plans the Government have and in what other ways they intend to support museums other than the national museums.
4.04 pm
Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury: My Lords, I join in the thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, for the opportunity to debate this matter. Gone are the days when museums and galleries were empty, echoing places where solitary contemplation of arts and artefacts was the name of the game. Indeed, I sometimes wish for a bit more solitude. According to
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The statistics support the experience. Visits are up by 87 per cent since 2001, thanks to the Government’s policy of free admission to DCMS-sponsored museums. Here we also have to acknowledge the part played by the noble Lord, Lord Smith, as well as that played by the noble Lord, Lord Howarth. Capital investment due to lottery funding and the Renaissance in the Regions programme, which has transformed regional museums and galleries, has meant that many more people are able to benefit from the enlightenment as well as the pleasure that these institutions offer. Of course, this in turn benefits society in furthering people's understanding of the communities, of the nation that they inhabit and the world as a whole.
Britain has historically recognised this. The British Museum was the first museum in the world. Created in 1753, it was free of charge and its intent and aim was to foster knowledge and understanding—to explain that instead of dwelling on what makes us different we should see how we overlap. The British Museum continues to achieve that. A year or so ago, the building of Durga attracted large numbers of Bengalis, both Hindu and Muslim, from throughout the country—different parts of the community in the United Kingdom understanding how they fit together.
Thanks to Renaissance in the Regions, this is not just happening in London. I was told about the reaction of a visitor to the reopened, redesigned Weston Park Museum in Sheffield recently. The email stated that,
- “the people responsible at the Museum have tried to be as inclusive as possible with all the different communities in Sheffield and the outcome is fantastic as no group feels excluded from visiting. Sheffield is a very mixed race city and the museum has got it ‘spot on’!”.
The bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade last year led to events and exhibitions in museums and galleries throughout the country which involved working and engaging with new audiences. But despite these achievements, as the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, said, there is still a problem with what he referred to as the “profile” of those who enjoy our museums and galleries. Certain groups still feel excluded. As Sir Brian McMaster said in his recent report:
“One of the biggest barriers to audience engagement is the notion held by many that the arts are simply not for them. The ‘it's not for me’ syndrome is endemic and conspires to exclude people from experiences that could transform their lives”.
A breakdown of those who visit the museums and galleries in increased numbers shows that many are tourists and many are schoolchildren on repeat visits—both to be welcomed. Less happily, numbers from lower income groups and ethnic communities are going down.
We on these Benches have always felt that the Government’s system of targets—of attaching funding to the meeting of certain quotas—was not the way to involve wider sections of society. The Government
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Then there is the problem highlighted by a recent MLA audit of a lack of diversity among the workforce in the cultural sector. Ensuring that those who work for an organisation represent all the sectors of the community it serves must surely lead to connecting with a wider, more diverse audience. That extends to those who sit on the boards of all museums and galleries. To quote Sir Brian McMaster again:
The Government could and should be acting to effect change in this area.
I cannot make a speech at the moment without referring to the Cultural Olympiad, which will run alongside the Olympic Games and aims to encompass thousands of local and regional cultural events as part of our nationwide celebration. This will be a unique opportunity for museums and galleries across the UK to expand audiences, inspire the young and broaden the profile of those who visit them; but it needs money. We have suggestions about where extra money can be found for lottery good causes, and consequently for the Olympiad. One is a gross profits tax for the lottery, and the other is a crackdown on lottery-style games, so-called “grey” games which, through imitation, dupe people into spending their money on games other than the National Lottery. We believe that those proposals could raise significant amounts.
We applaud free admission as a hugely successful element of the Government’s cultural policy; but it comes at a price. For those who now provide free access as well as for those who still charge—the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, referred to them—free entry is possible only through additional public funding. The compensation received by those museums and galleries that used to charge for entry is inadequate. On top of their loss of income from admissions, they face increased running costs due to a greater number of visitors, which is the Catch-22 of success. Grant-in-aid to English national museums and galleries will increase from £302 million this year to £332 million in 2010-11, which is an increase only slightly above inflation. The fact is that costs have risen at a rate higher than inflation. That does not just mean a problem with infrastructure and salaries, but with the fundamental issue of acquisitions.
Despite the fact that DCMS’s document Understanding the Future states that collections,
acquisition budgets have fallen dramatically. The Art Fund museum survey 2006 found that 60 per cent of museums were unable to allocate any money at all to collecting. Its survey of international collecting showed that UK national museums lag behind both America and Europe when it comes to the money that is available
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As Mark Jones, director of the V&A, said:
“Museums need to be a creative resource. We cannot do that if we are not able to acquire recent work. The British population is changing, and museums reflect back to society what it is. It would be a great shame if museums drifted away and ceased to reflect the society that surrounds them”.
