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UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 176-iii House of COMMONS MINUTES OF EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE CULTURE, MEDIA AND SPORT COMMITTEE
Tuesday 23 January 2007 MR MARK WOOD, MR CHRIS BATT and MS SUE WILKINSON BARONESS ASHTON OF UPHOLLAND and MR DAVID LAMMY MP Evidence heard in Public Questions 313 - 370
USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT
Oral Evidence Taken before the Culture, Media and Sport Committee on Tuesday 23 January 2007 Members present Mr John Whittingdale, in the Chair Janet Anderson Philip Davies Alan Keen Mr Adrian Sanders Helen Southworth ________________ Memorandum submitted by Museums, Libraries and Archives Council
Examination of Witnesses Witnesses: Mr Mark Wood, Chairman, Mr Chris Batt, Chief Executive, and Ms Sue Wilkinson, Director of Policy and Advocacy, Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, gave evidence. Q313 Chairman: Good morning, everybody. Welcome to what is the final session of the Committee's inquiry into Caring for our Collections. Can I welcome first representatives of the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council: Mark Wood, the Chairman; Chris Batt, the Chief Executive; and Sue Wilkinson, Director of Policy. Can I also record the Committee's thanks to Sue Wilkinson for valiantly coming in to give evidence to us having broken her arm yesterday evening. We are very grateful. Ms Wilkinson: Thank you very much. Q314 Chairman: The DCMS, since we received written evidence to this inquiry, have published Understanding the Future: Priorities for England's Museums. It is fair to say that some of the oral evidence that we have had since then has expressed disappointment that it has not, in their view, set out the national strategy for museums that some have called for. Can I ask what the MLA's view is and whether or not you feel it is your role to spell out a detailed strategy of that kind? Mr Wood: If I may, Chairman, I think the answer is partly that MLA does have a role in setting a national strategy but we have to work with DCMS which also has a role in setting a national strategy. We have worked very closely with DCMS on this consultation document. Chris, you have been more closely involved. Mr Batt: Just to make some general points and Sue can add to this after me. We see it as a really important mechanism of beginning to generate real co-ordination and co-operation across the sector. Clearly there are a number of issues which need further work to identify what should go into an action plan. We have now had the consultation replies but we have not had a chance to analyse those yet because they have just come back to DCMS, but we intend to work on that and move forward on that with other strategic partners to ensure there is a genuine commitment to being much more co-operative and co-ordinated in all the work that is undertaken. I will invite Sue to say something about it. Ms Wilkinson: I think it is a really important opportunity for the museums sector because the one thing the document has done to date is establish a sense of priorities for the museums sector. We have a very clear opportunity to work with the sector to expand on those and then to drive forward the action plan for delivering them. The idea that there would be a document which is both for national and regional museums is something that is quite important. If we can have a shared sense of goals and priorities for all museums I think that will be really significant. Of course, in many ways it is very timely for us because we would want to ensure that as we think about the next phase of the Renaissance in the Regions programme we will be able to make sure that it is shaped and directed by what comes out of this extensive consultation. I think it will also reinforce one of the key achievements of Renaissance, which has been regional museums working with other museums in the region and regional museums working with nationals. Q315 Chairman: Thank you. The document does set out five priorities. Do you view those all as having equal strength? How do you intend to translate the priorities into a detailed set of recommendations to be able to follow? Ms Wilkinson: I think the priorities fall into two big themes which really are the two big themes which have run the Renaissance programme, which is about collections, and clearly any work that any museum is doing is going to be about broadening access to and stimulating knowledge and enthusiasm for the collections. I think the core of that strategy is about how collections are going to be better used, better understood, how they are going to inspire future generations. As we take forward the action plan we will clearly be doing it through extensive consultation. As yet, we have not set out the details for how we are going to deliver it but there will be the need for a steering group, it will need to bring the same sorts of organisations that created Understanding the Future together, so we are going to need to have national museums represented, independent museums, university museums, local authority museums, volunteer run museums. I also think we will want to work outside the museums sector as well because one of the critical issues for us is being able to demonstrate across government the role that museums can play in delivering the learning objectives of DfES and the communities objectives of DCLG and the contribution museums make to economy and tourism. Q316 Mr Sanders: We have heard about the achievements which the Renaissance programme has made possible but also some disappointment about the trickle-down to the non-hub museums. Have you found particularly good or successful practices in some hubs which could be used as models for others to follow? Mr Wood: Definitely, yes. I will kick off with a quick comment if I may. The Renaissance programme as a whole has been demonstrably quite successful in achieving measurable results in terms of visits, in terms of usage of museums, in terms of co-operation with schools, and there are outstanding examples particularly in those hubs which have received the full funding, the Phase One hubs. I will ask Sue to say a bit more about that. Ms Wilkinson: It is quite clear that in a programme where three regions are fully funded and six are not that you are going to get patchy provision. It is quite interesting looking at the report that the Association of Independent Museums published last year, which they commissioned to look at the impact of Renaissance and its impact on their own constituents, that said there is evidence of increasing activity outside hub museums in the 2006-08 programme, so from next year when Phase Twos have much more money we can expect to see much more of the trickle-down that I think they were talking about. The report estimated that by 2008 £30 million will have been focused on independent museums, which is a not inconsiderable sum. The goal of this is always about the museums that are in the hubs working in partnership with and sharing experience with other museums. If I can give you an example: one of the Phase One hubs in the South West decided what it needed to do was take collections out, particularly into rural areas, and it developed the Museum in Transit, which was a mobile museum that went out and worked with schools. It worked with 7,000 children in the first three months of operation. Looking at that initiative, seeing how it worked, the North East then decided that it too was going to have its own Museum in Transit. The South East is looking at implementing it in 2007-08 when as a Phase Two hub it will have 60% of full funding. Colchester has also been looking at taking archaeological collections out. That is what Renaissance does, it allows museums to take some risks, to initiate a new project, to look at how it will work really well and then others to build on that and decide if it is appropriate to take that forward within their region. Q317 Mr Sanders: Is there anything which you would do differently if you were launching the Renaissance programme now? Ms Wilkinson: That is an interesting question. Would we do things differently? I am not sure that we would necessarily do things very differently. I think since 2002 we have tried to see the programme as something which is evolving where we constantly have to work with the hubs, with the regional agencies, with other partners, to see whether, in fact, it is on the right track and that it is delivering what it promised to deliver. We commissioned a big evaluation report of Renaissance last year in order to establish before we went into the next spending round that that was an appropriate direction to take the programme in. No, I do