Examination of Witnesses (Questions 120
- 139)
WEDNESDAY 23 OCTOBER 2002
RT HON
TESSA JOWELL,
RT HON
BARONESS BLACKSTONE
AND MR
RICHARD HARTMAN
120. As against the £8 million that they
would have received if they had charged.
(Tessa Jowell) The other museums that previously charged
and then went free were compensated for the income that they had
lost by charging, so in effect they either get the income from
charges or they got it from the compensation package, so they
did not make a profit from having been previously charging museums
that then went free. I know this is an argument that the British
Museum regularly make, but I do not think it is an argument which
is actually sustained in practice. The source of their financial
pain really has been the impact of the drop in visitor numbers
since September 11.
(Baroness Blackstone) I would simply add that the
trustees and indeed the previous directors of the British Museum
have always wanted to be free, and have always been committed
to being free, and they have always run themselves on that basis.
I would like to add, coming back to Michael Fabricant's question,
that the British Museum does need to modernise, and I think that
the new Director and the new Chairman recognise that, and they
are doing it. Just to add one area where this modernisation is
taking place, which Tessa did not mention, they are looking at
their governance, and they are coming up with a new structure
which will, I think, make them more efficient and better run.
121. Can I move on to the general question of
funding. I am sure as ministers you will always get complaints
that there is not enough money, and of course, we understand that,
but I am interested in the process. We have had fairly clear evidence
today that the process seems to lack transparency, is fairly opaque.
There are clearly discussions between ministers and trustees and
officials of the various museums, but there does not seem to be
any clear sense of a long-term strategy; there does not seem to
be any clear sense that there are targets. I understand that there
are political targets, and I separate these out from the running
of the enterprise. It is quite clear how important these institutions
are, not just culturally but to the UK economy generally, and
there is a sense that when the awards are made, as yesterday's
was made, there is no sense of what is in the Department's mind,
what has resulted in the level of the awards that have been made,
how the museums have achieved what they have achieved or failed
to achieve what they wanted to achieve.
(Tessa Jowell) I do not accept that that is fair.
The settlement that we announced yesterday represented the second
stage of reversing the long-term trend in the decline in funding
for regional and functional museums, and the museums are now set.
Remember, in government financial planning you plan on a three-year
cycle. We plan everything on a three-year cycle, and national
museums and galleries funding is no different from that. What
most of them had yesterday was the three-year funding profile,
a real terms increase of 1.5 per cent in 2004-05, and a real terms
increase of 2.5 per cent in 2005-06. The level of capital that
is allocated will of course vary, and that will depend on their
needs. There are three principles that guided both the amount
and the allocations: first of all, what museums needed; secondly,
safeguarding the policy of free access; and thirdly, ensuring
that the core requirements of the museums and galleries were met.
Reaching that settlement was the result of quite a lot of discussion
over the last months with them and obviously negotiation with
the Public Expenditure Committee, negotiation with the Treasury
and also negotiation with the Department for Education and Skills
because we see the potential for growth in the educational role
of museums and galleries as one where further resources will become
available to them.
122. From the Department or from the DfES?
(Tessa Jowell) From both sources. If I can just take
your question in two parts. There will be further money available
to them, both to support partnerships between the national museums
and galleries and the regional museums. I think you may have heard
a little bit from the British Museum about some of their very
exciting ideas in this area. Secondly there will be more money
available from a joint pot which the Department has with DfES
as part of the enrichment programme for children in school.
123. How will that money be accessed?
(Tessa Jowell) We are working on that. The extent
to which it is accessed through resource, the extent to which
it is accessed directly from the Department, is the detailed element
of the settlement that we are working on still. We have settled
on the broad indicative figures, we have to settle now on how
the money will be allocated and specifically for what purposes
that it is going to be allocated. As you know the regional museums
and galleries will be engaged in a programme of quite radical
modernisation as part of Renaissance in the Regions over
the next three years.
Chairman
124. Did Lady Blackstone want to add something?
(Baroness Blackstone) What I would like to do is just
to add to what Tessa has said and respond quite robustly to the
questions you have asked us where you have been quite straight
forward in suggesting that we do not have a long term strategy,
we do not have a clear view as to where we should go with the
museums and galleries.
