Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40-59)
2 FEBRUARY 2004
MS CAROLE
SOUTER, CAPTAIN
RICHARD WOODMAN,
COMMANDER JOHN
PATON AND
MR TIM
PARR
Q40 Chris Bryant: Cardiff already seems
to have some role.
Commander Paton: There is some
expertise there.
Q41 Chris Bryant: I was going to ask
whether you knew the answer to the question about CADW and whether
there is a good relationship with Wales. There have been ships
in Wales as well.
Captain Woodman: You asked the
question about Scotland as well. I think the answer is that it
is a pretty mixed bag. Because all of these projects are individual
they tend to do well if they are good visitor attractions. Discovery
obviously makes quite a show in Dundee, but we had problems in
Scotland setting that up.
Commander Paton: There have been
very good relationships with the Scottish Executive in terms of
talking about ships, for example. I think heritage generally is
being delegated down to the national or regional authorities,
so we do see it as important that the Unit, when it is formed,
continues those good relationships with those other agencies.
I see no reason why that cannot happen.
Q42 Chris Bryant: Not least in terms
of conservation practices and so on, the more one spreads good
practice so that is not reinventing the wheel all the time the
better.
Commander Paton: Also I think
it is important to say that English Heritage has been helpful
towards us. They have funded some research work that we have done
over the last two years. One of the difficulties they had was
they were English Heritage and they were afraid of our status
as a national body.
Q43 Chris Bryant: Tell me about outreach
in the sense that obviously one of the things about ships is that
for the most part they are going to be on the coast whereas a
lot of people in Britain do not live on the coast, although they
may visit the coast, and some educational appreciation of our
maritime heritage is important for children, whether they live
in Birmingham, Cardiff or wherever. How strong do you think that
business of enabling youngsters to have a greater understanding
is?
Captain Woodman: Could I make
a point here. This is a very important aspect, not just historically
and culturally. It is neglected and people are hugely ignorant,
in fact they do not go near the coast although we are an island
and they submit to all sorts of misapprehensions. 95% of the goods
in our shops come by ships, it is not all British ships but it
certainly comes by ship. One of the problems that we have in the
maritime field at the moment is that because of the marginalisation
of ships, which is partly an economic thing—big ships need
deep water which means we no longer have a port of London and
everything is down at Felixstowe—the perception of ships
is declining in this country and it does not set fire to the imagination
of young people very much any more. We do need an infrastructure,
we need a throughput of professional sailors in both the mercantile
and naval field to provide us with the people we need as harbourmasters
and pilots manning the infrastructure. As you know, Mr Prescott
has launched all sorts of initiatives, tonnage tax regimes and
all the rest of it, and there is still a bad shortfall in cadets
in terms of the throughput of cadets and finding jobs for cadets
and attracting cadets. As Commander Paton says, this is not just
about ossifying the past, this is about our maritime future as
well.
Q44 Chris Bryant: We have got a splendid
Sea Cadet Unit in the Rhondda but they are a long way away from
the sea.
Captain Woodman: Yes, very few
of them will go to sea.
Q45 Chris Bryant: Indeed. Obviously we
need to do more about making that a possibility.
Captain Woodman: It is to do with
setting fire to the imagination. I know that is probably not what
we are here to do this morning.
Q46 Chris Bryant: Sometimes Parliament
does that. I was a bit troubled earlier on by the idea of a sinking
fund. Shipbuilding of itself, which is slightly different from
historic ships, has been an important industry in many parts of
the country. I represent a former mining constituency and we have
a mining museum. I do not know whether there are shipbuilding
museums anywhere[1]and,
if so, whether they should not be rather better supported, not
least because if you look at some of the poorest constituencies
in the land, after the former mining constituencies, often they
are the former shipbuilding constituencies.
Ms Souter: I think it is very
important not to try to disassociate the ships from the museums.
That is something we are very keen to bring together and to present
as a whole. For example, the new Transport Museum in Glasgow that
the Trustees agreed to fund last week will be on the Clyde in
sight of the last operating shipbuilders there and will have the
Glenlee moored alongside it which is a ship that we helped
to fund. The Maritime Museum in Cornwall is on the waterfront
there with the small boats collection. There is a tremendous amount
we can do to take people out of the museum in terms of the horizon
to excite them about the ships themselves, the stories and the
histories. One of the things that the Heritage Lottery Fund is
able to do is to support people's history, the oral history, knowledge
of the way people worked and lived, and link that in with the
physical infrastructure of the ships and the buildings in the
museums. That is something that we are very keen to develop and
I think SeaBritain will be a tremendous opportunity for all sorts
of communities to be reminded that perhaps their community, non-coastal,
may well have had a link with shipping and ships in the past and
may have been built on trade, founded on trade.
Q47 Chris Bryant: Is there a ship that
you wish we still had?
Commander Paton: No, I think we
have got quite enough at the moment. We have 1,200 vessels on
the list.
