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Mr. Efford: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Baker: No, I shall finish my remarks.
If a committee designs an animal, it comes up with a camel. The dome is all right, but it could have been so much better. It is not worth £758 million. It is not the icon that it has been talked up to be. The Government are not wholly responsible for that, but they had a role in it. Some serious questions have been asked in the House tonight, which the Minister has a duty to answer when she comes to the Dispatch Box.
9.10 pm
Ms Claire Ward (Watford): I am amazed by the Opposition's choice of subject for this debate. It represents political opportunism of the worst kind on the part of the Conservatives. They are exploiting what was a cross-party venture, yet apart from the hon. Member for Westbury (Mr. Faber) who has just wandered in, there were at one point in the debate only three hon. Members sitting on the Opposition Benches, including the Front Bench. That is rather strange. The Opposition initiated the debate, yet as a party they have no interest in attending or speaking in it.
The one speech that we heard from the Conservative Benches, from the right hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine), was positive in tone. It took a great deal of courage for the right hon. Gentleman to make that speech.
Mr. Michael Jabez Foster (Hastings and Rye): Was not the great distance between the right hon. Member for Henley and the rest of the Conservative party also significant?
Ms Ward: The right hon. Gentleman, who unfortunately is not present, is distant from his party not only on the subject of the dome, but on Europe, I am pleased to say.
The hon. Member for Lewes (Mr. Baker) spoke about parliamentary scrutiny. Perhaps he has forgotten that the Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport held a
number of inquiries into the millennium dome. There is no doubt that parliamentary scrutiny took place; there was even a debate in the Chamber on one of the Select Committee's reports.Those of us who started off with a degree of scepticism--I include myself among them--have been convinced by the project. As a member of the Select Committee, I was involved in quizzing the right hon. Member for Henley intensely on his ideas for the dome. At that time, I was not impressed, but as the project progressed over the past two to three years, it has developed into a good project that is right for the country.
It is right that we should have a focal point for the millennium, and there is no doubt that the millennium dome provides that focal point. We should be proud that the project has been delivered to target, on time and within the budget that was set. It was built with public money, not taxpayers' money, and that represents only one fifth of the total amount of money available to the Millennium Commission.
Whether or not hon. Members supported the millennium dome project at the beginning is no longer the issue. The dome exists, and it is viewed around the world as an emblem of Britain. We must make it work. No matter what the views were before, it is important to ensure that it does not fail now. That would not be in the interests of the lottery players who contributed the money. It is not in the country's interests for the dome to be perceived as failing when we are the focus of world attention. I hope that Opposition Members will reconsider their views.
Mr. Pound: France marked the millennium with the partial sponsorship of a yacht race, and in Germany there was a trade fair. Can my hon. Friend imagine the reaction of her constituents, mine and the people of this nation, if we had not had such an achievement as the dome?
Ms Ward: There were mixed reactions to the millennium dome in my constituency, as there were in my hon. Friend's. However, there are mixed reactions to a range of lottery projects. It is important that as well as providing a national focal point, the Millennium Commission funded a range of initiatives around the country that allowed people to celebrate the millennium in their communities.
The millennium dome has meant investment in what was a waste site in Greenwich, provided thousands of jobs and played an important part in regenerating that area. No one can deny that the dome has had a difficult start. We should not make excuses for the mishaps on the opening night. It is unacceptable for people to be kept waiting at Stratford station and not to receive their tickets on time. However, one incident is not a reason to criticise the dome for the rest of the year. Perhaps the lesson that we should learn is that it is not good public relations to keep six newspaper editors and their families waiting in the cold.
Some people have always wanted the millennium dome to fail. No matter what happened on millennium eve, the dome would have had its critics. It was interesting to read the newspapers in the first few days and weeks when the millennium dome was open. First, they criticised the queues and the fact that people had to wait a long time.
Then they criticised the dome for being empty. Newspapers cannot have it both ways. The dome is either a popular attraction that people want to visit--in which case, queues are to be expected--
Mr. Baker: Will the hon. Lady give way?
Ms Ward: I shall not give way, because of lack of time.
I challenge those who have criticised the queues to compare the dome with other attractions in the United Kingdom at this time of year. I have recommended that my friends not visit the dome in January, February or March, but wait until later, when the weather will be much better and the dome will have an improved programme in the form of other facilities that will be open on the site.
It was interesting to note the names of the six Opposition Members who tabled the motion. Only one of them is present at the moment. I wonder how many of them have visited the dome apart from on millennium eve, when, as I found, there was no opportunity to view all the zones. If those Opposition Members had visited the dome apart from on millennium eve, they would have realised that the proof of the pudding is in the eating, or in a day at the dome.
The independent MORI survey showed that 83 per cent. of those polled were very or fairly satisfied, and that 68 per cent. believed that the dome represented very or fairly good value for money. Furthermore, 26 per cent. of those questioned believed that the dome was much better than expected, 23 per cent. believed that it was somewhat better and 25 per cent. believed that it was about the same as they had expected. Many attractions in the United Kingdom would love to achieve such a response. More than half those questioned would definitely recommend a visit to the dome to a friend, a further quarter would probably do so and 92 per cent. rated the show in the centre good or very good.
Mr. David Faber (Westbury): If the hon. Lady thinks that the dome is such a success and everything is going so well at the moment, why did she and her fellow Labour MPs on the Select Committee reject my suggestion last week that we should reconsider it immediately?
Ms Ward: The hon. Gentleman knows very well why we decided not to hold another inquiry into the millennium dome. That is not to say that the Select Committee will not hold an inquiry--it has been said that we will and I am confident that one will take place--but this is not the right time. We should not hold an inquiry until we have considered both P-Y Gerbeau's new administration in office and the figures over a more reasonable period. The hon. Gentleman accepted that argument at the Select Committee meeting and I am most surprised that he has raised it in an attempt to cause difficulty. I am afraid that that will not work.
People of a good mix of ages have visited the millennium dome, and its links to the community--for example, the McDonald's our town and the Tesco school net--all show that it is a success and will continue to be so, no matter what the Opposition and one or two newspaper editors think. There are 10 months to go, and P-Y Gerbeau should have the nation's backing to make the project work.
I trust that hon. Members on both sides of the House will leave politics outside the dome and consider it a national event deserving of cross-party support, as at the beginning. The Conservatives had the original idea and I invite Opposition Members to listen to the right hon. Member for Henley and provide cross-party support where it is needed.
9.22 pm
Mr. Oliver Letwin (West Dorset): I confess to feeling a certain air of surrealism because the debate has been conducted largely in terms that might apply to a bingo parlour: it is marvellous that the dome got up on time, or a little dangerous that it took rather long; it is splendid that so many people visited, or a pity that so few attended. The same might be said of a popular television series or some such thing, but remarkably this particular object is not like such a series or a bingo hall. [Interruption.] I say to hon. Members who are amusing themselves that I do not have an interest in either of those items so I have probably used the wrong terms for them. However, the point is valid.
Ms Ward: Has the hon. Gentleman been to the dome?
Mr. Letwin: No, no. Not only have I not visited the dome, but I have absolutely no intention of doing so under any circumstances. I shall explain why.
The remarkable thing about these populist events, whose success or failure can be measured in terms of the number of people who do or do not visit them, is that people pay to see them and do so because they like them. I do not happen to like them. The public and the sponsors between them have not contributed £750 million. I know that we live in an age of inflation and that the Chancellor is spending an ever-greater proportion of our gross domestic product on numerous matters, but £750 million still strikes me as a lot of money. Were it invested, it would yield about £60 million a year on a modest appreciation. What would that sum support? Many things could be mentioned, but I want to attend to one in particular.
The Secretary of State, many Members on both sides of the House and I attended Cambridge university. What does it receive from the Higher Education Funding Council? About £60 million. What are we saying? A combination of public money via the lottery and the sponsors' money was used to fund this object, which I shall come to in a moment, in place of funding Cambridge university in perpetuity with as much again as it receives from the HEFC at present.
Whether many people went or did not go, whether schoolchildren did or did not get in and whether the Secretary of State or his Ministers were hopelessly at odds with reality when they thought they could make the thing work financially does not matter. What matters is that a colossal sum has been spent on something that is indeed--in the words of the motion--a "national embarrassment". It is a national embarrassment not because it does not work particularly well--which, goodness knows, it does not--or because the food is awful, or for some such trivial reason, but because it constitutes an extraordinary denial of the fundamental aspects of our culture that we should spend time applauding this dreadful object instead of applauding Cambridge university. I say "Cambridge university", but I could just as well name any other great university.
First, there is the question of how this object relates to our national past. In a great university, what is celebrated, what is taught and what it handed on to other generations is a heritage in the proper sense. It is a cultural heritage--something that is inherited, and in that sense a heritage--but also something that is worth having; something that is the foundation of our understanding of the world. In our great universities, however, there is also a conception of the future. [Interruption.] I am sorry; I did not hear what the hon. Member for Eltham (Mr. Efford) said from a sedentary position.
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