As the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, said, is it not time to reconsider the tax incentives suggested in the Goodison report that would allow donors to offset the gross value of gifts of works of art against income tax? Would that not encourage the philanthropy that the Minister of State, Margaret Hodge, has recently been calling for?
Twice in this speech, I have mentioned the Renaissance programme for the regions, and we on these Benches congratulate the Government on its success. Investment in Renaissance has seen visits by priority groups to regional museums increase by 30.6 per cent since 2002. Is that not reason enough to commit to fully funding it across the regions and to introducing mainstream funding as enjoyed by the national institutions, so that long-term planning can be put into effect?
Tony Travers from the LSE, author of the report Museums and Galleries in Britain, which analyses their economic, social and creative impact, estimates that their economic contribution is in the region of £1.5 billion a year,
He believes that they are a crucial part of our future economic prosperity:
“Museums and galleries offer both a major internationally traded service ... but also underpin the creativity upon which future high value added economic activity is likely to be based. The storehouses represented by these institutions will encourage people in this country to use their creativity and talent to develop new services, products and even manufactured goods. Nations without such repositories of inspiration have less chance of success”.
Our museums and galleries are worth investing in. Across the country they are contributing to regeneration and social cohesion. They are playing a role in the creative and cultural economy through employment and inspiration and the opportunities they give to learn and exercise the imagination.
4.15 pm
Lord Howarth of Newport: My Lords, I shall not dilate on the splendours that have been achieved by making possible free entry to the national museums and university museums and galleries—the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, spoke handsomely about that. We are greatly indebted to him for tabling the debate and for his imaginative speech. I would like to draw the House’s attention to a policy that is less widely appreciated and celebrated: Renaissance in the Regions. I was glad to hear what the noble Baroness, Lady Bonham-Carter, had to say about it.
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My noble friend Lord Smith of Finsbury, as Secretary of State, and I as Minister responsible for museums in the period 1998 to 2001 were painfully aware that museums in the regions and local authority museums in particular were poor relations of the national museums that DCMS funded and where we were able to make possible free entry. My noble friend Lord Smith invited my noble friend Lord Evans to investigate the problem and make recommendations to us and he produced his report in 2001. The noble Lord found much heroic good practice, but the scene he examined was one of widespread depression, poorly funded museums and falling numbers of visitors. In many museums displays were stale, the routines of documentation and conservation were lagging, museums were working in isolation from one another, their staff lived off miserable salaries and had poor career opportunities. Many museums in the regions were lacking vision and self-belief as sources of inspiration, places of learning and community spaces.
The renaissance in the regions strategy enabled funding to be distributed through some 41 museums and museum services in nine regions. Leading museums were identified as hub museums in each region and became centres of a system of collaborative museums. What has happened as a result? There has been a 55 per cent increase in visits to those museums, a 19 per cent increase in the number of schools making visits to museums and 30 per cent of school visits have occurred in the 20 per cent of most deprived wards. Over 30 per cent of visitors—if your Lordships will forgive me for using this jargon—have been drawn from the C2/DE socio-economic groups, and black and ethnic minority groups and disabled people. By 2006-07 13 and three-quarter million visits had been made to the hub museums—more than 800,000 children had been on school visits to them and a not inconsiderable number of those children brought their families back on subsequent visits.
Research has shown the value of museum education to improving literacy and performance in schools. Renaissance in the Regions money has paid for family learning programmes, outreach to schools, work with children’s centres and the under-fives, recruiting additional staff for curatorial, conservation, education and marketing work, training and development of staff, some development of collections, some refurbishment of galleries and new displays in them, special exhibitions including touring exhibitions, networks to share specialist knowledge and expertise, research and interpretative skills and some digitisation.
Three and three-quarter million pounds has been made available for non-hub museums and within them some 4,000 staff have been supported in their professional development. New partnerships have developed between the national and the non-national museums. To give one example, shortly a bust of the Emperor Hadrian is to be loaned by the British Museum, first to Tullie House museum at the western end of Hadrian’s Wall and later to Segedunum in the Tyne and Wear museums at the eastern end of Hadrian’s Wall. It is wonderfully appropriate, but such an event could have been only a dream 10 years ago.
The hub partnerships have become increasingly confident and effective as regional centres of excellence.
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Wonderfully helpful as it has been, however, Renaissance in the Regions is no substitute for an adequately funded local authority museum service.