not think we would necessarily do things differently. There are some things that we could only do differently because we have learned from experience. For instance, trying to develop a lighter touch on business planning could only come through the experience of doing the programme and knowing how we can balance the need for evidence of impact with the need for detailed plans. That is something that we are constantly prepared to look at. Similarly, I think, getting the data collection right. We were clear at the beginning that we needed to have good data but it took trial and error to get to the process that we have got today. Q318 Mr Sanders: Is it complete? Ms Wilkinson: It is complete for the hub museums, yes. We are now getting full returns from every museum in the hub. We are getting them three times a year and we are publishing the results on our website. We always publish the constant sample as well, which is the museums that have completed the returns from the very beginning, so you can see both the pattern of change because you can look back year-on-year, but you can also see it as the other museums come into play. Q319 Helen Southworth: Warrington Museum is small but it has a wonderful collection, some very, very interesting things, and is not going to be part of Renaissance in the Regions, it is too small in any effective way to get resources from Renaissance in the Regions. We have just had a really superb exhibition, which is current, working with the Science Museum and with a lot of support from Liverpool Museum where the national museums are letting my constituents have direct access to some really rather stunning things. I was going round and was absolutely wowed, it was wonderful. In fact, even the reporter from the local newspaper decided to bring his family the next day. It is really good. That is only because the national museums can work with a very small museum and support the staff as well as lending exhibits. We are having something that is absolutely top class quality that my constituents do not have to go to London to see, they can go into town to see it. How are you going to make sure that is a key indicator for national museums and for the big local museums to work with museums like Warrington and make sure they succeed? Ms Wilkinson: We do not set the indicators for national museums, but that is why Understanding the Future is so important. If Understanding the Future is something that shapes the work of both the nationals and the regionals, that is the way that we can ensure that sort of work becomes part of every national museum's agenda. Having said that, of course, there has been funding to encourage national museums to work with regional museums and every single one of the hub museums is in a partnership with the national museums. The other work we are doing is we have always been very clear, even though we have not had full funding for the programme, that a chunk of the investment must be about the wider museums community so that they too can deliver high quality services for the people who live in their locality and their region. About a third of the funding for Renaissance goes into initiatives that are aimed at the wider museums community. So you have the regional agencies, who are funded through Renaissance, to provide the strategic framework within which museums will develop, but also to broker those sorts of partnerships, to be able to say, "This is a really good partnership and you can work here" and this museum is operating to the standards that are necessary to make that partnership work. We have got the Museum Development Fund which is about providing advice and support to small museums and we have got initiatives like the Subject Specialist Networks. All of those initiatives are about trying to foster the sorts of partnerships that you have described because that is our goal. Our goal is to make collections accessible to everyone but also to inspire future generations so that they too will understand just how important these resources are for knowledge, inspiration, creativity and enjoyment. Mr Wood: Can I add a point that I should have made. The whole philosophy behind the Renaissance programme was to reinvigorate the regional museum infrastructure after a period in which everybody recognised that there had been quite serious under-investment. If that was to concentrate investment in certain areas initially because it was thought that would have most impact rather than spreading it very thinly, I think the record shows that has worked very well. Part of the overall philosophy was also to give the regional museums more confidence and to really invigorate the whole sector to work with the nationals and to be more demanding of them and that has changed the relationship fundamentally in the last few years. The regional museums really do now engage with the nationals with a great deal more confidence and also have the infrastructure in many more places to manage collections moving around and exhibitions that they did not before. That is part of the trickle-down effect of Renaissance, that it has changed that relationship and the nationals have responded to it. If you talk, as you have done, to national directors, they are huge supporters of the Renaissance programme because they see Renaissance, indeed the MLA, as being a network which links them into the regionals and the regional infrastructure and helps co-operation and creates a framework which did not exist before. For all those reasons, Renaissance does have a responsibility for why you have got a brilliant exhibition in Warrington, frankly, I think there is an element of that there. Q320 Mr Sanders: Witnesses from the hubs have told us that they have been encouraged to make long-term plans under the Renaissance programme and that cuts in funding could put them in a worse position than they were before Renaissance. Do you agree with their assessment? Mr Wood: My colleagues will say a bit more on that. I do absolutely. Renaissance is an infrastructural investment programme in many ways and it has involved a lot of new vitally needed posts being created, for example new curatorial posts. I think a couple of hundred so far have been created. These are long-term improvements in collections care and in the workings of museums and in collections development. It is absolutely vital that the funding continues, it cannot be seen as a one-off programme where you can just switch the tap off, this would cause enormous damage to regional museums and to those in the hub teams. That is not just an MLA view, we have had very, very strong support from DCMS on this and David Lammy, who you will be speaking to soon, has been travelling around the country visiting Renaissance museums and has been an incredibly enthusiastic supporter of the programme. I think there is recognition all round that this is an infrastructural investment programme which has long-term impact but is not a short-term programme. Chris, do you want to say a bit more on that? Mr Batt: Just to reinforce that point, that Renaissance should not been as a project that has an investment and then finishes and everything is different, it is about maintaining that success it has already delivered long-term. That is exactly what is going to change the relationships both regionally between institutions and their users but also nationally, as Mark and Sue have described, between the national museums and the regional museums. It is a long-term investment; it has to be. Ms Wilkinson: The only thing I would to that is from the very early stages any museum that was going to be in a hub had to have a commitment from its funding body that they would maintain their core investment in the regions. We have had feedback from all the hubs that in tight budget rounds that has been an important consideration for any authority or funding body. If Renaissance funding does disappear then that protection will disappear. We know that when Renaissance was commissioned as a report it was because there was real concern about the state of regional museums and there was a steady decline in visitor figures, the Visit Britain figures showed that. I think we would go back to that situation with a customer base with increased expectations, because that was what we focused on, now being even more dissatisfied. Q321 Mr Sanders: So what can you do if that situation emerges to ensure that the Renaissance success story continues? Mr Wood: We have got to keep making the arguments that we are doing. Some of the comments we have had from the Treasury have been very encouraging in that they see this as one programme which has always delivered measurable results where we have deliberately established a programme in a way that measures the