Mr Doran
125. I am not suggesting it is not transparent.
(Baroness Blackstone) I think we are absolutely clear.
First of all they are very important to the UK economy because
cultural tourism is very important to the UK economy and becoming
more important. Also I think they are very important from the
point of view of UK culture. They embody a great deal about our
history and the nature of our community and as such they should
be cherished and protected and that is what we are doing. Basically
what we have done is to stop the rot that had set in in the first
half of the 1990s when there was a 15 per cent real terms decrease
in their funding over a period of five or six years. In the last
Government we put in then a 17 per cent increase. We are sustaining
that increase. The funding is in the museum and galleries' base
line. We have been able in the spending review which has just
been agreed—and our announcement yesterday—to give
a further increase on top of that which will allow the museums
to do the scholarship and the conservation that they have to do
to sustain these great collections. It will allow them to run
good educational programmes and there is funding to sustain free
access which we believe is important so everybody can see our
great national collections which belong to the people.
(Tessa Jowell) Could I just add one final postscript
to this which is the relationship between the Department and the
museums and galleries which I think we all feel at the moment
is overly prescriptive. We are in the process of negotiating with
museums and galleries greater flexibility, greater freedom on
the basis of the evidence of their performance. This is part of
what we call the touchstone programme which is the modernisation
programme for the relationship between my Department and the range
of non departmental public bodies which include museums and galleries.
Mr Bryant
126. For my mind the free admissions policy
has been one of the most successful things that the Government
has done, not just here in England but also in Wales. I think
it has seen a significant expansion in the number of people who
have gone to museums and even if that is the same people going
four times rather than going once I think that is a good thing.
The more people who have access to the great cultural exhibits
of the world, that can only be a good thing. My experience in
Wales—and I do not ask you to answer on behalf of Wales,
as it were, but I wonder if the same is true of museums that you
work with—is that the national museums have seen a significant
increase but where they are in direct competition with other museums
which are not national museums there can then be a significant
income problem for those other museums. In my own case the Rhondda
Heritage Museum is a local authority run museum, it is in direct
competition with the Big Pit which is a national museum Wales.
They are almost identical and what has happened is there has been
a migration from one to the other. Is that a problem in England?
Miss Kirkbride: Yes.
(Tessa Jowell) Yes, I think it is a problem and that
is in part why Renaissance in the Regions is such an important
programme. There are different regimes. There are local authority
museums which are free. There are some local authority museums
which charge. There is an inconsistent regime and there are inconsistent
levels of funding. But Renaissance in the Regions with
the money that we announced yesterday will fund a restructuring
of those museums. As I have referred to also we have allocated
money which will be available for partnerships between the national
museums and regional museums in order to develop more collaboration,
particularly through sharing of people skills, sharing of collections
and so forth. Yes, regional museums have been very run down. For
all of the view which may prevail that the money that we have
secured for Renaissance in the Regions is not enough just
remember that before the new £10 million came on stream at
the beginning of this financial year something like £2 million
a year was spent by my Department on all the regional museums.
That is set to increase cumulatively by £70 million over
the period of the next spending round.
Mr Bryant
127. Can I ask a tiny question which is about
university museums and whether it is not the time now that we
do away with the anomaly regarding the 1994 VAT amendment?
(Baroness Blackstone) When we announced free access
to the national museums and galleries it was made absolutely clear
that there would have to be some ring fencing around those national
collections and that it would not be possible to afford to provide
for the university museums the same change in their VAT regime
that had been provided for the previously free national museums.
I think of course there is a case for this extension but I think
that it does raise a lot of issues in terms of how the VAT regime
is applied which I think the Treasury would argue are very difficult
to deal with in relation to EU rules. So I think that there are
problems in this particular area.
Chairman: Could I just say Lady Blackstone
is being particularly diplomatic about this because the problem
is with the Treasury. Tony Lloyd and I went to see the Chief Secretary
about this because of the anomalies relating to university museums
in Manchester. All governments, particularly in Treasury, are
terrified of what they call repercussive effects and that is why
they have slammed the drawbridge up on this one.
Mr Bryant: Can you slam a drawbridge
up?
Chairman: You can indeed.
Mr Bryant: Do not do it on me now, Chairman,
because I have got another very important question.
Chairman: All your questions are important.