Mr Parr: We have been talking
about universities and the academics but I also want to put a
plea in for practical shipbuilding and ship restoration which
you raised. In the museum in Falmouth we do have an open workshop
where the public can actually see boats being restored and I think
this is one of the ways one is looking forward. In the bigger
ship restorations, such as the Waverley, I did insist that
they riveted all the repairs and that is the sort of thing we
would like to have on display to the public as part of the story.
Q48 Chris Bryant: There is still a large
industry around today creating million pound yachts. I know the
original yachts were Dutch fighting vessels, but we have moved
on from that since Charles II came back on his yacht. I just wonder
whether we should not be taxing them a bit more to fund somebody
else.
Captain Woodman: Good idea!
Commander Paton: I do not think
that is a terribly good idea. There are sections of the community
that can look after themselves. In some ways the classic yacht
part is quite capable of looking after itself because it is so
attractive to so many people. Another area might be river launches
on the Thames. They are quite well supported and catered for.
It is some of the other areas that are not quite so well supported.
There is a needs analysis that should go across the whole spectrum
and say, "Those over there are doing okay but these here
are flagging a bit and we need to put some more resources into
them."
Q49 Mr Hawkins: In your evidence you
have said to us that there are 15 large and important ships that
you say will need long term grant-in-aid to survive. Can you tell
us a little bit more about that? Can I couple that with asking
Carole Souter about the fact that Heritage Lottery Fund evidence
refers to 20 "At Risk" vessels in the core collection.
I would be interested if you could tell us whether the Heritage
Lottery Fund feel that priority should be attached to saving those
or whether that might be in danger of being at the expense of
either vessels on the designated list or not on either list at
all?
Commander Paton: That view came
from our research when we went round a core collection the year
before last. Although we were not getting accurate figures about
exact costings, we got a general view that it was an issue of
size. The big ships are expensive to run, which is fairly obvious,
but even if they were the best visitor attraction in the world,
even if they were actually doing an awful lot of outreach for
which they were getting funds back from local authorities and
the like, even if they were operating very well as a museum and
were doing research work and were chasing up stories and ways
of interpreting their vessel and perhaps getting some funds for
that, there would still be a shortfall at the end of the day in
balancing the books. We would hope that deeper research on that
would be able to produce figures to say that, at the end of the
day, these are the best visitor attractions in the country, these
are doing a huge amount of good outreach work, these are the numbers
of youngsters that are going through them and that sort of thing.
They are doing some very good research work into not only interpretation
of the actual vessels themselves but methods of preserving them
and things like that. There is a small shortfall that needs to
be found somewhere.
Q50 Mr Hawkins: Can you give a couple
of examples of those 15?
Commander Paton: I think we could
easily run through them. It is largely size, so we are talking
of ships like the Cutty Sark, the Victory, the Warrior,
the Discovery, those sorts of vessels.
Mr Parr: Having seen quite a few
of the HLF applications and known some of the ones that were refused,
sometimes it is the management of those vessels which wants a
great deal of education.
Ms Souter: That must be so in
some cases. As you know, we currently work on the basis of reacting
to applications to us. We do not nominate those things which we
will fund in advance. That is certainly the view which trustees
will continue to take until the end of our current strategic plan,
which is 2007. Later this year we will be launching consultation
on our new strategic plan and as we foresee a smaller amount of
funds being available in future years one of the key questions
we will have to ask and trustees will need to address is whether
we should continue solely to react to applications or whether
we should ourselves say, "These are our priority areas".
We would never make them up for ourselves, that would be ridiculous.
If we were to think about moving in that direction it would have
to be on the basis of advice from the specialists in those areas.
I would like to stress that at the moment that is not the line
we take and it has given us a tremendous amount of flexibility
to respond to projects that people come in with because quite
often it is a smaller project for a ship that is not necessarily
high up the designated list, which means a tremendous amount to
a local community, which gets people engaged, then you get the
kids involved and you get the volunteers going out. There are
a number of those projects where there is tremendous dedication
and an awful lot of volunteer effort. I think the challenge for
us always is to balance the published criteria against which we
assess every application, which includes value for money, the
number of people who can be involved and so on, with what are
often very large costs indeed for some of these ship projects
and that is a real challenge for us in assessing and also for
the applicant very often coming forward. It is interesting that
Mr Anning was saying this morning that sometimes we should be
looking at the smaller project perhaps first and seeing how that
goes and how it can be supported. My standard plea to people is
to come and talk to us first because it is an expensive process
to put in a big application to us and we would always encourage
people to come and talk to the teams locally about what they have
in mind, what they are planning to do and we can then help and
say to them, "This is the sort of thing that we are able
to support, we will not be able to support that," so that
people do not waste time and effort. That is the context in which
we say to people that if they come in for £25 million, of
course we will put it to trustees and they will take the decision,
they are less likely to be successful than if they come in for
a smaller amount.
Commander Paton: A museum has
lots of resources in which to put applications together and it
is particularly well versed in the idea of education and outreach.