I shall pause for a moment to mention an important national scheme, which falls under the MLA’s budget but which is not part of Renaissance in the Regions. I am referring to the Portable Antiquities Scheme, a national voluntary scheme to ensure the recording of archaeological finds made by members of the public, particularly by metal detectorists. I am pleased that the noble Lord, Lord Renfrew, will speak shortly. I dare say that he will have something to say on this subject, and I believe that the House will accept as authoritative what he has to say on archaeology.
Before 1997 a kind of anarchy prevailed. Amateur archaeologists and metal detectorists roamed the country in search of trophies and there was no system for reporting and recording. I pay tribute to Dr Roger Bland of the British Museum, the progenitor of this scheme, who was seconded to the DCMS and advised on the establishment of the scheme. The Portable Antiquities Scheme is led academically and administratively by the British Museum and employs 39 finds liaison officers across the country. By 2006 a code of practice for responsible metal detecting had been agreed between detectorists, archaeologists and landowners. As of now, more than 317,000 objects have been recorded in the largest such database in the world. There is worldwide scholarly interest in this scheme.
Finds liaison officers do not confine themselves to recording finds. They reach out to engage a wider public. Forty-six per cent of visitors to Fabulous Finds Days in 2005 had never visited the museum before, and 47 per cent of them were C2/DEs. The journal British Archaeology has described the scheme as,
- “perhaps the most successful project to engage a wider public with the practice of archaeology anywhere in the world”
and the Minister, Margaret Hodge, has described it as,
The scheme, however, is in serious difficulty. It was somehow overlooked by the DCMS in the Comprehensive Spending Review. The MLA’s budget for those programmes that are not part of Renaissance in the Regions is due to decline sharply. The Portable Antiquities Scheme’s budget is to be frozen in 2008-09, with the consequence that three posts are expected to be lost. The years 2009-10 and 2010-11 are an abyss.
Roy Clare, the excellent chief executive of the MLA, is trying his best to find a way to salvage the Portable Antiquities Scheme, and has proposed a review. There is a view within the MLA that perhaps some synergy could be found between Renaissance in
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The British Museum is willing to take the Portable Antiquities Scheme on to its budget and accept full responsibility for it, but it needs a sufficient dowry to preserve the integrity of the scheme and its proper effectiveness. That seems to be the right solution and I hope that the DCMS, the MLA and the British Museum will arrive at a satisfactory agreement.
I would otherwise just note that Early Day Motion 566, which expresses anxiety about the predicament of the Portable Antiquities Scheme, has now been signed by 196 Members of Parliament. While EDMs are perhaps not the most accurately calibrated gauge of parliamentary opinion, that is unquestionably a significant expression of view, which I hope the Government will heed. I hope that they will heed our voices here too.
The Portable Antiquities Scheme issue illustrates a wider systemic difficulty. Nationally we have an incoherent, fragmented and still grievously underfunded system of support for our museums. The national museums themselves are not without their difficulties, as the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Hooper and Lady Bonham-Carter, have already said. Funding for museums comes from central government, the lottery, local government, some from Europe, museums’ own earned income and fundraising, trusts and foundations, corporate giving and individual philanthropy. It is good that there should be a plurality of sources of funding, but we need a concordat about respective responsibilities.
The welfare state model of funding for culture, the assumption that everything important will be paid for by the taxpayer, will no longer work—if, indeed, it ever did. The respective responsibilities of all who can produce funding need to be negotiated, established, promulgated and maintained. That is a challenge for the Secretary of State for Culture. The Treasury and the DCMS need to agree definitively what is the role of central government and then perform it, predictably and reliably. We should have a debate on the appropriate role for local government. We certainly cannot drift on like this. I would like to see a statutory duty on local government, such that every citizen will live in an area where a local authority has an obligation to maintain a museum service. That is the case where public libraries are concerned, but the experience of public libraries also teaches us that it is not much use willing the end if you do not will the means. Without adequate funding, the promise is hollow.
Should there, then, be a discrete cultural component of revenue support grant? Perhaps. Alternatively, should the same money form a fund to be distributed by the MLA in response to bids by local authorities? If that were to be the case, the MLA would become a true funding council. The question of whether to fund free entry for local authority museums would be one for the Government to face and answer one way or another. The difficulty about making the MLA a true funding council is that the national museums have never wanted it to be, and the DCMS has so far agreed with them.
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The concordat should clarify the responsibilities of the private and voluntary sectors. If grant in aid is going to fall short—and of course it is—the Treasury must allow incentives for private giving. That has now been recognised by the Government in France.
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