Mr Bryant: No, that is not true, Chairman.
Quite a lot of the national museums are in the posher places in
Britain and some are not, such as the Imperial War Museum and
the Geffrye Museum.
Michael Fabricant: That will lower house
prices.
Mr Bryant
128. As somebody who used to be on the board
of the Geffrye Museum, one of the constant problems was trying
to make the Geffrye Museum—and I suspect also the Imperial
War Museum—live within its own community. I wonder whether
there is more we can do to enable those museums to do that, whether
there is still further work about extending the other great museums
which are in the posh places of Britain to enable them to diversify
their work into the rest of Britain?
(Baroness Blackstone) First of all, the Geffrye Museum
is a museum I happened to visit just about two weeks ago.
129. It is a cracking museum.
(Baroness Blackstone) I know it well because when
I was Deputy Education Officer in the ILEA I had responsibility
for both the Geffrye and the Horniman Museum in Lewisham. I think
it does a fantastic job working its local community. It is mainly
focused on educational programmes for primary, particularly primary
but also some secondary school children. Of course it could always
do more but it has greatly extended its imprint. It has a fantastic
new gallery and it has managed to raise money not just from Government
but also from sponsors who have supported it. I think the same
goes for the Imperial War Museum which again has worked very,
very closely with its local community mainly through its educational
programmes. What I think is terribly important is that all the
national museums and galleries that have very substantial collections
should work with those other museums and galleries which do not
have (a) such big and valuable collections but (b) some of the
other resources they have in terms of the skills of their staff.
We would like to see far more collaborative programmes within
the national museums and galleries sector but equally, and perhaps
even more important, between the national museums and galleries
and the regional and local museums and galleries. Indeed, some
of the money that we are allocating during the spending round
is going to be held back so that the national museums and galleries
can work up new programmes working with the regions and lend their
expertise as well as their collections.
Ms Shipley
130. Secretary of State, the Director of the
Natural History Museum was extremely careful in his answering
of questions about free entry and my impression was he was equivocal
at best. Also he intimated that schools find it more difficult
to do visits now but he could not actually substantiate why. Also
he said that they do substantial regional outreach work. When
I said "Give me an example in the West Midlands" he
could not actually think of one. The Natural History Museum did
not know why it had a drop in C2, D and E visitors since free
admission. The final sort of rider at the end of the questioning
was that if basically you did not keep up funding the trustees
may well instigate charging again. Now given that this is a sponsored
museum, it is a national collection, what do you think about that?
(Tessa Jowell) Let me be absolutely clear about this.
The settlement that the museums and galleries were told of yesterday,
that we announced yesterday, is in part in order to maintain free
access. There is a quid pro quo in that these are publicly
funded bodies and the money that they get comes with strings attached
and one of the strings is that they maintain free entry. That
will be made very clear to them in the funding agreement that
will be settled over the next few weeks. They are all absolutely
clear about that.
131. Good. Would you say then, also, another
strings is that these C2, D and E visitors have dropped only in
the Natural History Museum? Is that something else that you will
be saying: "This should not be happening really, if the other
museums can manage it, you can manage it"?
(Tessa Jowell) I think that this is something which
we need to look very closely at. You will draw some conclusions
obviously in your report on this. We will look at this also because
investing as we have done in promoting free entry one of the very
explicit aims of doing that is to increase the diversity of visitors
to museums and galleries. I think we have got also to be clear
that this does not simply happen by hoping that it will happen.
You need to provide a structure for this greater participation
and I think that the three programmes that I have referred to—firstly
the scope for greater partnership between regional museums and
national museums is one part of that, secondly that creative partnerships
will extend to museums and galleries and there will be an instrumental
link to schools which are covered by creative partnerships and
thirdly the further pot of money that we will spend jointly with
the Department for Education—are ways of providing structure.
132. Good.
(Tessa Jowell) We attach great importance to it and
we will monitor the performance of museums and galleries in this
area very carefully indeed.
133. Moving over to the British Museum. It does
a lot of educational stuff but it does not get funding from the
Education Department; should it?
(Tessa Jowell) I think again there will be scope for
increasing the amount of money available to them for education
subject to successful bids against the further streams of money
that I have identified.
134. There is generalised education, people
like me going in and being educated.