outcomes, if you like, the results that we get in every single part of that investment. It is very important to keep telling that story. The broader story as well is the role of museums in the whole UK economy, whether it is the tourist economy or with education and the role of museums in inspiring youngsters and really getting teenagers off the streets where they have a vitally important role to play. Looking forward to the Olympics, museums really are the most important tourist attractions in the UK as well as being cultural centres. They have such a vital role to play that we have to keep making the argument that it would be so short-sighted to reduce investment, and we still have not had the full Renaissance investment yet, we are still short of the full programme, but it is achieving such remarkable results and having fantastic knock-on effects, including enabling regional museums to leverage Lottery funding. I think nearly £300 million of extra Lottery funding has come through this programme. This is really having an impact and we just have to keep making that argument, and the regional museums do so as well, of course, the hub museums. Q322 Mr Sanders: So your message is "museums, not ASBOs". Ms Wilkinson: I think we could take that one and use it. Mr Wood: It is a good slogan. Ms Wilkinson: It is a very good slogan and a lot cheaper. Q323 Chairman: You have talked of the support which you have had from DCMS and the minister's personal enthusiasm but, on the other hand, you have been asked to consider what will happen if there is a 5 or 7% reduction in funding. Can I take it from your answer, therefore, that you are not resigned to that, that you are still fighting to convince Government to at least exempt the museums sector from any such reduction? Mr Wood: Absolutely. We are not resigned to anything. We have very, very strong arguments to make that this is a sector which has suffered from under-funding for a very long period and there is cross-party agreement on that in the background to the Renaissance programme. We are having a measurable impact at a time when you have in the education sphere the need to think about how you create a creative economy and the creative institutions are a vital part of that. What was very important was that museums engaged much more with schools, which they have done, the Renaissance programme has been a real motor for that. The other aspect is how do you establish a UK programme for the Olympics which engages all the regions. It is not just visitors coming in to visit North London, the Olympics should be a national event, and will be a national event I think, and museums have a vital part to play and, therefore, continuing to invest in their infrastructure and their work is absolutely vital. No, we will continue to lobby and argue forcefully that this is one area where funding should not be cut. I do not get any sense that DCMS is not behind us on this and the minister very much because he has been a very, very keen supporter of this. Q324 Chairman: But at the end of the day it is not going to be the DCMS that makes that decision. Are you detecting similar enthusiasm in the Treasury? Mr Wood: I think inscrutability is the word that probably applies there. What we have recognised is there is a lot of appreciation of the Renaissance programme in the Treasury because it is almost the perfect Treasury programme: you put the funding in and measure the results coming out. We can deliver statistics, which we do, which demonstrate what value has been achieved and created with taxpayers' money and that is very, very important and I think we should be doing that. From that point of view the Treasury thinks it is a very good programme so that gives me hope still. Ms Wilkinson: We have created a very robust evidence base. We have conducted surveys of children and teachers where we have had 26,000 children and 1,600 teachers talking to us about what they see as the impact of Renaissance on teaching and learning. As I was saying, we have regular data returns from the hubs. We conduct an annual exit survey of museums. We have both robust quantitative data about the programme as well as a lot of hugely important evidence about people talking about the impact the programme has had on their lives. Talking about "museums, not ASBOs", the sorts of comments we are getting about these programmes could be summed up for me by a 15 year old boy in Bolton who said, "I didn't know what community was until I did the Local Treasures project" and at the end of it he said he had a much greater respect for older people than he had ever had before, which I personally found very encouraging because I think I was probably one of his "older people". Q325 Helen Southworth: We have had some evidence about the engagement of museums with young people who are on the margins. I was wondering whether you had any comments about how the programme has helped to develop that. I have had evidence about working with Sure Start and young people in care and I was wondering whether you have got some evidence you can give us about that. Ms Wilkinson: Yes. The PSA targets for the programme have been very much focused on drawing people into the Renaissance funded institutions - that is the whole programme, not just the hub museums - which would not normally go to museums. We have got a huge number of case studies of museums that have made a particular focus on children and young people at risk of exclusion. When we did the big survey of 26,000 children we discovered that 32% of the schools that visit the Renaissance funded hubs come from 20% of the most deprived wards in the country using the Indices of Multiple Deprivation. Colchester Museum worked with 20 families whose children suffer from Aspergers Syndrome. Norfolk Museum was working with the Norfolk Youth Offending Team and the Youth Offending Team have reported the impact of this programme on the young people who were involved in it. They were talking about increased motivation and the development of skills. There are examples in every single one of the hubs and in many of the museums outside the hubs who have been funded through things like the Museum Development Programme and, of course, the Museums with Designated Collections about both their commitment to working with these audiences and their amazement about the impact this sort of work can have. One of the things that MLA have done is created an outcomes framework which allows us to analyse what it is people say about their experiences. We have now got a strong evidence base which shows the ability of museums to inspire people and to motivate them so that they want to take their learning further, so that they want to engage in skills training or learning or they want to join in some other project or programme. Q326 Alan Keen: Mark Wood has already made the point indirectly that the greatest threat to funding of the arts in the next few years is the Olympics. You made the point that what you have got to offer is crucial to the Cultural Olympiad. Mr Wood: Yes. Q327 Alan Keen: How did the secondment of a senior person come about? Did you suggest it? Did it come from a joint meeting? Mr Batt: It was an opportunity that we saw very quickly to second a senior member of staff to the London Organising Committee, LOCOG, to be at the heart of the development. This was when some thought had been given at the very beginning of the process to how culture would play a role beyond the Opening Ceremony and the Closing Ceremony. By having someone in at the heart we were able to give quite a degree of confidence very quickly about the range and opportunity of the institutions that we represent. It has led us, first of all, to a very close working relationship with a number of people at LOCOG but working with the Arts Council also, which is engaged, and now are in a position where the one element that was in the original bid, the international exhibition programme, we are responsible for managing the committee that is running that, and Mark chairs that committee. We produced a prospectus of opportunities for museums, libraries and archives and then consulted on it. It was not simply a matter of us being able to have a strong voice at LOCOG but also to have a strong compelling voice with the sector who, it is fair to say, at the first meeting we called with stakeholders looked quite askance at the idea that there was any opportunity to do things because clearly many people saw the Olympics as a threat rather than an opportunity. Our engagement has made it possible to encourage institutions right across the country to see the value in being a part of it. In the consultation that has just closed we have had over 100 responses and about 80% of the institutions that