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Mr. Robert Key (Salisbury): The hon. Lady is right in saying that cultural heritage is part of the general heritage. Is not the case of the Isle of Eigg, however, similar to that of the Isle of Raasay, or that of the Scilly islands off Cornwall? What matters is the sustainable development that can be encouraged on those islands, rather than the question of ownership. The infamous Dr. Green on Raasay was a prime example of the same thing more than 30 years ago. Encouraging the economic life of the community is more important than ownership.
Ms Cunningham: That may be so in theory, but our experience in Scotland tells us that it is not necessarily so in practice. Certainly, the Assynt crofters have built a far more sustainable future for Assynt than they had under the previous ownership, and so far the individual ownership of the Isle of Eigg has not so far shown the possibility to which the hon. Gentleman refers.
The people who live on Eigg put up with an extraordinary position for a long time. Only then did they decide that the only answer for the future was to buy the island as a community. They are, in a sense, following the precedent laid down by the Assynt crofters, although the land ownership and the issues are different. We should allow this development to take place. I shall be interested to hear the Government's response, especially in the light of Miss Case's view that under the Bill, even as it stands, the people cannot really be included in the concept of heritage. I know that views may differ, but in the absence of any clear guideline I intend to press the amendment.
Mr. Brian Wilson (Cunninghame, North):
I support the principle of the amendment, which is interesting in an historical context. The national heritage memorial fund did not appear out of thin air: it has a distinguished pedigree which, sadly, has been largely forgotten in the course of time. Its origins lie in the
Mr. John McFall (Dumbarton)
rose--
Mr. Wilson:
I think I know what my hon. Friend has to say.
Mr. McFall:
My hon. Friend will remember that one of the first uses to which the fund was put was to purchase land on Ben Lomond and Loch Lomond. Fifty years later, there has still not been any progress in that area. My hon. Friend will correct me if I am wrong.
"better than any work of art in stone or bronze."--[Official Report, 9 April 1946; Vol. 421, c. 1840.]
The purpose of the national land fund was to acquire properties for the enjoyment of the nation and to ensure access for the enjoyment of the nation. The fund's achievements in its early years were stunning. Many properties and areas of land were bought for the nation in that period, and they are still enjoyed by the common people of every part of the United Kingdom.
7 pm
Mr. Wilson: I think that my hon. Friend is right. The one that I was thinking of, which I believe is in his constituency, was Rowardennan--
Mr. McFall: The same property.
Mr. Wilson: It is the same property. It was bought for access by people, and particularly for the Scottish Youth Hostels Association, I believe. There is a long list. It was a fantastic period of acquisition, but not for the state--that is the important point--which used its interventionist role to acquire the land and property for third parties. The Balmacara estate in Lochalsh is another obvious example. It was bought through the national land fund and handed over to the National Trust for Scotland. Throughout Britain, such properties were acquired.
I need hardly say that the Tories hated the concept from the outset. They resisted the setting up of the national land fund. They were not interested in war memorials which took the form of giving ordinary people access to the land. Stone and bronze might be all right, but certainly not land, so the Tories opposed the setting up of the fund, and when they inherited power in 1951 they set about destroying it.
Initially the Tories did that by stealth. They allowed the national land fund to fall into disuse and there were no further acquisitions. Then, around 1955, Peter Thorneycroft in his Budget robbed the fund of its assets and returned them to the Exchequer, leaving a small fraction of what had originally been there. The Tories then slipped through an important clause which allowed the fund to acquire not only land and property, but the contents of property. In that way, with one piece of sleight of hand the national land fund was transformed from a land fund, as its name suggested, into an arts fund. It became a slush fund for the owners of stately homes and other properties. It was used for buying works of art and as a subsidy for the people who had such things to sell.
The Tories changed the fund's name to the national heritage fund and in the fulness of time that became the national heritage memorial fund, which in turn spawned the national heritage lottery fund, so there is a straight continuum.
Sir Hector Monro (Dumfries):
May I put the hon. Gentleman right? I took the legislation through the House in 1979 or 1980. The word "memorial" was added in Committee because we wanted to mark the relationship with those who had given their lives in the war. That was an important step. I am not saying that what the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross (Ms Cunningham) says in principle may not be right, but it would be worrying to change the principle of that legislation without more detailed consultation than we are having today.
Mr. Wilson:
The right hon. Gentleman can rest assured that we are not going to change the legislation tonight without having more detailed consideration, but it is an important marker to lay down. I have sufficient respect for the right hon. Gentleman to think that it may well have been he who did it. After a 40-year gap, the concept of "memorial" was restored to the fund. It is an important reminder that its origins, as I am sure he would endorse, were as a memorial fund to buy land for the enjoyment of the nation.
Until recent years, the national heritage memorial fund would not consider the acquisition of land. It has been an advance that in recent years it has been prepared to recognise that land is a vital part of the national heritage and it has supported some important acquisitions on that basis. It has supported the acquisition of Strathaird on Skye by the John Muir trust, Glen Feshie in the Cairngorms and other lands of which the right hon. Member for Dumfries (Sir H. Monro) is well aware.
That is good, but the fund still has to demonstrate a case in terms of the environment to have an interventionist role. The proposition that it should be able to intervene on social as well as environmental grounds is modest superficially, but has far-reaching consequences because it would be a device whereby Government could intervene to rescue not only communities such as Eigg, which has been mentioned, but many others, where there is a will and a need for community ownership as the only device for sustaining the economy and the social fabric of the region. But the money simply is not available.
In other words, the fund could act as an interventionist instrument in the market for land. On that basis, it is an admirable concept to promote. I have advocated it in the past and I hope to do so again, but the key to the whole land question is that there must be ways of intervening in the market and that the highest bidder must not be allowed to prevail because the record of the highest bidder has been disastrous in many areas.
For many years, Eigg was under the benign ownership of the Runciman shipping family, but paradoxically, just as with the Horlicks in Gigha or other benevolent landowners, it is they who best demonstrate the weakness of the system because, inevitably, the benevolent landowner dies and every time that happens the lottery starts all over again and the community do not know who they are going to end up with.
Eigg ended up initially with a terrible man called Farnham-Smith, an imposter who claimed to be a commander. It turned out eventually that he had once been
a very junior officer in the London fire brigade, but by then he had scammed public money and visited a terrible blight on Eigg--followed by Schellenberg and Maruma, and we all know that story.
However, Eigg is not an isolated example, but a general principle. There must be means of intervening in the land market. The one that we are discussing is interesting and has great potential and my main purpose in rising to speak was to point out that it has a strong and important historical pedigree.
Mr. Robert Maclennan (Caithness and Sutherland):
As so often in these matters, I find myself in considerable agreement with the hon. Member for Cunninghame, North (Mr. Wilson), although I notice that he can speak with authority about the power of ownership--in his case, the power of the ownership of the press, which he never hesitates to use to the full to attack people who happen not to belong to his political party. I go along entirely with him in rebutting the arguments of the hon. Member for Salisbury (Mr. Key), who suggested that ownership was not a significant factor in considering land matters.
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