(Tessa Jowell) Exactly.
135. Then there is specific schools education
for example or universities education. Would there be an argument
that you could support which would say "the Department for
Education actually should be physically funding, very much related
to education institutions, contributions to museums"?
(Tessa Jowell) The money which we will spend jointly
with DfES is specifically in recognition of that, that museums
have got a very important role to play in enriching the curriculum
for children. I think that if you go to any of our national museums
and you look at some of the exhibitions you will see that they
are very specifically targeted at schools, targeted in imaginative
ways at the different key stages of the curriculum. They are doing
that and I think that through particularly the two schooling steps
that I identified we will improve the structure through which
that is delivered.
John Thurso
136. Can I preface my question by saying I do
not think there is anybody in this room who would not associate
themselves with Lady Blackstone's remarks regarding the importance
of our great institutions, particularly culturally but also as
you mentioned with regard to tourism. There is a clear recognition
that they were woefully underfunded for many years and there has
been catch up. I think where we all part company is has the catch
up been enough. What I would like to come back to is the question
Frank Doran was putting in relation to the process. I would like,
if I may, to be reasonably specific because if you get into the
detail you begin to understand the thing better and that is with
regard to the Natural History Museum. It might be that it is Mr
Hartman who is best placed to answer this. What is the actual
precise process by which you communicate with the Natural History
Museum to receive whatever input they want to give you prior to
funding being decided and what is the process by which you communicate?
In other words, is this a dialogue, a negotiation, what happens?
(Mr Hartman) Yes, it is a dialogue. Essentially what
happens is that, first of all, we write out to them and ask them
to set out what they feel their particular needs are because first
of all when we are addressing core funding the issue is what are
the needs of the institution, what are your priorities, so we
ask them that. Then we take our discussions on from there essentially.
Finally there are eventually discussions with ministers.
137. When those decisions have been made, what
happens in communicating the whys and wherefores of the decisions?
Presumably you do not tick every box or the minister decides certain
boxes do not get ticks.
(Mr Hartman) Yes.
138. What is the process of decision and dialogue?
(Mr Hartman) Quite often we have a washing up session
with each of our institutions, usually separate but at official
level, to discuss the consequences of what this will mean for
the longer term, whether there are going to be any further problems
emerging, and just to generally get feedback which we report back
then to our ministers.
(Baroness Blackstone) Could I just add to that very
briefly that I did have a meeting with representatives of the
National Museums and Galleries back in the summer to discuss with
them our priorities, their priorities and get some feedback as
to what they thought were the most important aspects of their
programmes over the next three years where they believed they
needed funding.
139. Why I wanted to find out your views of
how you thought the process was working is that I asked very similar
questions of Sir Neil Chalmers and his actual quote to me was
that he had no understanding of how the figures were arrived at
and gave further evidence that the Government's objectives, the
four objectives in the letter sent out yesterday, were highly
laudable, absolutely correct, no argument about them, but there
was not dialogue about how those fitted in to the ten year vision
which the institution had or the rolling business plan. There
seems to be a very clear lack of dialogue and communication, at
least in perception if not in reality. Is that something that
we can address because clearly one of the primary things Parliament
can do is actually debate the vision so it can be agreed to prior
to the resource being applied. It seems at the moment that the
resource is made available and that drives the objectives that
come from that rather than us all deciding "These are our
objectives, now when can we fund them".
(Tessa Jowell) I think there are two or three points
in relation to that. First of all these are our sponsor museums
and galleries but as I said a few moments ago we set down the
ground rules which govern our funding of them, in most cases funding
comes also from other sources. So the museums and galleries have
more resources available to them than just what the Government
provides. The three conditions which I indicated are the terms
of Government funding and then there is the process of monitoring
against performance measures. Secondly, consistent with the safeguarding
and delivery of those objectives, we are keen to minimise the
amount of day to day control by my Department in the running of
museums and galleries. The third point is that in Government we
operate on a three year funding cycle, certainly where Lottery
money is invested over and above mainstream Exchequer funding.
Of course we engage with the trustees and with the executive staff
in the longer term vision but I think it is important to remember
that they are free to develop a longer term vision which is a
freedom that extends beyond that having to be signed off in every
detail by Government.
| 