responded indicated they would certainly be actively engaged in contributing to the Cultural Olympiad that begins next year. We are on the breaking wave rather than being behind it in terms of this. Q328 Alan Keen: Are you really saying, or are you not, that your involvement has led LOCOG to understand what it is you have got to give and, therefore, are coming in on your side on funding rather than thinking, "We need the funding. We are going to be the ones who are going to get the criticism if it is not delivered on time"? Do they understand now that some of the funding has to stay with you instead of being taken away or increased funding coming in from their side? Mr Batt: They recognise that nothing will happen without investment. That is not quite true because institutions are already thinking about a range of things they would want to do. There is not guaranteed funding for any of this activity. We learnt very quickly that there are quite a lot of constraints about how the money that is in LOCOG's budget can be used and a lot of that is focused on the Opening Ceremony and the Closing Ceremony, which are big events. There is a relatively modest budget which covers educational and cultural activities and it is possible that we could be a part of that. We understand that we need to consider other funding streams, which could be sponsorship, and clearly they have a strong engagement with that, and could be looking for other funding investment. For example, the Heritage Lottery Fund has already indicated many of its programmes consider favourably Olympics related activity and there is the Olympics Trust which has been set up. There is a range of opportunities. The crucial point in all of this is we have been able to make it very clear that we do not have to talk about huge sums of money to do this, there is a real opportunity to make a difference to the whole country before, during and after the Olympics with the investment in programmes we already have. Mr Wood: I think I can add to that. We have helped, and this work has helped people in LOCOG, and LOCOG has been quite enthusiastic about this, to recognise the potential for staging activities and events around the country based around museums. That is one very, very powerful way of involving the whole of the country in the Olympic experience, if you like, and contributing to the Olympic event and being caught up in it and being engaged in it. That was our objective when we began engaging with LOCOG and I think they have been very receptive. Q329 Alan Keen: As you know, we have just completed a report on the Olympics and that was one of the big issues, particularly for people from other parts of the country. We were talking earlier about the regions and the MLA quite separate from the Olympics, so I am pleased to get that answer from you. It is one of the strongest arguments you have got as well, is it not, to make sure you get funding and you have got to keep battling away. Good luck with that. Mr Wood: Absolutely. It is our job to get those arguments across. It does not take much to convey the potential and the enthusiasm and the creativity amongst the leading regional museums and, indeed, even going down to the local areas. Q330 Alan Keen: I am sure you would be very pleased if we recommended that. Mr Wood: We would be very pleased indeed, yes, thank you. Alan Keen: I am encouraged by those answers, thank you very much. Q331 Janet Anderson: Could we move on to trust status. We have heard some very enthusiastic endorsements of the benefits of trust status for local authority museums. Has your report on that encouraged other local authorities to look into the possibility of improving their services in this way? What are the benefits and what are the disadvantages in your view of trust status? Ms Wilkinson: The report we commissioned focused in the main on local authority museums, as you have said. It seems that there were various reasons that were identified within the report for devolution, some of which were around responding to funding difficulties or something like a best value review, others were around wanting to have much more flexibility and freedom and to give stronger focus. The report in the end did not come down to say trust status is better than non-trust status. What it said was there are advantages and disadvantages to both and the critical thing is about how you go into setting up the trust but also the management and governance of the institutions. What we have done in order to facilitate museums that are thinking of taking up trust status is to commission a further piece of work that builds on the report that will provide things like model governance frameworks because we would not see it as our role to say, "This is how you should be governing your institutions", we think it is our role to say, "This is the evidence that will tell you both what you need to consider and what the problems and issues might be, and here is some support so that if you decide to go ahead we can draw on the best practice of the 23 museums that have taken up trust status and assist you in ensuring that you make the best decisions for you and particularly the people you are there to serve". Q332 Janet Anderson: Would you draw a distinction between those authorities where they have a wider sort of leisure trust and those that just have trust status for museums and galleries? What are the benefits and what are the disadvantages of those two models? Ms Wilkinson: The report did look specifically at that issue and I can give you the section of the report now, if that would be useful, or we could send it to you afterwards. Broadly what it said was that while the advantage of a strategic approach to the delivery of culture is self-evident, there was no evidence to suggest that museums fared better in those larger trusts and, in fact, there was evidence to suggest that perhaps they were not necessarily the best solution for the museum service. That was for museum services which were small services. Clearly if it was a big service operating within a culture and leisure trust then that might change. The issue was about profile, recognition and status within a large culture and leisure trust not being terribly different from the issues about being a museum service within a large local authority trying to make the same case for investment. Janet Anderson: Thank you very much. Q333 Philip Davies: Could I ask you about the Goodison Review and its recommendation that it made on liberalising the tax regime to encourage philanthropic donations. A couple of weeks ago when Sir Nicholas came to the Committee he told us that despite being set up by the Treasury four years ago he had not even spoken to anybody from the Treasury apart from a phone call the night before our Committee hearing, I think. I just wonder what you have been doing in order to press for a more liberal tax regime to encourage this? Mr Wood: We were very enthusiastic about the Goodison Review and some of those aspects which have been implemented have involved the MLA, for example passing over some responsibility from DCMS in export licensing and so on. Indeed, it should not be forgotten that Sir Nicholas' recommendation one was that the Renaissance programme should be carried out and funded in full, which he said was the framework for everything else, which I thought was slightly overlooked but is quite an important part of the report. In general, we wish there had been more progress. I think it is a very important report. If you look at the sector, the big problem in the museums sector right now is funding for collections development and for acquisitions. It is not the only problem but it is a major problem, a lack of adequate funding for collections development. It is clear that we are in a situation now where the Government is not going to suddenly find extra money to give to museums to add to their collections so where do we find alternative revenue streams. Of course, there are other revenue streams, national museums have been very good at commercial development and so on, but if you look around at other developed countries most of them have a more developed infrastructure and system for philanthropy, both private and corporate. As Sir Nicholas Goodison did, so we looked at different models. France is an interesting one, Australia is another interesting one. You do not have to go all the way down the route to the American model, although that is also quite instructive. A more liberal regime on tax treatment of philanthropy and donation would open up private investment, private funding, which could help the museums sector as it has in other countries. The Goodison Review was a very important first step which we have not even taken in some areas. Q334 