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UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 296-i House of COMMONS MINUTES OF EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE CULTURE, MEDIA AND SPORT COMMITTEE (MARITIME HERITAGE AND HISTORIC SHIPS SUB-COMMITTEE)
MARITIME HERITAGE AND HISTORIC SHIPS
Wednesday 2 February 2005 MR RICHARD DOUGHTY, REAR ADMIRAL JOHN HERVEY and MR SID ANNING MS CAROLE SOUTER, CAPTAIN RICHARD WOODMAN, MR JOHN PATON and MR TIM PARR
RT HON LORD McINTOSH OF HARINGEY and MR RICHARD HARTMAN Evidence heard in Public Questions 1 - 84
USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT
Oral Evidence Taken before the Culture, Media and Sport Committee (Maritime Heritage and Historic Ships Sub-Committee) on Wednesday 2 February 2005 Members present Derek Wyatt, in the Chair Chris Bryant Mr Nick Hawkins ________________ Memoranda submitted by The Cutty Sark Trust and Mr Sid Anning
Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Mr Richard Doughty, Chief Executive, The Cutty Sark Trust; Rear Admiral John Hervey, President, HMS Cavalier Association; and Mr Sid Anning, HMS Stalker/Maritime Steam Restoration Trust, examined. Q1 Chairman: Good morning, gentlemen. Can I welcome you to this Sub-Committee of the Select Committee for Culture, Media and Sport looking at maritime heritage and historic ships. Although we announced this inquiry before Christmas, we largely did it because we had a letter certainly from the Cutty Sark to say would we investigate the future of the Cutty Sark. Before we have even sat it seems as though we have managed to persuade the Heritage Lottery Fund to help the Cutty Sark. We understand that the Arts Minister, Lord McIntosh, is going to make an announcement today about the National Historic Ships Unit. We wondered whether we should actually continue the investigation because the two things we wanted have actually been done. Nevertheless, you are very welcome here. We are very informal, we are not going to have a list of questions, Members will just ask questions directly to you. If I might just start by thanking Rear Admiral John Hervey for the book that has been given to the Chairman which we will put in our library. I wonder since we did the HMS Cavalier inquiry whether you think between you all that things have got better or worse in this particular area? I am not looking at anyone in particular. We did that in 1998. Rear Admiral Hervey: If I can say something. As far as Cavalier is concerned, the situation has certainly got a lot better. Reading all the memos that everybody has put in I get the feeling that the Department has not really altered its basic position. It is giving a little bit more money to the new organisation but it is miniscule compared to what is needed to tackle the problem. I do not think it has altered all that much. There are still only very few shops that are being helped and the chances of saving something new do not seem to be significantly better for Mr Anning, who is now working on a project, than they were when he was dealing with the Cavalier and I was helping him. Q2 Chairman: Is that a view shared by the other members? Mr Anning: I am working with the Maritime Steam Restoration Trust at the moment and I am finding the same problems exist now trying to save the landing craft as we had with Admiral Hervey with Cavalier. It is a chicken and egg situation: you cannot progress on to one thing until you have done something else. It is this sort of situation all the time and it is very, very difficult. Q3 Chairman: Where are the hiccoughs then? What would you recommend? Everyone wants more money but there is always a finite amount of money. Mr Anning: I think I said in my memo that the Government make money available for all other sections of our heritage, such as libraries, museums, churches and football, et cetera, et cetera, and we wonder why this is anti-historic ships. That is the impression that we are getting. Our maritime heritage is very important to this country and yet it seems to be the poor relation to every other thing. I think that is the feeling most people in historic ships have got. If we can get some sort of money, even if it is only to help the National Historic Ships Unit and perhaps some of the core collection, that would go a great way and relieve a lot of the pressure on the Heritage Lottery Fund for them to look at things on the DV list, or perhaps regional boards. Q4 Chairman: Mr Doughty, you have got some money coming in but not as much as you want. Is it dependent on you raising the other bits of money before you get the Heritage Lottery money for the Cutty Sark? Mr Doughty: Yes, Chairman. We have to be able to raise partnership funding to be able to draw down the Heritage Lottery Fund grants that the Trust has been awarded. Clearly this sector is very heavily dependent on the Heritage Lottery Fund and I think it is ludicrous that an organisation like English Heritage is prepared to put resources into helping record or excavate wrecks but there is no money that comes from that particular department to support the maritime heritage sector. Q5 Chairman: It seems to me that we have listed buildings and they are graded and you cannot get rid of them, you must preserve them, although there are issues about whether we have got enough money to preserve everything that has a Grade A or a Grade B listing. Is that how boats and ships should be? You have got 900 or so on the list, have you not? Mr Anning: We all appreciate that you cannot save every historic ship in this country and nobody would even say that you have to. If you look at the situation in Chatham, for example, you have got many listed buildings around the historic ships and the listed buildings are protected but not the ships that are there. The only ships that are protected are the ones that are sunk, the wrecks, and this was brought in last year by Baroness Anelay of St Johns. We cannot see any parity there. They were saying that some ships like the Cutty Sark are listed buildings in actual fact, so would it be right for them to go under English Heritage if they are buildings as such? Q6 Chairman: If they are listed there is then a local authority requirement and that is the issue, is it not, with housing, although they never have enough money to actually preserve those houses. Rear Admiral Hervey: I think it was very unfortunate that English Heritage should have shrugged their shoulders in 1992 and said they were no longer interesting themselves in historic ships, it sent a very bad message to the whole business. In fact, I am rather amazed that they were asked for their opinion this time since they seem to be so uninterested in our business. Perhaps you would like to record that. Chairman: It is recorded. Q7 Chris Bryant: Let me just challenge you a bit. My grandfather was a naval architect and my great-uncle designed most of the destroyer class as a naval architect at Clydeside, so my flat is full of memorabilia from that period of shipbuilding in Clydeside. Why do ships matter because there are hundreds of them? Why does it really matter to Britain? Rear Admiral Hervey: If one is talking about warships, in Cavalier's case there were two reasons really. One was that it was an extremely interesting artefact in its own right, the epitome of the middle of the last century's warships. It was also, of course, representative of 143 destroyers of ours that did not come back from the Second World War, plus about another ten or 11 of our ships manned by allied navies. By the end of this year there will be a suitable memorial alongside the ship on the jetty. The arrangements for that are going very well now. They will all be listed on the back of a large bronze bas-relief which depicts destroyers rescuing people from the sea, which they did a great deal of. I think the other reason why it is important is because it has an enormous educational value. Since the three ships have been in Chatham, over the last two years we have had 22,000 children through the dockyard. Before the ships