Small community projects do not necessarily understand that. The
Heritage Lottery Fund has done a wonderful job in terms of raising
the profile of that sort of issue. There is a sort of educative
process that has to go on with these small groups in saying, "This
is a lovely ship you've got here and it's a very important ship,
but it has got to be able to sustain itself", so we have
got to talk about business plans and that sort of thing. We have
also got to talk about how it is going to be of use to the community.
Q51 Chairman: Is there any district council,
unitary or county council that does not have a lottery officer?
Ms Souter: Yes, I believe there
are a number.
Q52 Chairman: Where is that published?
Ms Souter: I doubt if there is
a formal survey, but I will certainly find out.
Q53 Chairman: But your instinct is that
there are very few or lots?
Ms Souter: There are a number
of authorities who do not. They may well not have a specific lottery
officer but they may have a public funding officer or something
of that kind. There are a number of authorities across the country
that feel they do not need to work through lottery officers.
Q54 Mr Hawkins: Presumably those representing
the National Historic Ships Committee agree with our earlier witnesses
that if English Heritage were to have their stance towards historic
ships changed, so that they regarded historic ships in the same
way as historic buildings, that would help a lot in terms of taking
some of the pressure off the Heritage Lottery Fund in that you
would still be able to apply but it would not be your sole source
of big grant?
Commander Paton: It is a very
complex jigsaw these days. I am dealing with a vessel called Kathleen
& May down at Bideford, which is a privately owned vessel,
it was restored by a private person and the local authority is
sort of interested, HLF have been approached, the local county
council is sort of interested, there are some local trusts, there
are volunteers and there are some friends. My experience is that
you need somebody to go in there and draw it together a bit and
to set them on the right track and then it works together and
everybody is playing their part and it is not just English Heritage,
it is not just HLF, it is a coordinated thing.
Captain Woodman: The National
Historic Ships Committee would like to make the point that we
see the new units as acting as an adviser to the HLF. We have
been disappointed in many cases in the failure of this bridge
to be crossed over. There is always a danger with projects where
enthusiasts who, quite understandably, having given up a great
deal of their time and often their money to work on a particular
project, become very focused on that project and they are not
capable of seeing it in the greater context. One of the things
we have staunchly maintained is our independence and our ability
at least to give an opinion as to how these things function. One
of the problems we have identified is that inevitably in all applications
enthusiasts will talk up their project and overestimate their
visitor attraction and their visitor numbers and very often that
is a major plank in their business plan, it falls short. Many
of them, when you get into the realms of the larger ships, are
on display without you having to pay a penny to look at them,
the Cutty Sark being a prime example.
Commander Paton: This is where
Heritage Lottery Fund project planning grants are so good, because
they can apply for a small grant from HLF to sort the business
plan out and to get greater clarity on it.
Q55 Chairman: Mr Doughty said it was
£500,000.
Captain Woodman: It was not a
good example in terms of business numbers.
Q56 Chairman: If you are small and you
are asked to put £10,000 in, that £10,000 is the equivalent
to £500,000 for a big project. Why would you have to do that?
Ms Souter: First of all, just
to be clear, business plans as such are not something we would
support through a project planning grant. We would normally be
looking at that stage of an application when people are fairly
clear about what they want to do but they might need some help
to develop their audience development plan or their access plan.
For a small grant the volume and detail of material that is needed
in the application is not huge. Obviously if you are applying
for a very large sum of money and you have a very technical project,
as is the case with the Cutty Sark, then our advisers and
experts who we ask to help us assess the project are going to
need to have sufficient information about the detail of the technical
process and the way it is going to work, but that is expensive
to do and that is something that we are well aware of and we are
always looking to make sure that we are not asking for too much
at the wrong point. The way we work with our larger applications
is that stage one, which is what the Cutty Sark has just had,
is our highest hurdle. Then if you get a stage one approval only
a handful of projects subsequently fail to proceed to the release
of the main money. In terms of the small trusts, I think it is
genuinely difficult for them to have the expertise and to bring
the expertise together in the wider sense and that is why I would
always say that it is best for people to come and talk to us first,
because we have got very good guidance on how to do audience plans,
training plans, those sort of things and often it is a great shame
when people come to us, having done a lot of work and maybe spent
money they can ill afford, without having spoken to us first and
asked us what we need.
Q57 Chairman: How much money currently
do you have in the bank on one day that is not spent?
Ms Souter: None that is not committed.
Q58 Chairman: So you have no reserves
whatsoever?
Ms Souter: No. We have £900
million in the National Lottery Distribution Fund committed to
projects.
Q59 Chairman: But it is not drawn down,
so you have got it as it were.
Ms Souter: Yes. We have nearly
£300 million on top of that that we have committed to projects
that we do not have cash in the National Lottery Distribution
Fund for. What we have to do is model when people ask us for money,
but we work on the basis that if we have said there will be money
available for them we put that money to one side and so when people
come back it is there and that is really important to projects.
1 Note by Witness, Mr Parr: There is a section
at Chatham Historic Dockyard on shipbuilding. Back
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