Philip Davies: Given your success in persuading DCMS to implement the Goodison recommendations that related to them, does this mean that you have come up against a brick wall at the Treasury as well on this or have you not pressed as well on this as you have on those other issues? Mr Wood: We have tried arguing the case. We need to keep regrouping and arguing the case again. The Art Fund put forward a very good paper on lifetime giving, which we supported, which put forward the arguments very coherently which was rejected by the Treasury. We just have to keep rethinking how we advance the arguments because they are very sound. Of course it is a difficult one for any government, for any Treasury, because you are giving up potential tax revenue, so it is not straightforward, but we are looking at systems which have worked very well in other countries and have helped open up additional funding streams which really do make a big difference to the institutions. Sir Nicholas Goodison's recommendations were very well thought through, very thorough and were not that radical. We just need to keep pressing that argument, and we will do so. No, we have not been given much encouragement so far from the Treasury but there is a logic to these arguments which is persuasive. If we cannot see any other sources of funding for collections development in particular, and other things, then I think we have got to keep banging on the door. You know as well as I do if you go into any American museum you will see a wall of donors. The fund raising which is going on in the States, for example, from the private sector and the corporate sector is so much more dynamic than it is here because there is that tax framework. We need to learn from that because it helps everybody. People are willing to give if there is some encouragement and some incentive. Sir Nicholas' recommendations only covered a small area of that, I think we could go a lot further. Q335 Chairman: Indeed, we were told that if you go to a British museum you will see a wall of American donors! Several of our witnesses have pointed at the considerable disruption that the MLA has undergone in terms of reconfiguration, reviews and the uncertainty that has inevitably created. Are you confident that you are now in a state where you can move forward and implement the considerable tasks that have been given to you and there will be no more of this restructuring? Mr Wood: Absolutely. There has been a restructuring in as far as far as we have integrated the nine regional MLA agencies into the national agency. Before that we had a peer review process, which was actually quite effective. Overall it has created a much more effective organisation and a more dynamic organisation to have a national/regional MLA as opposed to having separate semi-autonomous regions. We have a shared agenda now and we can work together much more effectively. Another effect is we have been able to make efficiency savings, particularly in back office work. We have taken out costs, we have reduced staffing. One of the objectives of this organisation is to be as lean and mean as possible and to make sure the money goes to the frontline, it does not go into administration, bureaucracies and needless posts and roles. By this integration we have achieved a much more focused organisation which is much more effective in the regions as well. I do not think we missed a step along the way. We had a short, sharp debate, relatively speaking, we created the new structure, we have a new board where all the regional chairs sit on it, it is not that dissimilar to the path the Arts Council took, but we now have very, very enthusiastic commitment from across all the regions for a national MLA. I think Chris, who carried out this work laboriously over many months of the integration work, might want to say a few words. Mr Batt: Just to reinforce that we believe what we have done has created a much stronger and robust organisation. We have not lost any speed on any of the programmes we had in place before the review started. Indeed, I believe in doing that it helped us in some areas to see the way forward. I just want to stress that it is not simply about doing more efficiently what we were doing before. We recognise that the sector needs a strong and powerful voice nationally to speak up in a consistent way for it. That is what we are doing today, hopefully, and what we will do much more of in the future. To do that we need to have a much more compelling research and evidence base so that rather than simply telling an interesting story about what is happening we can demonstrate that there are significant impacts to be delivered by our institutions, and Renaissance is a good precursor of what we want to do more of. We need to ensure that our reputation is heard and understood. We have delivered in a whole range of areas from the People's Network to Renaissance in the Regions, inspiring the Learning for All programme, but we need to make it very clear that we are exactly what we have agreed with DCMS, the lead strategic body for museums, libraries and archives. Now it is much more about focusing on future development, the development of policy options for government, and that is why it is so important that we are now leading on the action plan for Understanding the Future. We are just about to launch a new policy framework for libraries and on archives we want to look again at all of the recommendations of the Archives Task Force and ensure that where we have not already done something we can review those to make sure there is a policy framework with DCMS. Q336 Helen Southworth: You have touched there on the significance of developing a long-term policy for archives and you said in your evidence that a long-term strategy for publicly funded archives needs to be developed to bring them into line with museums and libraries. Can you give us a progress report about how close you are to achieving that? Mr Batt: Yes. In advance of coming to talk to you we looked again at the recommendations of the Archives Task Force and it still presents us with the framework that we need to move forward. It was a really fundamental review. For us at MLA it seems a long time ago but it is only just coming up to three years now. Of those eight recommendations, we have achieved seven of them with the National Archives and others, significant steps to demonstrate they are the right kinds of things to do. We have used our own core funding to replace what would have been about £2 million of investment in that particular area but it has demonstrated that the basis for a development framework for archives is there covering things that we are doing elsewhere: positioning archives as part of national policy more broadly in terms of education, the economy, social development in communities and things like that; looking at particular areas like film and audiovisual archives where there is not any kind of organised framework available; and looking at the workforce because developing the workforce is critical. We have started to do things in all of those areas, it has not been that nothing has been happening. The key element of the recommendations which it has not been possible to deliver is, of course, recommendation one which was the creation of the archives gateway which proposed expenditure of around £10 million over five years. We have worked with the National Archives and other strategic partners to put a bid into Heritage Lottery Fund. My interpretation of the situation is that when that gateway proposal was made it was at the end of a period when there were quite a lot of grands projets in IT development, the People's Network, the National Grid for Learning, the University for Industry, and there was a developing view at that point that in the future those projects should look more at outcomes and the impact on communities and to see how far one could take existing frameworks and build on them rather than starting from scratch. Having talked to the Heritage Lottery Fund I am convinced that their view was it did not take that view enough, and that is understandable. We want to revisit that in terms of our new policy framework and find ways in which we can work in partnership to find ways of moving forward the archives gateway as well. There is a really strong commitment now to take the success of the elements that have been achieved in the past three years and use that as a foundation for moving forward. We have already had some conversations with DCMS about this who are extremely supportive of, first of all, agreeing the relationships that there are between us and the National Archives to ensure there is no duplication, that we are working as one to deliver, but then to find ways of