were there hardly any children came into the place at all. They have all had a proper structured day, at the end of which one boy, who had never put anything constructive down on paper in his life before, wrote a page and a half about his visit. Sadly, the following week all the boys who were supposed to come did not turn up because they were all up in front of the beak again, but at least they have made a start with changing the attitude. I think the educational side down there is extremely important. We need better role models for our children anyway than the ones they seem to have these days and what better role model than children of their own age who gave their lives for their country, as quite a few did. Mr Anning: I think another problem that we should take into consideration is there are still a lot of skills available but once these latest generations have gone you will not be able to practise those skills. That is one of the problems we have got with historic ships at the moment, there are not enough shipwrights and riveters and caulkers, people like that, the old trades, to keep these things going. If you keep historic ships going those trades will still continue and can then be passed on to future generations. Rear Admiral Hervey: It is one of the interesting things about the Friends' organisation that about eight, nine or ten of them come every Wednesday to work on the ship and the Chairman of the Friends is a very experienced ex-naval shipman. He has got one of the 460mm Beaufort guns off and into the workshop alongside the ship and he has re-plated the deck. Normally that would cost umpteen thousand pounds if you can get somebody to come in and do that as a contractor. It is quite an economical thing and he is helping with the skills we need. Q8 Chris Bryant: I can see that especially because Britain is an island nation our naval heritage is an integral part, whether you are talking about people living in the islands of Scotland through from coracle building to modern techniques or whether you are talking about our military heritage, but I wonder whether the balance is right between our naval military heritage and our merchant ships? Rear Admiral Hervey: I think you have to take a look at the work done by Dr Prescott in drawing up the list. There were 14 warships that were put into the core collection, so by any means it was not all slanted that way. Providing you are prepared to accept as time goes on that you can move from the designated list to the core collection, and that is one of the things that this new committee ought to have in mind, that there should be some flexibility in re-listing, if people do a really good job of looking after the ship it becomes more interesting and more important and perhaps deserves a higher place. I was upset that Cavalier was not in the core collection but I was so pleased that we had saved her anyway I did not make a lot of fuss about it at the time. I have it in mind that my next battle will be to get the ship upgraded if they look after it properly at Chatham, which at the moment they are doing, thank goodness. Mr Doughty: I think we are better as a nation with respect to looking after our naval heritage than we are our merchant navy heritage. One thinks of Glenlee in Scotland and Cutty Sark now in England, but they are the principal features. To answer your original question, what is the merit, the DCMS response to the Ships for the Nation consultation acknowledges some of the benefits, and one of the ones that I would particularly highlight is the impact our maritime heritage can have on regeneration. Certainly in the case of Cutty Sark in Greenwich, I am sure one of the arguments that helped persuade the Heritage Lottery Fund to give us a grant was that Cutty Sark is a public amenity in much the same way as the Albert Memorial is. You do not have to board the Cutty Sark to be able to enjoy and appreciate the beauty of the ship. While I make much of saying 16 million people have paid to go on board Cutty Sark, there are countless millions more who are benefiting every year and appreciating the ship in her setting in Greenwich. Q9 Chris Bryant: Tell me, have you ever visited the Vassar in Stockholm which was a 16th Century ship that went down days after setting sail? They have dragged it up, it is a wonderful thing to go around, stunningly beautiful and in almost perfect condition, except that in the 15 years since it has been in the museum it has now started to deteriorate fairly rapidly and they are finding terrible difficulties in maintaining it now. How expensive and how difficult is it in particular to bring things up from the sea and to maintain, even if they are very important? Mr Doughty: I think that is a very interesting example for you to have taken because I believe the Vassar is a project that was almost entirely subsidised by the government in Stockholm. Interestingly, their conservation team are now coming to the Cutty Sark Trust for advice as to how they should tackle their own project. Indeed, they are looking at the innovative system that we are developing for supporting Cutty Sark in our vision for the future. Clearly, conservation treatments need time to be considered and for their long-term effects to be assessed. In the case of the Vassar it turns out that a very serious mistake was made: they overlooked the impact of people going into a building. They thought putting the ship into a building would protect it from the elements but, in fact, that has worked against them. The breath of people going into the building has created problems that they now have to address. The bottom line with any historic ships is you are going to have to raise considerable sums of money periodically, perhaps every 25 years or so, because you know you are going to have a major refit to take into consideration. I think the point is that the majority of historic ships are quite good at running their day-to-day business but what they do not have the ability to do, and what the Cutty Sark does not have the ability to do at the moment, is to build the reserves that are required to ensure that there is a resource available to tackle those long-term maintenance problems. Rear Admiral Hervey: Of course, you are now allowed to carry forward the grant-in-aid from one year to the next if you are lucky enough to get it in the first place, so it is very difficult to build up a fund to tackle that. Every time HMS Belfast has to have a docking she has to be taken all the way round to Portsmouth to have it. Mercifully, Cavalier sits over the top of the blocks and all you have to do is pump out the dock. Q10 Chairman: Does that mean on the Cutty Sark money that there is a finite time you have that sitting there, your ten million or 11 million that you have got? Mr Doughty: Yes. The Heritage Lottery Fund have awarded us a £1.2 million development grant and that will allow us over the next year to prepare our second stage application. The grant that has been allocated, £11.75 million, is ring-fenced only until we submit that stage two application. If we fail to make that submission or, indeed, if our submission is not of a good enough standard then that offer will be withdrawn. If I may just make another point here. We were given a strong steer not to ask for more than £10 million in our grant application, which is what we have done but I have said that they have given us £11.75 million. Another issue I would like to draw to your attention is the fact that projects such as the Cutty Sark are now having to pay VAT, so on a £22 net million project we have now got to raise over £3 million to pay Customs and Excise, which is another extraordinary burden that is being placed on to voluntary organisations. Mr Anning: I support the Cutty Sark in every way, but the worry that I have is because of the limited amount of resources that are available one ship can suck out so much of the lifeblood of historic ships generally because 90% of the ships outside the core collection, outside the museums, do not get any grants at all. I would