| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Mr. Simon Coombs: I did not wish to suggest in what I said earlier that I had anything other than the greatest admiration for the work that had already been done.
18 Dec 1996 : Column 1007
I merely wished to point out how much more difficult it would be to find further funding, as opposed to the fund-raising that had been done. A huge extra burden will fall on the people in the localities along the length of the canal and it will be difficult for them to match the £25 million, as I am sure my right hon. Friend agrees.
Mr. Brooke: I take that point totally, and matching funding is a subject to which we should return.
I make the briefest possible reference to the Victoria County History, which has already been mentioned in the debate. Three Government Departments--the then Department for Education, the Department of National Heritage and the Department of the Environment--all sought to avoid taking responsibility for the Victoria County History. The Commission in Brussels believed that the British have a better co-ordinated civil service than any other country in the Union, but that problem was not a classic example of it working well. Co-operation between the three Departments might have solved the problem, but I am delighted that rescue has arrived through the amendment to the Bill in the Lords.
I am also delighted that the amendment was initiated by my noble Friend Lord Beloff. Parenthetically, he was a senior member of the library committee of the Oxford union when I was an officer of the union. I am delighted to enrol under his flag in this cause. Both of us were enrolled under the banner of the senior librarian of the union--I shall be brief in this diversion, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and I hope that you will not pull me up--Canon Claude Jenkins, who was a remarkable figure and had been the librarian of Lambeth palace. He was not a man of the tidiest disposition, and his fellow canons in Christ Church felt that his garden should be tidied up. They decided to pay for a gardener, but they received a note in Canon Jenkins' enchanting and spidery hand saying, "By order of Canon Jenkins, his garden has this day been consecrated as a bird sanctuary." I bring him into the debate because his garden would clearly have been one of the beneficiaries under the Bill.
I also wish to pay tribute to C. R. Elrington, the former editor of the Victoria County History, who has undertaken an enormous sponsored journey up and down the length of this land in the past year to raise money for the history. I believe that he raised £27,000. One of his stopping places was a couple of miles from where I was staying in August this year. His journey was worthy of Defoe or Lady Celia Fiennes and, given that his itinerary was so detailed that it included exactly when he would be having breakfast, I was tempted, in the spirit of those earlier travellers, to go and observe both the breakfast and his departure, to cheer and huzza. The journey was enormously to his credit, but I am pleased that the Bill will mean that such enormous travels will not be so necessary in the future.
Sir Wyn Roberts:
My right hon. Friend may be interested to know that there is a connection between C. R. Elrington, Canon Jenkin's and myself. C. R. Elrington and I both listened to Canon Jenkins's lectures on the Theodosian code.
Mr. Brooke:
A debate of this sort is improved and enhanced by intelligence such as I have just received from my right hon. Friend, especially given the subject that we are discussing.
18 Dec 1996 : Column 1008
The last time that I offered my right hon. and hon. Friends on the Front Bench my participation in the Committee stage of a Bill, I am sorry to say that it was refused. I am therefore a little diffident about making the offer again, but the Bill is sufficiently important to me that I am happy to swallow my pride and do so. However, I should not sail under false colours, and I shall close with a brief word about museum charges, because they have been mentioned in the debate already.
I have no inherent objection to the principle of museum charges per se, but a distinction should conceivably be made between museums about whether charges are desirable. I am delighted that huge numbers of people visit our museums in London. We are periodically told by journalists how much better the French order such matters with the Louvre, but it is significant that far more people visit museums in London than visit museums in Paris.
Mr. Sproat:
I wish to respond briefly to some of the points made in this interesting, if short, debate. In particular, I wish to thank all those right hon. and hon. Members, starting with the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central (Mr. Fisher), who gave a strong, warm, general welcome to the Bill. I will return in a moment to the charging issue, which was the one area of mildly abrasive acrimony within our gentle debate--I am sure that we shall also return to it in Committee--but first I wish to thank the hon. Gentleman for his warm support for the Bill. He continued the tradition started in the other place, where the Bill was first debated.