moving forward on that broad front of eight recommendations. Q337 Helen Southworth: The archives sector has some very pressing challenges currently. What needs to be done in order to address those challenges but also set the sector into the 21st Century as well as doing incredibly valuable work to record the previous centuries? Mr Batt: The caveat I normally say at this stage is we cannot solve everybody's problems for them. It is great when we have got budgets that we can actually enable change to happen, and even sometimes a relatively small investment can make a big difference, I am not dismissing that. We have to help organisations to change themselves quite often. Archives are as heterodox as the rest of our sector, it is quite a complicated sector, but even within the public sector, from record offices that at least fall within a framework of inspection from the National Archives, through local history collections in libraries that form a part of the normal collection of a community's identity through to a whole range of specialist archives, for example the film archives, those are areas where we can help to identify urgent need, we can lobby, support and argue for investment from governing bodies where we can. A very good example is with the National Archives we make a relatively modest investment in the National Council for Archives. Our contribution is about £75,000 a year. We pay 50% of a Lottery advisory officer, which for us is probably around £20,000 of that £75,000. In three years that person has brought in £37.5 million worth of Lottery investment to support archives. It is not necessarily about large scale investment to bring about change, it is getting the money in the right place to do it. That is the sort of thing that we are going to be much stronger on in the future, to find the points where you can really make a difference and work on those. Q338 Helen Southworth: Following your restructure, how many staff do you have? What sort of expertise do you have on archives? Mr Batt: We have a head of archives policy now and also an archives manager within the national agency. There are staff working in our regional agencies as well. We do not have large teams of people, even running the Renaissance programme there is a relatively small team of people at the national agency, but they have a responsibility both to advocate but also to develop policy, to make connections with partners to ensure that we are getting maximum benefit from the investment. Q339 Helen Southworth: Do you think it would be helpful to clarify what proper arrangements local authorities should be making in terms of care of their records? Should it be a statutory function? Mr Batt: Our view is that trying to do this through legislation is probably not going to be an effective way of raising standards where standards need to be raised. Q340 Helen Southworth: So it will all be effective? Mr Batt: We are looking at performance indicators and these will be voluntary. We are hoping to have performance indicators in play early next year which will allow archives to assess themselves. There is a voluntary scheme that National Archives have as well to allow self-assessment. All of those will provide the means of helping the archives themselves to understand where they have strengths and where they have weaknesses. We believe that is probably a more effective way in the short to medium term of bringing about improvement. Mr Wood: If I can add to that. A role that MLA has, and fulfils very well, is in workforce development, leadership development and best practice. A lot of the experiences, both in the museums and archives sectors, in developing, if you like, a customer focus in the way services have developed is being applied to the archives sector. I know from meeting people from the Society of Archivists a couple of years back that there is a younger generation of archivists who are very keen to latch on to this as a means to change the culture in that sector as well and make it much more open, much more focused on delivering services to visitors and tourists as well, changing the way that even county archives work. We have tapped into enthusiasm there and a lot of MLA's work is in this below the radar but very effective work of ---- Q341 Helen Southworth: Their enthusiasm has to be backed up by resources. Mr Wood: Yes, it does, absolutely. The enthusiasm also helps put forward the arguments which get the resources. I think that is where MLA has been very effective. MLA has generally been very, very good at workforce development and setting standards through the Museum Accreditation Scheme which reorient these institutions and change their focus, and I think that is where they have achieved a lot. Q342 Chairman: On that note, can we wish you every success with your lobbying of the Treasury. Thank you very much. Mr Wood: Thank you very much. Any help you can give us would be welcome. Chairman: Thank you. Memorandum submitted by Department for Culture, Media and Sport Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Baroness Ashton of Upholland, a Member of the House of Lords, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Constitutional Affairs; and Mr David Lammy, a Member of the House of Commons, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Culture, Media and Sport, gave evidence. Q343 Chairman: We are going to touch on the close working relationship between the two departments - it is good to see it in practice already! Mr Lammy: She came to my wedding! Chairman: Can I welcome the two Ministers who have responsibility in this area: Baroness Ashton from the Department of Constitutional Affairs; and David Lammy from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and invite Alan Keen to start. Q344 Alan Keen: We could take any number of quotes from people in this inquiry - we have reached the last stage of it now - and I will just take one at random. The National Council on Archives would like to see "much greater co-ordination between the numerous departments with a finger in the archival pie." An archival pie to somebody who follows football is an horrific thought; the only worse pie at a football match would be an "archaeological pie", I think, so it is frightening! There is a demand from a lot of people for more co-ordination. Which department is really responsible for the whole sector? Baroness Ashton of Upholland: I think the truth is that different departments are responsible for different aspects of archives because archives is not of itself a subject that you can simply lump into one place. The DCA and in a sense the National Archives are the record-keepers for government and that is a fundamental role. You will all be aware of the tremendous work that they do and the submissions you have had about the involvement of the public and the 270,000 visitors and the 22 million visitors on-line a year, but that is quite different as a responsibility from the work that DCMS does and from the work in local government, particularly where archives play a critical role not only for local people but again for record-keeping and increasingly for freedom of information too. Q345 Alan Keen: Local government have asked for more co-ordination by DCMS; what have you got to say about that? You must have talked about bringing the responsibilities closer together. Mr Lammy: Absolutely, I think you have got three places that are key to archives in this country. You have got what is going on locally, and the overwhelming majority of archives are local. It is what our local authorities are doing to preserve archives and to communicate to their communities the values of social cohesion and social history. It is the sort of work that the Lottery was able to fund last year, in particular to veterans across this country. It is the sort of work that I have seen in Birmingham in relation to black and ethnic minority communities where they spent £800,000 on a black archives resource. It is in small, voluntary organisations, charitable organisations, and there are issues about upkeep, about access, about how one links up with what is going on nationally, about the sorts of standards that are coming out of the National Archives, but there is that local component first and foremost and in a sense that must be for local government. We are in dialogue of course with the LGA and our colleagues who are local councillors. Much of our work must be about advocacy then to local government about the benefit of archives, and I have to say in relation to social cohesion, anti-social behaviour, the sort of dialogue that we are having about Britishness, about the nature of our multi-culturalism, I believe that archives are absolutely key in that; absolutely key for all communities to understand