like to see the sights lowered a bit so there is a fairer distribution of Heritage Lottery wealth. I just feel that sometimes these large grants tend to shoot one in the foot because it gives the impression that historic ships are expensive - they are expensive, we know that - but we have got to lower our sights otherwise people are never going to take on historic ships if we keep charging so much money. Q11 Chairman: How much does Stalker need? Mr Anning: Stalker, to purchase her is about £150,000. Q12 Chairman: How much have you raised? Mr Anning: I am not the Chairman, I am only supporting them. It is only a very small amount at the moment. We are in a chicken and egg situation. We have put in for a project planning grant and we are waiting for the result of that, which we should know this week. People are not coming forward to help you unless you go through certain stages, that is the problem that we have got. Rear Admiral Hervey: If you recall, when we came in front of the Committee in 1998 it was very interesting that as soon as the Committee meeting was over two organisations who before had been pussyfooting around both came to see Sid and myself saying "Please come to Birkenhead" or "Please come to Chatham". The way the Committee had been handled that day by Gerald Kaufman and what he said made it quite clear that he was going to put a bit of pressure from the CMS Committee on both the Minister and the Heritage Lottery Fund to cough up, and indeed they did. For the first time the Minister came to have a look at the ship. He had been told by the Chairman not to say another word on the subject until he had visited the ship. I will not say what he said to the Director of the Heritage Lottery Fund because it was not recorded in the report, but he made it pretty plain that he expected her to take a more positive attitude to it and produce some fast track procedures and get some money for the feasibility study. As soon as that had been said in Committee Room 15 people started looking at it more positively. There was plenty of goodwill before that but it was not focused until this organisation that you are part of had given a lead. It was a very, very significant step that day. Mr Doughty: I think it has to be said, Chairman, as I already have, that the burden is falling on the Heritage Lottery Fund and I think that is somewhat unfair. The Heritage Lottery Fund has not been set up to resource the maritime heritage sector. Their paper that has been submitted to this council is a very good one and it makes it quite clear that each bid is assessed on its individual merits. The trouble is, it is a very difficult process to go through. In my case it has taken me three years and over half a million pounds to actually bring this application to the Heritage Lottery Fund. The point really is not to criticise the Heritage Lottery Fund, it is to be aware that historic ships and the maritime sector are under-resourced and under-appreciated. They need better support and I would suggest there need to be ways in which the Government can support the most important parts of our maritime heritage. Q13 Mr Hawkins: Rather like Chris, I come to this inquiry with a bias in that my father was a naval officer in submarines during and after World War II and I was a Royal Navy Cadet and I have an interest in transport history. That is just so that you know where I am coming from. One of the things that I am pleased to hear you say is that this Committee played a positive role in the past and I hope that our session today and our inquiry will have a similarly positive role. I did want to ask you whether you agree with me that the fact that we are in 2005, which is a very significant anniversary in Britain's Maritime history, SeaBritain 2005, is something that is going to enable us to concentrate the minds of the public and may increase the fund raising effort from other sources, from members of the public being more interested because of the tourism campaign for SeaBritain 2005. Is that something that you are hoping will help concentrate minds, as well as our work as a Committee? Rear Admiral Hervey: Yes. This year is a good year to be putting some emphasis on the maritime scene. There could not be a better way to get in amongst it. I agree with Mr Doughty that I do not think it is fair to put all the onus on the Heritage Lottery Fund for making these make or break decisions on individual ships. Some money needs to be set aside out of which you can generate some income and use it for these purposes. When we were in front of you in 1998 we suggested that it should be built up gradually over the years. One was looking at a figure of about 30 million and, in fact, we gave the example that if what was being asked for by the Mary Rose, which was 29 million at that time, had been put into an upkeep endowment fund it would have been able to endow ten ships at 200,000 a year in perpetuity. That would be a pretty helpful thing to have. At least you would then know that the finance was going to be available and you were not constantly having to rely on the council budget being got at by central government and then having to change their minds about helping you or not. These are the sorts of things that govern everything at the moment. Mr Anning: When you see that £15.8 billion has gone to good causes since the Lottery began, £38 million for historic ships is not a lot. I wonder if historic ships are actually getting their fair share of the pot? Quite frankly, I do not think they are. Mr Doughty: If I may, one of the benefits of the new Unit that has been identified is that it can give the help that smaller organisations need to be able to put in a bid of the sufficient quality that is required. We all hope that 2005, the Year of the Sea, is going to shine a spotlight on maritime heritage, but I am not going to be able to raise the £10 million matching funds I need to find through that sort of public subscription. Sure, it is going to make a contribution but not a significant one. What I have found frustrating is that there is joined-up government and it is joined-up against the maritime sector. If I go to English Heritage, and it has also been pointed out that Cutty Sark is a Grade 1 listed structure, they do not recognise this as a building although they have now put Cutty Sark on the Grade 1 Listed Buildings At Risk Register, they turn round to me and say, "You are an historic ship, we do not fund historic ships". If I go to DCMS and say, "I am not playing on an even playing field in Greenwich. It is very price sensitive. We have got the National Maritime Museum with grant-aid support, we have got the old Royal Naval College and there are other museums, such as the Geffrye Museum, for example, that are taking down grants to support them as museums because it is deemed that they are disadvantaged by museums that are able to offer free access", and if I ask whether this might apply to Cutty Sark because we are now a registered museum they say, "No, you are an historic ship, you are not a museum". It is very difficult. Mr Anning: It is catch-22 all the time. Q14 Mr Hawkins: Really one of the things that you would like this Committee to address in our report is that feeling that you all have that the way in which the funding works is joined-up against you and you would really be inviting us to ask some tough questions of bodies like English Heritage to see whether they could reverse the stance they took at the beginning of the 1990s. That is one of the things you are saying to us, is it not? Mr Anning: If you take the recent award to the Macclesfield Psalter, it was given £860,000 from the National Heritage Memorial Fund but, as I understand it, the National Heritage Memorial Fund is to fund heritage throughout the UK in memory of those who gave their lives for the UK. I am sorry but I really do not understand how the Macclesfield Psalter can get £860,000 from a fund like that. Q15 Mr Hawkins: One of the issues which is raised in the evidence to us is about what the Department is doing and from the