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17 July 2006 : Column 93W—continued
Culture, Media and Sport
Art Market
Keith Vaz: To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport what action her Department has taken to strengthen the position of London as a global art market. [85364]
Mr. Lammy:
My Department sees maintaining the pre-eminent position of London within the global art market as vitally important. Through Arts Council
England, we have invested around £480,000 of lottery capital funding into London studio spaces for artists. The Arts Council also supports a number of art fairs, including the Frieze Art Fair which last year attracted 31,497 people, encouraging new buyers for contemporary art and leading to £32 million of sales.
My Department sponsors a number of museums and galleries, a number of which have important contemporary collections. The Arts Council has also stimulated public interest in contemporary art through its Own Art Scheme, which offers interest free loans to open up the market to a wider range of people. Own Art, although primarily focused on the regions, is to be expanded to involve a number of art colleges in London.
Casinos
Mr. Swire: To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport when (a) Ministers and (b) officials have held meetings in the last 12 months with casino operators interested in securing licences under the Gambling Act 2005; where each meeting took place; and what was discussed. [83371]
Mr. Caborn: Under the Gambling Act 2005, local authorities acting in their capacity as licensing authorities will be responsible for issuing the one regional, eight large and eight small new casino licences permitted by the Act. Licensing authorities will be required to run the competitions for these licences in a fair and open way. These competitions are not expected to begin until mid-2007, and the identities of the bidding companies will not be known until then.
DCMS Ministers and officials have met frequently with casino and other companies that may be interested in bidding, and their representative bodies. These meetings have covered all aspects of the implementation of the Gambling Act and wider gambling policy, and are part of our regular and ongoing consultation with the gambling industry, local authorities and other stakeholders. Those meetings that have been identified that have taken place since 1 January 2006 are listed in the following table, and all these meetings took place in the UK.
Details of earlier meetings that may be relevant were included in my reply of 20 December 2005, Official Report, columns 2654-6W to the hon. Member for North-East Cambridgeshire (Mr. Moss).
One further meeting has been identified, which was inadvertently omitted from my earlier reply: DCMS officials and I met Detlef Kornett, Managing Director of the Anschutz Group in London on 7 July 2003. The minutes of this meeting were published on the DCMS website as part of a response dated 26 July 2005 to a request made under the Freedom of Information Act.
Mr. Moss: To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport what (a) rights of appeal and (b) avenues to reopen decisions are available to those local authorities who have had their applications for a regional casino rejected by the Casino Advisory Panel. [84130]
Mr. Caborn: The process for considering local authority proposals for regional casinos is a matter within the discretion of the Casino Advisory Panel having regard to published criteria and to Government policy. Local authorities have no rights of appeal to the panel. The panel, however, has given interested parties the opportunity to submit further relevant information. The deadline for any such information was 28 June 2006.
Coastal Resorts
Mr. Amess: To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport which coastal resorts in England and Wales received Heritage Lottery grants in each of the last 10 years for which figures are available. [85388]
Mr. Lammy: The Heritage Lottery Fund have awarded the following grants to English coastal resorts (as defined by the British Resorts Association) and Welsh coastal resorts since 1994-95 to 2005-06:
| Region/coastal resort | Number of projects | Total value (£) |
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