how they arrived at the place that they arrived at, to tell stories and tales that really touch the lives of young people. We have seen a lot of archives used. It is important also to remember that in relation to Renaissance in the Regions, funding much of that resource that young people are using in our museums is archival material that has benefited from those new funds. That is the role that you have heard from MLA that we play in, if you like, those cross-cutting issues, levering in more money - and £37.5 million was levered into archives through new posts that MLA has been able to support - but there are also leadership issues as well. I am very pleased that there are two Clore Fellows in the archives sector to take that forward. It has got to be all three of us: nationally a responsibility for national archives which I think must sit with DCA; a clear responsibility for MLA on the cross-cutting issues to be doing advocacy for the sector; but one would not seek to take away from local government and local people what in the end must be a local resource. Q346 Alan Keen: Can I come on to something very specific as an example. Just by chance a few years ago I came across a website that the Northern Echo in the North East were keeping and I found my little town where I was brought up, with a population of 3,500, in the shadow of the steelworks and in the middle of North Teesside, a tiny little town, and local people have put lots of stuff on there. There are wonderful newspaper reports - talking about anti-social behaviour - of fights in the local pubs between Protestant and Catholic communities way back in the century before last. One of my family members has put stuff on there. One of the Speakers of the House of Commons was born in the little town. People put stuff on there but I do not know if anyone is encouraging that locally, whether the local authority is. It does not look as if the local authority has any involvement in it at all. There are school photographs of scruffy kids in the 1940s and earlier and some later which local people have put on. Is there anyone co-ordinating that effort anywhere? Mr Lammy: Certainly up in Newcastle the Museum is doing a considerable amount in terms of that local resource and I am sure that they would have been connected with some of that activity, as was the case with Birmingham, Hull is having a new centre, we have put funds into a new centre in Swindon, Exeter, Norfolk, and I am talking about millions of pounds here, £4 or £5 million in each of those centres, to grow archives locally but also to make that a national resource. I think there is a challenge; the challenge is to make those local resources accessible to all. That does mean a degree of digitisation across the country. You have heard what has been said in relation to a National Gateway for our archives and I am disappointed that we have not been able to find the £10 million to make that happen, - it was in the last spending review cycle which preceded me in this post - but I can see that that is very attractive. Notwithstanding that, I do think that the National Archives have been able to make a huge contribution and programmes like Who Do You Think You Are?" (which had 4.7 million people watching it in 2004 and that has gone up since) have made a contribution and attracted a lot of people to the on-line resource that is there. There is more that we could do with a serious strategy working together over the next few months. Q347 Alan Keen: Do you not think that the Department for Education could play a part because if it is young kids who are going to benefit from this, it is their future and their roots can be traced back, and if every school were doing this as part of a curriculum activity then nothing would be missed? You have given examples, David, of Newcastle and somewhere else and somewhere else. What I am worried about are the gaps in between. Mr Lammy: The national programme from DfES in this area is Engaging Places, which has a relationship clearly with the built environment but in the end is about people and resources in those local communities. There is also the work that we want to do with our education colleagues in relation to education outside the classroom. We can grow the work in this area but we are working very closely with DfES right across my portfolio in the arts in relation to Renaissance in the Regions, which they are supporting, and MLA have done extremely well with. Yes, absolutely there is a role for our archives and our heritage in the classroom. Let us remember that the target we set MLA in relation to increasing the amount of young people coming into our regional museums, seeing their histories and that archive material, was to raise that by 25%, and they raised it by 50% and exceeded the target, so I think that the whole thrust of our activity is very much in the direction that you are describing. Baroness Ashton of Upholland: The National Archives is very involved with providing resources for children and young people and indeed one of the pieces of work that will go on when we look back on the 200 years since the abolition of the slave trade will be work that National Archives is doing with children involved in Key Stage Two - seven to 11-year-olds - and Key Stage Three - 11 to 14-year-olds - because I think one of the points that you make underneath what you saying is that if children and young people know how to use archives that is of enormous benefit to them for the future not only for their own personal research but I think, arguably, for lots of aspects of the work they might want to do in the future. Q348 Alan Keen: The real point I am making is that if every junior school, for instance, had a role locally kids would go home and ask granddad and grandma, "How can you help me put something on?" then nowhere in the country would there be anything missed and it would not take money because it would be part of the curriculum. That is the point I am making. I am worried about the gaps. They are obviously brilliant initiatives and I am delighted at David's grasp of the vital part that these things play in our history, but we must make sure we do not leave any gaps. Baroness Ashton of Upholland: I think that is one of the biggest challenges in a sense because by the nature of local activities, and particularly having been an Education Minister with the autonomy that you want to give schools in the way that they do things too, is you need the right level of enthusiasm (which is a key component that I think was referred to earlier) in how this happens and also the right level of direction, and certainly for local activities in schools you do need that local, focused support, excitement and enthusiasm to come to enable the children to participate. There are hundreds and hundreds of examples of it. I suspect we do not know and the Education Department would not know all of the examples that existed by any means, but it is a fair point to make. Alan Keen: That is what worries me because if they do not know it is the co-ordination point, but we could talk for a long time so I had better hand over to someone else. Q349 Helen Southworth: I was most impressed by the fact that in one year 4,000 people have visited the tiny room in my local library which is the archive centre. It is a very small resource with one member of staff as an archivist and some support workers who are actually providing a service for a very significant number. I was really quite surprised by how many people were going in there directly to use the service. It is a fantastic collection but I am very aware that they have very inadequate storage facilities and the staff are working extremely hard to protect the collections and are unable really to give public access. As I walked into the very small room the humidity was significant in archive terms. People cannot actually work outside those physical resources unless they are given additional resources. You cannot just make things work, you have got to have an environment that will work with you. What are you actually going to be doing to tackle that because this is a major problem for archives and in some cases we are talking about losing things and we are certainly not talking about being able to open them up to public access if our main focus is on conservation and preservation? What are you actually going to do to tackle that? Mr Lammy: Can I begin by saying that I support the whole thrust of what you have said. I think that there is a big advocacy role for my Department and the MLA in relation to archives and I happen to believe that archives are absolutely central to national discussions in relation to Britishness, the kind of communities we want to be, multi-culturalism, identity, and