results of their consultation exercise they talk about the positive feedback they had about the creation of a Small Grants Fund. Clearly you have made the point about the large sums that many of the maritime projects need, and I think we all understand that, but are you also supportive of the idea of creating a Small Grants Fund to enable seed corn money to come in for some of the smaller projects and perhaps help to attract business sponsorship to projects in the future? Mr Anning: All of us who were here last time were very grateful to the Select Committee for the recommendations they made, we thought they were spot-on, but unfortunately nothing was done about them. It is nice that we have got another opportunity now and we are hoping that we can perhaps pick it up this time where it was not last time. One of the problems with historic ships is there is not enough communication with everybody around the countryside and people feeding in ideas, collecting these ideas and bringing them forward. This is something where I thought perhaps Regional Area Committees of Historic Ships could help to generate a local interest and then feed it through to the national interest. Q16 Mr Hawkins: I wanted to ask you about that. Do you feel that all of the different maritime voluntary organisations around the UK, and I go to quite a lot of events where I see fund raising going on for the Medway Queen, for example, work well enough together or is there sometimes a bit of an atmosphere of rivalry that some organisations think "If they are getting it, that is doing us down?" Mr Anning: As you know, the Medway Queen is only a stone's throw from the Chatham Dockyard. I have heard that they pulled the plug on the electric one day because they had not paid the Bill. There is the John H Amos which is alongside and it has moved to get that inside the dockyard as well. I spoke to the Excelsior Trust once about funding and he said: "My whole working day, my waking day, is made up of trying to find money for the Trust". The trouble is people are looking over their shoulders all the time at other people trying to protect their little pot so they really have not got time for other people and I think that is the danger. Q17 Mr Hawkins: You have made the point that you think it is perhaps unfair that too much of the burden falls on the Heritage Lottery Fund. Mr Anning: Definitely. Q18 Mr Hawkins: There are all kinds of other pressures on the Heritage Lottery Fund for the money that they do have to distribute. I think in the figures that have been given to us they make the point that as compared with something of the order of £32 million that they have provided in the past for historic ships, over the same period they have given £3.5 million to railway preservation projects, for example. There are all kinds of other historic transport projects which fall on them. Perhaps what you are really saying to us is that there ought to be other Exchequer funded sources of income perhaps which could be available because of the importance of maritime heritage to Britain as a nation to educate the next generation of children about the importance of our maritime heritage. Mr Anning: You mentioned earlier the ship upkeep allowance. If a sinking fund was put in that could help the core collection quite considerably perhaps. Q19 Chairman: You said that you had a £3 million VAT bill, or you expect to have at the end of your project. Just explain why you have got to do VAT? Are you not a registered charity? Mr Doughty: We are a registered charity. The change of legislation in June meant that because we charge an admission for going on to the ship we can no longer be VAT registered. It is actually European legislation which I imagine was brought in to benefit organisations like ourselves. In the ordinary course of events we would probably be something in the order of £30,000 a year better off because the greater part of our expenditure is in staff costs, so there would be a saving, but when a capital project comes along, as they invariably do, then you lose out. Yes, it is a disaster, that is exactly what it is. We have spent a lot of time and energy taking advice and talking to Customs and Excise to explore whether there is any loophole that will allow us to take the project forward without having to pay the VAT burden. That has gone right up to the Minister and we have been told quite firmly that is not possible. Q20 Chairman: In the Treasury who is the Minister? Mr Doughty: I am afraid I cannot remember the name. Q21 Chris Bryant: I think it is the Paymaster General, Dawn Primarolo. You have referred to English Heritage and I just wonder whether you have had similar experiences in Scotland and in Wales? I do not know what it is called in Scotland but in Wales it is CADW. Has that not entered into it at all? Mr Anning: No. Mr Doughty: I do not have experience of that. Q22 Chris Bryant: We might need to find that from another source. Mr Anning: One of the good things that has come out of the Cavalier is the volunteers who have put a tremendous amount of time on board the ship. Something that needs to be thought about is that those skills need to be passed down to the younger generation to keep those going. That saves a lot of money through volunteers. Q23 Chairman: There is no NVQ, there is nothing at any level in further education that would retrain them, as it were? Mr Anning: That is right. Q24 Chairman: That is the issue, is it not? Rear Admiral Hervey: The Naval Historic Dockyard at Chatham looked at the question of whether they could introduce actual training for people but the rules and regulations about running that sort of organisation that you have to meet are very, very restrictive and up to now they have frightened them off a bit. Q25 Chairman: We have a very energetic Learning and Skills Council in Kent and Medway, have they been approached? Rear Admiral Hervey: I honestly do not know. I think Sid is absolutely right about the question of volunteers. Every day that the volunteers put in is counted towards the matched funding, so it works in more than one way. Mr Doughty: In our case, we are working with the Learning and Skills Council because we are relying on being able to train people up to work through our project so that it becomes a centre of excellence for the maritime heritage. Can I just come back to a point Mr Hawkins raised about whether there is rivalry because I am not aware of this rivalry that Mr Anning speaks of, I am only aware of co-operation. One thinks of the Maritime Curators' Group and the work that they are doing and all the other umbrella organisations that exist to work together. We are in a competitive environment in terms of drawing down resources but certainly if I think of the work that has been done through the Maritime Trust, for example, it has all been in the spirit of co-operation. The fact that Cutty Sark has the challenge that it now has today in terms of raising the capital it needs is a reflection of the fact that the monies that it has raised in the past it has put into other projects. The Maritime Trust, the former owner of the Cutty Sark, has probably done more for maritime heritage than any other organisation other than the Heritage Lottery Fund itself. It is not just historic ships that have benefited all around the country, it is also museums. For example, the excellent fishing museum in Anstruther would not have been set up without the core funding that came to Cutty Sark nor the boat museum in Windermere. I think there is a spirit of support. I have to highlight and commend the work that John Peyton has been done with the National Historic Ships Committee because for the last three years or more on a very limited budget he has been doing exactly what this new Unit is being charged with undertaking. I know that John goes round and gives advice to organisations. Sometimes those small organisations do not always listen to what they are being told. As I say, putting in a grant application is a very, very complex procedure. We have only been able to do it because we have drawn on the advice and expertise from a large number of people. Q26 Mr Hawkins: Can I explore that a little bit more. In his written evidence to us, Mr Anning has referred to some schemes as being "madcap schemes" which may have been encouraged by the Heritage Lottery Fund. I just wonder if you can give us some examples of what you regard as "madcap schemes"? Mr Anning: I spoke to the Heritage Lottery Fund and I asked for a break down of the Lottery bid because I thought it was very high. I was met with a certain amount of prevarication. What I asked for were costings for the fabric of the ship and costings for interpretation. I understand that some things are not quite clear-cut and some things cross over into each other, that is the way it is, the fabric of the ship is part of the conservation and everything, and interpretation. What I was told was that there was loads and loads of paperwork. I said, "I understand that, I do not want all the paperwork". I then said all I wanted was the clear position of what was on one side and what was on the other side, that was all I asked for. Then commercial confidentiality came in, which was another red herring, and I said, "I am not asking for Mr Bloggs' name, all I am asking for is how much he is charging for his work". In fact, I was referred back to Mr Doughty for that and I asked him that question myself. I just believe that the Heritage Lottery Fund should be a bit more transparent over these things. It is public money and I think we have a right to know what is being spent on what. That is something that I think needs to be opened up quite considerably. Q27 Mr Hawkins: In other words, what your evidence to us really referred to was the lack of information about how public money is being spent rather than being a criticism of other individual projects? Mr Anning: My view is this: every pound saved on a scheme is a pound that goes to another ship. I am very pleased that the Cutty Sark has got this, believe me, they need it badly, but my concern is the interpretation, the amount of money that is going on interpretation. I understand that a certain amount of interpretation is needed to sell the ship, to make it attractive, we know that, but to raise a ship with Kevlar and put glass around it to make it look like it is going through the water is a waste of money to me, especially when, as the Chairman knows, just up the river is the Medway Queen which only a few months earlier was turned down for funding. The Heritage Lottery Fund in here says that the Cutty Sark should not put a bid in above £10 million. I do not know why they said that because the way I look at that is they are saying, "You can have £10 million and no more", and that is before they have even looked at it. I just want to see fair play. That is not taking anything away from the Cutty Sark, I want to see that ship brought back up to a good standard but not to the detriment of everybody else. Rear Admiral Hervey: I think that there is a parallel with when we were trying to save Cavalier. I know that Chatham Historic Dockyard Trust, who are part operators and managers of the consortium, were given a very clear steer that they should not ask for more than two million or they would not get anything at all. The same answer was given to the director of the submarine museum because at the time politically it was seen as being bad news to have a huge figure constantly publicised. Of course, the hope was that one could come back incrementally and break down part of it that could be done for two million and then come back for some more perhaps to do another bit, which was virtually what they did in the submarine museum. It gives the feeling all the time that there is no trust between the two sides in the handling of this sort of thing. Mr Doughty: I have to say I think the point is it is ludicrous for anyone to turn round and say that heritage is not worth more than £10 million of public money but, let us be clear, it is not the maritime heritage sector that is being singled out here, I am sure that is advice that is being given by Heritage Lottery Fund officers to any potential applicant who comes forward. The point is that there is a diminishing resource that the Heritage Lottery Fund has available to give to the very many good causes that it has to process. I understand why they bring in the thresholds that they have to enforce, it is just very difficult for all applicants because I have no doubt that the quality of bids is getting higher as the resource is getting lower. Q28 Chairman: Are there any ships overseas that are in danger that you know of? Mr Anning: There is one in the Egyptian Navy, an Algerine minesweeper that they are trying to bring back. Rear Admiral Hervey: It is a Black Swan class. I was talking in the Army and Navy Club last night to Michael Gretton who is running the business of trying to save her and they have got to the point where they are doing quite well at raising the money and they are now waiting to get the technical assessment by the team who are going out there to have a look at her. Basically she is in quite good stead. They have never tried to adapt her to do anything else so from the point of view of if you want something from the Second World War she is in quite good shape. Q29 Chairman: Gentlemen, can I thank you very much. One thing I will do is I will ask the clerk to write to Dawn Primarolo so we can get a better understanding of the VAT position and we will publish that. Mr Doughty: Thank you. Chairman: Thank you very much indeed. Memorandum submitted by Heritage Lottery Fund Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Ms Carole Souter, Director, Heritage Lottery Fund; Captain Richard Woodman, Chairman, National Historic Ships Committee, Commander John Paton, Secretary to NHSC and Director of The English Heritage National Museum Partnership Project; and Mr Tim Parr, examined. Q30 Chairman: Good morning. I suspect you have heard some of the criticism, does anyone want to come back on anything that you have heard from the first witnesses? Captain Woodman: If I may, Chairman. I represent the National Historic Ships Committee as its Chairman. I would like to pick up and really endorse a couple of points made earlier. We take an overview, we are not partisan of any particular cause. We would agree that the maritime sector is hugely neglected and needs a high profile before we lose a great deal of it. In a sense, in 2005 we have a feeling it is the last chance saloon. Ships matter because they have made this country what it is, and I am not just talking about warships, I am talking about merchant vessels and service vessels. We feel that it is extremely important that this matter is raised before you. The National Historic Ships Committee has come in for a certain amount of opprobrium from some quarters. I would like to correct one impression made by Rear Admiral Hervey who said that the core collection had been selected by Dr Prescott. Dr Prescott was commissioned to devise the method by which we selected a core collection. It is done on the basis that we look for a number of vessels which reflect the whole spectrum of maritime achievement in this country, so we are looking at selected examples of ship types, connections with famous people, famous events and also the vernacular and the mundane where it is significant. We have taken a very broad look at this. This does not fall in with everybody's expectations. We know perfectly well that you cannot list ships, and we would advise strongly against it, in the same way as buildings because they are vastly different, not only are they different in their method of construction but they are different in their purpose. We have historic ships which are at sea operating and, therefore, conform with things like SOLAS 95 and all the regulations that govern vessels and have to sacrifice bits of their original material to keep going on that basis. We have also got vessels which are static in museums in glass cases and we have them, like Victory, Cutty Sark and Discovery, which are out in the open air. The horrors of regulation by listing seem to be quite awful and we do not really want to contemplate that. The core collection which amounts to 58 vessels was based on the premises that I have just outlined and it is important to say that the National Historic Ships Committee in arriving at this figure were mindful constantly that the resources were going to be limited and that it was not a bottomless pit and we would have to work on the basis that we were driven by practicality. The list of designated vessels, which you are aware of, amounts at the present time to 157. There is some provision in there for transfer of vessels should some of the core collection be lost for one reason or another, deterioration or mismanagement or whatever. There are some good reserve list within that, as it were. Q31 Chairman: I am just aware you are getting into a long statement and we want to ask you lots of questions. Captain Woodman: I am sorry. Perhaps I will let it rest there. Q32 Chairman: Does anyone else want to pick up anything that was said earlier? Commander Paton: Could I just say that historic ships are not just important because of the past, they are important for the future as well. They are wonderful vehicles for education, inclusivity, regeneration and all those sorts of things. Yes, they are memorials to the past but they are also very, very important vehicles for the future. Mr Parr: I would like to say that historic ships in some people's opinion are almost bottomless pits and the money goes off anywhere. In fact, there are numbers of people who have benefited from them on particularly things like the Waverley where she has been carrying 150,000 passengers for the last three years ever since she has been refitted, Balmoral similarly, a challenge steam tug, in the last year since she has been refitted has had over 16,000 visitors through the ships. She has done over 2,000 miles in the last year and has been to Dordrecht, Liverpool, Brest, D-Day and two boat shows. I think that is extremely good value for money. People do not realise what value for money we have had in historic ships from grants from HLF. Q33 Chairman: On the 58 you have got, have you done a costing as to how much you need just to keep them in good nick? Captain Woodman: No, we have not. Q34 Chairman: So you have no idea really. Will you do it or not? Commander Paton: That is very much a plan that we want to do as soon as possible. Q35 Chairman: You have the resource for that? Commander Paton: We will not until we have got the Unit. Q36 Chairman: Coming later, I am told. Commander Paton: It will be a very careful analysis. We also needed a greater status to be able to go to the 58 and say we would really like this business information so that we can present a full case. Q37 Mr Hawkins: I really wanted to follow upon that. One of the things that we are interested in is the way the system as it has operated up until now may change once this new National Historic Ships Unit is established. Particularly for your committee, how do you foresee now your role is going to change? What is the interlinking going to be between you and the new Unit, or is that yet to be determined? Captain Woodman: It is yet to be determined. I would very happily hang my hat up if I was a volunteer and go and tend the garden if I knew it was going to be properly looked after and the stewardship would be adequately done. Certainly we have a lot of things we would like the Unit to do and I imagine probably a percentage of that is going to be a wish list at the moment. We were very interested in what you said this morning. Q38 Chairman: Is there a university anywhere that concentrates on this area? Is there a professor or anyone who looks at historical ships? Do we have any research anywhere in our universities? Commander Paton: It was Dr Robert Prescott from St Andrews who led the original project. I think his department is in the process of closing down, through lack of funds I suspect. Captain Woodman: There is an International Maritime Unit at Cardiff but that is more in terms of studying current shipping. Q39 Chairman: We are asking almost out of ignorance here. Would it be helpful if there was one university that had this as part of its being? Commander Paton: Yes, very much so. Chairman: Chatham has Greenwich, and I am not saying that because it is close to me, there are a lot of places, I am just asking. 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 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 Trust 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 are not able to work with lottery funders. 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. Even if you get a stage one approval then still only a handful of projects subsequently proceed to have 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 a model where 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. Q60 Chairman: Are the trustees allowed to go to the City and say, "We have got £1 or £2 billion but what we would like is £3 billion and we'll pay you the interest from what we have," because that way you could fund much more? You are not legally allowed to do that, are you? Ms Souter: No, we are not able to do that. Q61 Chairman: Would you like that resource? Ms Souter: I am not sure I could speak for my trustees on that one. I suspect that they would prefer not to have that resource in that we are a distributor of lottery funds. Unlike a number of other distributors, that is our sole purpose in life and getting into more complex funding arrangements is not something that I have heard my trustees express a desire to do. Q62 Chairman: We heard from our previous witnesses that it is still cumbersome and difficult and we hear that every time we do a lottery inquiry. I thought the idea was it was going to be simplified and online and much easier. Ms Souter: It does depend what you are applying for and, in particular, how much you are applying for. A number of projects, including ships, have been funded through the Awards for All programme, which is a small programme, up to £5,000, operated on behalf of a number of lottery distributors. That process is extremely straightforward and I think everyone who has been through that process would agree with that. Our smaller grants programmes we try to operate with a lighter touch and we will get decisions out without three months. A number of the projects we have been talking about this morning are applying for very, very large sums of money and public money. Any funder is going to ask for some certainty that what they are being asked to support is viable and that requires a certain amount of detailed information. Q63 Chairman: Can you apply online? Ms Souter: You cannot yet apply literally online, we are working to a situation where you will be able to do that, but all of our materials are available on our web. The site has been redesigned and is very accessible. My own personal feeling is that I would not like people, unless they were very, very expert and knew exactly what they are doing, to just zap in an application online, even when we are able to do that technically, without having had some conversation about what it is that they are planning to do and whether that fits with what our priorities are in that area. Q64 Chairman: I have only been here eight years. I used to get 100 letters a day from my constituents and I now get 300 emails. I hardly ever get a letter nowadays. When you ping an email back they are very grateful. Just to have that conversation means a great deal. Ms Souter: We certainly do that. Q65 Chairman: Did you say you can do that? Ms Souter: Yes. Mr Parr: Having handled quite a few applications, one certainly wants at least a conversation or even an opportunity to go up and talk to the people concerned and see the boats because so often what you get on the application does not convey the whole picture. Commander Paton: Some of it is very new territory for them. The educational outreach area is quite a big jump for many of them to make. I am not demeaning them in any sort of way. All I am saying is that it is a new subject that they have to articulate in particular ways. Q66 Chairman: Presumably you could say to them, "X from Gateshead had a similar project and we gave them funding, why don't you go and talk to them"? Commander Paton: Absolutely. Q67 Chairman: If you are not on the register, is that the death knell for the boats that are not on? Is that what is going to happen? Commander Paton: By no means. There are quite a few projects that go through that are not on the register. The register is just an attempt to show you what there is in the land. It is an attempt to show which are the more important ones and which are the lesser important ones. It was never intended to be a vehicle for funding per se. Captain Woodman: There are no particular strictures against being on the register if you can prove some sort of historic status. Mr Parr: The Heritage merit is only one of the seven parameters on which the application is judged. Q68 Chairman: And export licences, does that ever come up? Commander Paton: It is a murky world to us. I think Mr Anning probably knows more about it than we do. It is certainly handled by the DTI and there are certain rules about the value of the artefact in question, but there is not a lot of knowledge about in terms of export licences for historic ships. Q69 Chairman: So what recommendation would you give us? Commander Paton: That is something the Unit could investigate as a matter of priority and present the solutions. Chairman: Thank you very much. Memorandum submitted by Department for Culture, Media & Sport Examination of Witnesses Witnesses: Rt Hon Lord McIntosh of Haringey, a Member of the House of Lords, Minister for Media and Heritage, DCMS, and Mr Richard Hartman, Head of Museums Sponsor Unit, DCMS, examined. Q70 Chairman: Good morning, Minister. Can you tell us a little bit about the National Historic Ships Unit that you are announcing, have announced or want to announce? Lord McIntosh of Haringey: You are the occasion of the announcement and I am very grateful to you for providing that occasion because this becomes an announcement to Parliament. We have always recognised that historic ships are an important part of our maritime heritage and this is the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar. It has always been the case, as your Committee has pointed out in both of your previous reports, that the preservation of historic ships has been fragmented and uncoordinated and there has not been any clear sense of priorities. We are committed to delivering a national policy on ship preservation that preserves the best of our maritime heritage. We have carried out extensive consultation and you might argue it has been rather lengthy consultation in terms of time, but I am able to announce the establishment of a National Historic Ships Unit to advise the Government on policy and funding priorities for historic ships, to coordinate work within the sector, to help those directly engaged in preservation and to maintain an up‑to‑date register of the historic fleet, including the National Register of Historic Ships and the "At Risk" register. The Unit will encourage a better understanding of the costs of renovating and maintaining historic vessels, advise the Heritage Lottery Fund on ship preservation priorities and bids for funding and promote historic ships to a wider audience. We are making available the sum of £100,000 to establish the Unit on an interim basis in 2005/06. In 2006/07 this will increase to £170,000 and a further £80,000 will be given to provide a challenge fund to support research, publications, training, recording and similar activities relating to the preservation of historic vessels. The Unit will be based at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich and from 2006/07 it will be overseen by an Independent Advisory Board appointed by the Secretary of State and we shall consult, as one does, on the establishment of the Advisory Board. Rear Admiral Roy Clare, the Director of the National Maritime Museum, has asked me to place on record that the museum welcomes the new Unit, which will substantially enhance the expertise and organisational resources available to those responsible for Britain's many significant historic vessels and will refine and focus the advice available to grant giving bodies such as the Heritage Lottery Fund. Admiral Clare also says that the Museum looks forward to sustaining its support for the heritage fleet and assisting directly with the process of establishing the Unit in Greenwich under this independent board. I would like to join Roy Clare in paying tribute to Admiral of the Fleet Sir Julian Oswald, until recently the Chairman of the Historic Ships Committee, whose leadership has helped to bring about this policy. Q71 Chairman: Minister, we asked a previous witness whether it would be appropriate to have a university that specialised in this whole area of historic ships and we were told that St Andrews did have a department but that actually it might be closing. If you are going to Greenwich with this project, would it not make some sense to ask Greenwich University to take over this role from St Andrews so we had everything in one area? Lord McIntosh of Haringey: I would not want to say anything about the future of St Andrews. If they have got a viable unit going there I would not want to say anything threatening to it. The positive idea of having a unit at Greenwich University linked with the National Maritime Museum and with our Historic Ships Unit sounds to me a very good idea and indeed we could talk to my noble friend Lady Blackstone. Q72 Mr Hartman: The sum of £100,000 is not very much. That may be one man and two dogs. Will this £100,000 employ two people? Lord McIntosh of Haringey: No. The idea is it would employ three people, that it would employ clearly the head of the unit and a field officer and then somebody who would be responsible for the register. I know it is not very much but it is what we have managed to get out of a very tough settlement in Spending Review 2004. Q73 Chairman: We had Mr Doughty in front of us earlier and he said that he has had to pay VAT on the changes that have come in and he is going to have to pay something like £3 million on the cost of re‑preserving the Cutty Sark. What discussions have you had with the Paymaster General on this particular issue? Mr Hartman: We have had no discussions on this. This is the first we have heard of this problem. It is normally a problem for the Treasury, Customs & Excise, rather than us, so it would not come to us directly, but it is not a general issue that I am aware of. Q74 Chairman: Paying £3 million in VAT takes away £3 million from the project and other projects. Lord McIntosh of Haringey: It is normally the case that grants are allocated on the basis of knowledge whether VAT will be payable or not. If that is not the case ‑ and I think that is a matter for the Heritage Lottery Fund ‑ I am certainly prepared to talk to Treasury ministers about it. Chairman: I think we certainly want you to do that. Q75 Chris Bryant: Is this just England or is it England and Wales? What is going to happen to ships in Scotland and Wales? Mr Hartman: It includes Scotland and Wales and Northern Ireland may refer. Q76 Chris Bryant: This body's relationships with CADW and with English Heritage as well as the Heritage Lottery Board are going to be important, are they not? Mr Hartman: Yes, they are. Q77 Chris Bryant: Are you going to be providing any guidance? You referred to the fact that one of the things it is going to be looking at is outreach. The fact is that most ships are obviously on the coast and lots of people in the country do not live on the coast, they live inland, but our maritime heritage is a very important part of understanding Britain's role in the world and our history. Is there any guidance you are going to be giving on how they balance all the different competing elements of this work? Lord McIntosh of Haringey: That is what the Advisory Panel will be able to do. I do not think it should be a Government dominated initiative. We are talking about establishing a relatively small unit of three people which will have the next financial year to establish itself and at that time we will be appointing the Advisory Panel and I think they should be given a pretty free hand. That is not to say that I do not agree with you that the principle of getting people, even those who do not live near the coast, to appreciate the virtues of historic ships is important because I do agree with you. Q78 Chris Bryant: Obviously it is historic ships that we are talking about primarily today, but the whole of our maritime heritage goes rather wider than that, it is about the fact that the ships were built somewhere, there were major industries in particular parts of the country and parts of the country relied very heavily on that heritage. Do you see connections needing to be made there as well? Lord McIntosh of Haringey: I think there should be. The National Maritime Museum makes it possible to make those connections and the link with the NMM makes that possible, but anybody who visits Portsmouth and Gosport knows about the importance of the links between shipbuilding, between armaments for the Navy and the whole variety of ships themselves and clearly that is an important element. Q79 Mr Hawkins: Minister, I get the impression from all the evidence we have heard this morning and from the various written submissions to us that there is a strong feeling in this sector that maritime history has been undervalued for a considerable period of time. We have heard a lot of criticism of English Heritage who are prepared to list the buildings or land that may be associated with heritage and they list all kinds of building all round the country but they have not been prepared to support ships since the early 1990s. We have received very strong representations from just about all our witnesses so far that as a Committee we should be recommending that English Heritage change their stance back to supporting ships in the way that once they did. Do you not feel, particularly in an important anniversary year and when so much of our history is bound up with the maritime nature of our country, that really we should give a greater priority to supporting our maritime heritage and that it is quite wrong for English Heritage to say they will only look after buildings and they will not look after ships? Lord McIntosh of Haringey: The first response I want to give is that what is wonderful in this country is the degree of devotion and expertise which people who are not in official capacities want to give to historic ships and it is marvellous that we have the Committee and that there are support groups for individual ships all round the country. That has led to a much greater appreciation of the values of historic ships and of the history around them as well. I would not want to say anything about official action which would imply anything other than extreme appreciation and gratitude for what is done voluntarily. Having said that, English Heritage made a policy decision in 1992 and I do not think it is appropriate for Government to interfere in detail in the way in which they determine their grants policy. Clearly they will listen to what you say and they will listen to what witnesses before you say, but these grants are on an arm's length basis and the Government does not determine them individually and I think it would be wrong if we did. Q80 Mr Hawkins: Historic ships are by their very nature extremely expensive projects. A feeling that the witnesses to us so far have been expressing is that too great a burden is falling on the Heritage Lottery Fund, wonderful work though they are doing. The volunteers do lots of wonderful work around the country but they can only raise a relatively small amount of money and large sums are coming at the moment from the Heritage Lottery Fund. Is there not an argument for saying that there should be a greater role for Government, more than just setting up a Unit, welcome though it is, with only a small budget? Lord McIntosh of Haringey: I do not think there is a particularly good argument for greater overlap between the National Heritage Fund and English Heritage. They do different jobs and it is better if they do not trespass in each other's territories. You are quite right about the Heritage Lottery Fund, they do a marvellous job and they deal with the particularly intractable problem for historic ships, which is not only that you have to spend capital money on bringing them up to standard, but there is continuous maintenance expenditure required and the Heritage Lottery Fund I think understands that, which is why they have given the money to the Cutty Sark Trust. I do not think there would be any advantage in having more than one source of official financial support for historic ships. Q81 Mr Hawkins: In your Department's written evidence to us you talk particularly about the establishment of a small grants fund as one of the ideas that most people welcome. Is this something that you would particularly encourage the new Unit to look at, because certainly our witnesses so far this morning have generally welcomed the idea that there can be small grants to smaller projects to encourage volunteers to act as seed corn which might bring in business sponsorship and attract other sources of funding? Lord McIntosh of Haringey: I think that is a very appropriate thing for the new Historic Ships Unit to look at when it is established and I am sure it is something that will be taken into account when we look at the appointment of the Advisory Panel. I find that a very helpful suggestion if I may say so. Q82 Chairman: The Tourist Board do not fund ships anymore. I think they stopped funding it in 1999. It seems to me that shipping is part of the tourist business. I know how popular the Cavalier at Chatham is. I am just wondering if you and Mr Caborn could put your heads together. Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My preference for not overlapping funding between English Heritage and the Heritage Lottery Fund does not apply to tourist boards. I think tourist boards should be playing a more active role in exploiting the tourist potential of historic ships. Q83 Chairman: One thing that is clear in everything is that there is always a finite budget. All of the lotteries have substantial amounts of money in the bank, between probably £4 billion and £5 billion. Even though that is allocated across it is still in the bank. Is there anything to stop the Government going to the City and borrowing against that £10 or £15 billion so that you would just pay an interest and you could have a more profound effect on the communities? Lord McIntosh of Haringey: There is a National Lottery Bill, which has just had its First Reading in the House of Commons, which actually addresses the issue of balances in lottery funds. You are right, there are always substantial balances held by lottery funds and particularly by the Heritage Lottery Fund. They argue that those balances have been committed for projects which take place over a considerable period of time and that they are committed and they are not being withheld, but I think it is worth saying, without entering into a debate on the National Lottery Bill in advance of your Second Reading, that interest is gained on those balances and, secondly, all of the interest that is gained on those balances goes into the Fund itself and so nothing is lost. It would be a financial calculation which I cannot make off-the-cuff as to whether it is better to do as they do, which is to invest the money and use the income or to borrow against it in the City. Q84 Chairman: I just wondered whether there was any other lottery anywhere in the world that used it by borrowing from their own major bank. Lord McIntosh of Haringey: I do not know. I would be interested to know and if we can find out we will let you know. Chairman: Minister, thank you very much. |