Examination of Witnesses (Questions 380
- 399)
WEDNESDAY 12 JULY 2000
LORD FALCONER
OF THOROTON,
MR BRIAN
LEONARD AND
MS CLARE
PILLMAN OBE
Ms Ward
380. When Mr Gerbeau came before the Committee,
he made it very clear that, as far as he was concerned, NMEC had
sufficient funds to get them to the end of the year. Are you as
confident?
(Lord Falconer of Thoroton) To get to the end of the
year depends on three things, (1) revenue, which means the visitors
we are going to get; (2) costs, and there need to be some cost
savings, obviously; and (3) what we get from the legacy. I am
confident that there will be enough from those sources to make
sure we meet our budget and get to the end of the year.
381. So you do not anticipate a return to the
Commission to ask for more money?
(Lord Falconer of Thoroton) I think it would be extremely
difficult now for there to be any suggestion that there be any
additional payment to the Dome. It has to get by, as it were,
out of its own resources. I think the legacy competition, which
will inevitably involve there being an agreement to make a payment
to the Dome, will mean that it will have an asset which it can
then use, as it were, to make sure it can get through to the end
of the year.
382. So can we take it there will be no return
to the Commission to ask for more money?
(Lord Falconer of Thoroton) The three sources I have
indicated will make sure we get to the end of the year.
383. When Jennie Page came before the Committee,
her comment was that she had suggested to ministers that it would
be in their interests and the interests of the Dome if there was
a little bit more space between them. Were you part of those discussions?
(Lord Falconer of Thoroton) Jennie and I had many
discussions about the role of the politician and the role of the
people involved in the Dome. Everybody, including myself, recognised
that the less political controversy there was and the more there
was a focus on it being a visitor attraction the better from the
point of view of the Dome, but we equally recognised—and
Jennie and I were in complete agreement on this—that try
as one might, it very frequently was impossible to avoid political
controversy about the Dome. Jennie said in her evidence that,
right from the inception of the Dome, it had been a matter of
political controversy because it had been associated with individual
members of both Governments. We both wanted it stepped back from
political controversy but we found it was not altogether possible.
384. Would you have found it easier to allow
the design team to take full responsibility for the contents without
you being involved?
(Lord Falconer of Thoroton) They were the people who
decided on the contents. They would keep us informed as to what
was going on in relation to it but they were the people actually
designing it. This was a Dome company-driven design process. The
problems, I suspect, were not about them making the decisions
about the designs; it was the fact that there was lots and lots
of criticism about the decision to start in the first place with
the Dome and then what happened subsequently in relation to the
expenditure of money.
385. Did you ever veto any of the contents put
forward?
(Lord Falconer of Thoroton) No, I never vetoed any
of the contents. I certainly discussed them; I never vetoed any
of them.
386. In that discussion, did you put forward
very strong opinions about the contents?
(Lord Falconer of Thoroton) No, I did not have very
strong opinions about the contents. I expressed views about the
contents but I certainly did not veto them.
387. So you think the question of contents was
not a matter for the politicians, but very much the product of
the design team?
(Lord Falconer of Thoroton) I think the detailed design
of the contents is plainly a matter for the design team. Obviously
we, politically, are accountable, just as the previous Government
was accountable, for the Dome overall and one of the things I
am accountable to Parliament for is what is actually in the Dome
but that does not mean, it seems to me, that the politicians or
officials should seek to try and, as it were, take part in designing
what is in the Dome.
388. PY Gerbeau has suggested in his interviews
over the weekend that at the end of the year he will "tell
all", and will perhaps name those people he believes were
responsible for the problems that the Dome has. Are you worried?
(Lord Falconer of Thoroton) I am not worried, no.
I think PY is completely committed to making the Dome a success.
He has come from a pure visitor attraction background into something
that has a very strong political controversy around it and I fully
sympathise with PY having not only to run the Dome on the day-to-day
basis but also to deal with all the politics that go with it.
389. So there is no term in Mr Gerbeau's contract
requiring him to keep confidentiality at the end of the day?
(Lord Falconer of Thoroton) No. There will be the
usual commercial confidentiality but he will be free to speak
at the end of the year.
390. And finally, when Jennie Page was here,
she mentioned the problems of the school children and the additional
one million free tickets that were given to school children. The
suggestion was that that was a late idea and that it caused some
of the problems in terms of visitor numbers?
(Lord Falconer of Thoroton) Well, the million free
school children was agreed at the time the price structure was
agreed for the Dome by which I mean what people paid to come in
and I think that was agreed in or about April or May of 1999.
It was agreed on the basis that we were determined that, whilst
the Dome did have to get revenue from visitors, it should, within
that context, reach out as much as possible to people who might
not otherwise think of coming to the Dome. If we made available
a lot of free school children places that would lead to schools
which might not otherwise think of it agreeing to arrange school
trips to go and that is what has happened in large measure. Whether
the school children who go on those free trips then go back and
tell their parents "Let's go to it", or whether they
do not come on a paying basis, I have no idea. Jennie said anecdotally
there was some suggestion that they did not come back on a paying
basis; some people I have spoken to—and, again, it is only
anecdotal—say the children, once they have been, urged their
parents to go, so it is impossible to tell what the effect on
the visitor numbers has been but the reasoning behind it was a
determination to reach out to people who would not otherwise go
to the Dome.