The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central also raised an interesting point about nature conservation. The national heritage memorial fund is keen to support a wider range of nature conservation projects and the Bill will enable it to do so. Funding will be available, for example, for projects involving conservation of rare species, flora and fauna, and so on. He chose a good example of the widening of the activities of the national heritage memorial fund which it was not able to undertake under the rather restrictive definitions of the National Heritage Act 1980.
My hon. Friend the Member for Calder Valley(Sir D. Thompson) raised the question of war memorials, which the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central also mentioned. It would be possible to help war memorials under the present dispensation, but it may be that the widening of the Bill and the psychological increase in the feeling that more causes can be supported will enable war memorials to receive the care and attention that my hon. Friend mentioned that they need. I hope that we shall return to that important example in greater detail in Committee.
18 Dec 1996 : Column 1009
The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central mentioned the case of privately owned cinemas and industrial premises, and asked whether they would be covered in the Bill. The answer is a firm yes. He also mentioned the case of Leigh mills, and I agree with him. I have been to Leigh mills, although it was some time ago and I cannot remember the exact details. I believe that the building in its present form was built in about 1921 or 1922. I remember that the upper windows are of the architecture of that time. If a building is listed, the owner has to keep it up, which subtracts money from his business and employment. Listing is a difficult area, and Leigh mills is a good example of the problems that arise. It is the sort of case that we should examine in Committee.
The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central talked about the clawback. It is not a hypothetical issue. As I said in my opening speech, English Heritage already provides grants to private owners, and there has been a clawback on several occasions. I have looked through the list and, from memory, the biggest clawback in the past few years was £5,500. Sometimes it was £276 or £330. It was nearly always for the sale of a property, although in one case it was for the sale of land. The point is that it has been done, it could be done again and it should be done with rigour. If it is done, that is how it will occur. I give the hon. Gentleman the assurance that he seeks in that area.
I turn now to the British museum and to the points raised by the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central and subsequently by the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan). The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central spoke about the excellence of the British museum. No one doubts the excellence of its scholarship--particularly that of Dr. Anderson, who is of world calibre. However, the mildly disagreeable comments that I made were not my views but those of the Edwards report. The Government did not ask the British museum to conduct an inquiry: the British museum trustees commissioned Mr. Edwards to do it. He found that there were deep and long-standing flaws in the museum's financial and general management, in its organisation and in its general efficiency.
I did not know that the matter would be raised tonight, so I have not refreshed my memory regarding the figures. However, I recall that there has been a 76 per cent. increase in the number of curatorial staff since 1972. That is just one example of the trustees not exercising the kind of control that they might have wished over an expanding staff. My right hon. Friend the Member for Conwy (Sir Wyn Roberts) pointed out that, even if charges were introduced, redundancies might still be necessary. That is the view of the Edwards report, not of the Government. It would be extremely sad, but there is a direct correlation between the lax grip on management in the 1970s and the state of the museum today. I am informed that the figure was not 76 per cent. but 70 per cent.--so my memory is not too bad.
The point is that the British museum trustees must decide whether to charge for admission. I know that the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland does not agree with that, but the Government believe that such decisions must be left to the trustees. I have a scrap of
18 Dec 1996 : Column 1010
There is no question of the Government favouring those museums which charge. It is fair to make that assertion, but it is equally fair for me to refute it utterly. Museums received grant increases this year on the basis of how well they were run--it had absolutely nothing to do with whether or not they charged. I put it to the House and to any fair-minded person that I could not go to Sir Neil Cossens--who has run a very tight ship at the Science museum in the past few years--and say, "Although you have done wonderfully well for your museum, and the British museum is in such a state that it has set up its own inquiry to investigate what has gone wrong, we will not reward you for doing well: we will take money from you and give it to someone who has not done his duty".
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |