FIRST REPORT
The Culture, Media and Sport Committee
has agreed to the following Report:
NATIONAL MUSEUMS AND GALLERIES:
FUNDING AND FREE ADMISSION
"The price is what you pay; the value
is what you receive."
Anon
SUMMARY
1. The museums and galleries in the UK constitute
a treasure trove of artistic, cultural, historical and scientific
artefacts and expertise. Together they represent a living resource
that significantly enriches many people's lives and has the potential
to do so for many more. Moreover, this resource makes substantial
contributions to the welfare of the country as a whole, including
to education and lifelong learning (both formal and informal),
to the UK's attraction for overseas visitors (both scholars and
tourists) and to the country's high status in the world of science
and many other disciplines. Perhaps most importantly these institutions
are also fun and fascinating places to visit.
2. There are nearly 2000 registered museums and galleries
in the UK with about 1500 of these in England. They come in all
shapes and sizes covering a wide range of interests: from the
collective memory of mankind that is the British Museum; through
the eponymous specialty of the National Football Museum in Preston;
to the Silk Museum in Macclesfield with its focus on the history
of silk in relation to that town.[1]
There is also a wide range of ownership and funding sources. A
small, but very important, minority of these institutions are
directly funded by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.
It is these national museums and galleries which have been the
focus of action by the Government on admission policies and thus
are the focus of this Report.
3. Providing, maintaining and developing these key
national collections—the staff that protect and bring them
alive and the buildings, often cultural icons in their own right,
that house them—does not come cheap. In 1989-90 government
spending on directly sponsored museums and galleries was £153.6
million. In 2000-01, the last year before full free admission
and the associated compensation, the cash allocation was £228.5
million—£158.4 million in 1989-90 figures, an increase
of 3.1 per cent in real terms.[2]
These museums and galleries have also raised funding from additional
sources, including admission charges in some cases, and on average
this has amounted to about 27 per cent of revenue per year (varying
markedly across the range).[3]
4. In December 2001 the Government completed an incremental
policy shift that saw increased public investment committed to
the sponsored museums and galleries in exchange for the dropping
of admission fees by the independent trustees of those institutions
that previously charged for access to their core collections.
A considerable number of the museums and galleries in question
had in fact offered a significant range of concessions including
periods of free entry. Free admission had been achieved for children
in 1999 and for the over-60s in 2000.
5. The support for the principle of free admission
has been unanimous in the evidence we have received (albeit alongside
a range of thoughtful qualifications). We believe that free
admission for everyone to all the museums and galleries funded
by the Department is an excellent joint achievement by the Government
and the institutions involved and one which must not be allowed
to go astray. The chief risks are the deterioration of the real
value of public funding for these bodies and the reappearance
of stresses and pressures on museums and galleries that caused
some to introduce charging in the first place during the mid-1980s.
6. Abolishing all charges has had a welcome effect
on visitor numbers and the way people are using these resources.
The very worst outcome of all would be an, inevitably, acrimonious
reversal of this move by one or more institutions inflicting tremendous
damage to the public perception of the whole sector. We believe
that the Government must tackle the whole complex of issues which
is set out in this Report (and summarised below) but above all
it must commit itself to adequate, realistic and responsive funding
of its museums and galleries over the longer term. This is the
only way to consolidate the benefits achieved so far and realise
the full potential of these institutions to meet their own obligations
as well as contributing to the wider objectives of the Government.
Conclusions and recommendations
7. Our other key conclusions and recommendations
are summarised below.
(i) Most importantly the UK's museums
and galleries are fun and fascinating places to visit. (Paragraph
15)
(ii) We welcome the eminently sensible adjustment
to the Value-Added Tax regime which allows non-charging museums
and galleries to reclaim their input VAT despite not operating
formally as businesses. We note that free local authority museums
have been in this happy position since 1994 and we urge the Government
to take a final logical step in extending this provision to free
university museums. On the figures put forward by the Museums
Association this step should not prove unduly onerous to the Exchequer.
(Paragraph 23)
(iii) We believe that financial flexibility
should be included in the DCMS' programme for modernising its
relationship with museums and galleries. The Department should
consider whether limited freedoms to borrow for specific incomegenerating
projects might be beneficial to the museums and galleries and
cost-effective for the public purse. We believe that, with sufficient
riskmanagement provisions in place, such a course of action
would not prove incompatible with a rigorous public expenditure
process. (Paragraph 45)
(iv) The museums and galleries sponsored
by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport must receive sufficient
funding to avoid the situation which gave rise to the imposition
of admissions charges in the first place. This is absolutely crucial.
With the abolition of entry charges we believe that this funding
should, at least in part, be sensitive to a number of variables
such as the actual numbers of visitors to each institution—partly
to reward success, partly to recognise wear and tear. If additional
costs accrue to museums as a result of the free admissions initiative,
which we applaud, the Government must accept responsibility for
these consequences of its own policy. (Paragraph 48)
(v) Funding for the sponsored museums and
galleries should not be simply a matter of a two-yearly allocation
of three years' money with sporadic special requests between times.
There must be a more responsive process established including:
- access to funds from other departments whose
objectives are being served (such as, for example, the Department
for Education and Skills and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office);
and
- access to funds in recognition of the cost-implications
of new duties and responsibilities whether general or specific
to the sector or an individual institution. (Paragraph 49)
(vi) Museums and galleries must be better
funded in the sense that the current process for allocating funds,
described as "opaque" by the museums, should be modernised
as far as is realistic. Exchanges regarding each institution's
bid should be part of a transparent dialogue with clear links
to an over-arching strategic vision for each body agreed with
the Department which would reflect better the long-term business
of curatorial work. The burden of this process, however, must
be proportionate to the potential return. If in reality decisions
are dependent on the Treasury's fiat then either the Treasury
must be involved 'round a table' or the other parties really should
not waste each other's time. (Paragraph 50)
(vii) DCMS should certainly have taken the
lead in establishing appropriate methodologies for the collection
of visit and visitor data. The Department should now work towards
establishing a common framework to improve the accuracy and consistency
of the counting and profiling of visitors for the purposes of
improving policy. (Paragraph 54)
(viii) Interdepartmental consultation is
clearly necessary, especially with the DfES, to ensure that there
is the widest possible benefit from the policy of free admission
to the national museums. (Paragraph 59)
(ix) It is too early to draw firm conclusions
about the impact of free admission, either for the institutions
directly affected or for the wider sector as a whole. However,
emerging trends and previous research indicate that free admission
on its own is unlikely to be effective in attracting significant
numbers of new visitors from the widest range of socioeconomic
and ethnic groups. We recommend that the Department consult on
how best to tackle the non-financial barriers to museum and gallery
visiting to build on the overall increases in visit and visitor
numbers that have undoubtedly occurred. (Paragraph 60)
(x) We whole-heartedly support the principle
of free admission to the nation's key artistic, cultural and scientific
storehouses but more specific work needs to be done to achieve
the objective of broadened access. Since the Government has called
the tune, it must keep paying the piper. (Paragraph 72)
1 See Ev 1, 73 and 65 Back
2
Ev 84 ff Back
3
Ev 28 Back
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