391. But the figures we got from Mr Gerbeau
suggested that, of the million free school tickets, only 700,000
or so had actually been taken up. Are you a little concerned that
those 300,000 free places for children have not been taken up?
(Lord Falconer of Thoroton) Once one sees the figures
go down from the original estimate of 12 million to the lower
figures that are now estimated it is not perhaps surprising that
the free school children go down as well in relation to that.
I can also understand the Dome being keen to market particularly
the £8 school children trip at the moment—for reasons
that are obvious.
392. Quite, except if you are running a school
budget you will not want to pay £8 a head when you are entitled
to free tickets?
(Lord Falconer of Thoroton) No, but the free tickets
are still available. Anybody who wants a free school children
trip is able to apply in relation to it.
Chairman
393. It is worth listening to some of the questions
put and some of the answers to take advantage of your presence
to set certain things in context, is it not? For example Claire
Ward has just asked about free school trips and some of these
have been discounted from the attendance fee figures. What do
you believe the reaction of some newspapers would have been if
you had said there would not have been any free school trips?
(Lord Falconer of Thoroton) I think there would have
been an unfavourable reaction to that and it would have been a
matter of criticism of the Dome.
394. Secondly, I questioned you earlier—and
I questioned Jennie Page and Mr Gerbeau as well about this—about
the problems with regard to visitor attractions but is it not
a fact that what you have was a totally unique challenge; that
Disneyland, Paris, run by people with huge experience of theme
parks, was such a disaster to begin with they had to close it
down and start it all over again, whereas you had to start on
a given date, keep going and keep going for a whole year. Others
do not do that. Again, if one looks at some of the Millennium
projects started under the previous Government and mid-1990s,
some of them were way over budget and over timescale. This was
delivered on budget, and to time. Compare that with the British
Library, for example.
(Lord Falconer of Thoroton) Yes.
395. While I certainly would not for a moment
minimise the problems and the mistakes that have been made, have
not some of those mistakes stemmed from the unique nature of this
project?
(Lord Falconer of Thoroton) Yes, and also that what
the Dome has been trying to do is build an attraction, build revenue
and build visitor numbers in a year without the sort of brand
that, for example, Disneyland has. Even Disneyland, which has
a very clear identification in the public mind as to what it was,
took a period of three or four years to get its Paris operation
to a level where it was a thriving commercial attraction. I think
the context you set, Chairman, is very important because what
we have achieved is we are now ahead of any other pay-to-visit
attraction in the United Kingdom, so we have already received
more paying visitors in the year 2000 than the next most popular
pay-to-visit attraction in the United Kingdom, and I think that
is quite an achievement.
396. When I visited Disneyland I found I did
not go on a lot of the attractions because the queues were too
big. A successful visitor attraction has queues and this project
has been attacked, on the one hand, for having queues too big
and, on the other, for not having queues at all?
(Lord Falconer of Thoroton) That is right. We have
tried to keep the queues down and Mr Gerbeau has made real progress
in keeping the queues to a minimum. I know you have all been,
or most of you have, quite recently and it is a pleasant, easy
experience for the visitor.
397. And again, it would be interesting to know,
we were told by previous witnesses that the impractical visitor
targets—14 million all told, 30 million at one stage—were
all started when the Dome was conceived, long before it was inherited
by the present Government. Again, without underestimating in any
way the errors that have been made and the problems that have
arisen, is it not a bit barmy for anybody to start off with a
huge figure for this attraction? I am Jewish and we have a horror
of the evil eye. We will not forecast what is going to happen
in case the evil eye descends on us and we are judged on that
basis, and those 30 million and 40 million and 12 million figures
which you inherited you are going to be judged by.
(Lord Falconer of Thoroton) That is right. The 12
million figure was there by March 1997 when the budget was put.
Ultimately, though, a figure had to be put on it because budgeting
had to be done before the venture was embarked upon.
Mr Keen
398. Could you help us through the decision-making
process? How was it decided that there would be a company to run
it?
(Lord Falconer of Thoroton) The structure of a company
with a board, an ordinary Companies Act company and a shareholder—the
shareholder to be the Government—was decided by the previous
Government. It was decided that that structure would be adopted
because, although the previous Government had made efforts to
get genuine private sector investment into running the Dome, they
failed to do it. It was therefore decided that it would be dealt
with by this private type structure with money coming from the
Millennium Commission. That was decided in 1996.
399. When was it decided that the chief executive
should be Jennie Page?
(Lord Falconer of Thoroton) There were a number of
chief executives before Jennie Page. Jennie Page became the chief
executive in January 1997 and she came over from the Millennium
Commission where she had been the secretary or the director of
the Millennium Commission before that.
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