all the rest of it. In the end we as a Department and the MLA have to be in partnership with local government. We are not in a place where we are prescriptive about how local government choose to spend their funds. I know that you will appreciate that there are other select committees within this House and there is a thrust of development in relation to local government. Indeed there is a White Paper which is seeking to give local government more autonomy on how they spend their funds. There is actually a requirement, if I can remember rightly I think it is section 224 of the 1972 Act, that does place a requirement on local government in relation to records and a duty of upkeep. We are in communication with the LGA and I think this is important. We have provided funds for local areas who have gripped this, who are keen on this - Birmingham, Norfolk, Swindon, Exeter - and indeed they have responded to that money that is levered in through HLF and through direct funding. I cannot sit here and determine decisions that in the end are made by local council leaders, county leaders and councillors, but I do say that this is important. It is important for communities and I think it is vital over the next period and that is why we will be working together to demonstrate what the National Archives has demonstrated nationally. Q350 Helen Southworth: So how hard are you going to press to get the Gateway for example, which is not necessarily something that can be passed over to local authorities? Mr Lammy: We are, as you know, in dialogue with the Treasury on these matters as we speak. Q351 Helen Southworth: When do you hope to see progress on it? When is your target for achieving it? Mr Lammy: It is not my target, it is the Treasury's, and I cannot tell you the outcome of that because I do not know. Q352 Helen Southworth: When would you like to see it happening? Mr Lammy: As I say, my personal advocacy in this area is clear. I think this is important stuff but I have to accept that there will be competing demands across government for funds, different priorities in different places. I think it is also fair to say that the kind of revival that we are seeing in archives is relatively recent. The popularity of Who Do You Think You Are? and the huge growth in family history and genealogy has really occurred over the last five or six years, and it has grown in a big, big way. Now we have to respond to that nationally, and I think we are, but there is more work that Cathy and I and our colleagues in DCLG will want to do over the coming months in response to greater strategy and working across government. We must communicate that as effectively as we can to our colleagues in local government. As I say, I think it is the case that some local council leaders have picked this baton up and are responding to their local communities, but there are others who are not doing that and we have to continue to make the case. Baroness Ashton of Upholland: Can I just say something about digitisation and preservation because I think part of the issue is how we support local archives in the latest techniques in terms of preservation and digitisation: it is one of the biggest challenges that the National Archive have, and indeed the National Library and the British Museum have, and the difficulty, as you quite rightly point out, of things that have not been looked after well enough is that when they arrive at the archives they are very difficult to preserve. One of the pieces of work that we have been talking about for the future is how do we not only digitise across the National Archives but how do we provide expertise and support to local archivists and to local archives in order to make sure that we help them appropriately. That is not so much about extra money but getting the experience and expertise out there as well. Q353 Mr Sanders: Archives are not really just restricted to local government areas. The world moves on and so do the systems of archiving, digitisation for example. Film archives are perhaps increasingly important and in my area - the South West - film archive, which does not fit under a local government structure, is archiving various formats of film material which is actually a very specialist and quite expensive job and there does not seem to be anywhere that this particular archive fits in in terms of getting a secure and stable funding stream in order to do that work, and I am sure that is a similar challenge in other regions as well. Mr Lammy: I think I would have to accept that there are real challenges in relation to our film archives which the industry itself is responding to. We give the British Film Institute national archives £6.2 million a year solely for archives. We also through the UK Film Council give the nine regional screen agencies, of which the South West is one, an allocation of funds and they are spending on average (it varies across regions) about £250,000 on archives. I think there have been three problems for the sector. One is the degree of fragmentation with film being in lots of different places and the different sectors not always being able to speak to each other. Two, the nature of film preservation, as you indicate most film is stored in cold conditions and fridges and then there are real issues around access to those film resources joining up that story, which in a sense is a theme that was picked up in regulation to general archives. Digitisation is going to be key for this sector. Then the third issue of course is intellectual property issues, enabling libraries to be able to use master copies and to give access to those film archives to their communities. Much of that work comes out of the Gowers' recommendations and the Government is keen to take those forward. We have asked the BFI and the UK Film Council to work together on a national strategy for film archives. They are doing that and are set to report round about the end of March and we will respond to them and work with them on that agenda. There is going to be an agenda to get more investment in. There is going to be an agenda that is around coherence and greater focus in relation to film archives. Digitisation is going to be very, very important indeed and is helpful because it is less costly than some of the ways in which film has traditionally been stored, but this is a big agenda and it is one that we are responding to. Q354 Mr Sanders: It is a big, expensive task and it is a technical challenge that requires certain skills that are not necessarily widely available in this sector and are probably around in the commercial sector and are therefore commanding quite a good salary. Unless you can build partnerships with the broadcast sector in order to perhaps share some of those skills, which is not an ideal arrangement, it is a big challenge. In terms of identity which I know is very important, film does actually help people with their identity, whether it be family, town, region, nation, there are historical events and things that have happened that help towards that agenda, so it is an area that I do not think has had enough focus of attention, and that was certainly reflected in some of the evidence that we have had that archives are described as the "poor relation" in the sector. Liz Forgan said that they were the "Cinderellas" of the sector to which the Heritage Lottery Fund had been protective. I just wonder whether there can be a shift in emphasis. Mr Lammy: As I say, I accept the thrust of what you said. I wanted to remind myself about BFI's on-line resource where they are actually providing free access to film, and my advice and understanding is that nowhere else in the world is able to do that. We have also got the Mediatec cunning which again will provide hundreds of hours of curative film, accessible to the public, so there are advances here but you are right, this will require partnership and a much more joined-up approach with the industry and with the commercial industry itself to lever in more funds. It will require much greater work across the regions and in the end we need a strategy that we can get behind. BFI and the UK Film Council are in the lead in setting a strategy that we can all step up to and respond to, and I will be working with my colleague Shaun Woodwood as Film Minister over the coming months to bring that alive and to respond to that. Q355 Chairman: Baroness Ashton, I know that you have another engagement so we will be happy for you to go off to that. Baroness Ashton of Upholland: Thank you very much indeed. Chairman: That leaves David Lammy as the sole representative of the Government for us to direct our fire at! Janet Anderson? Q356 Janet Anderson: David, the Prime Minister has asked the Secretary of State to ensure that museums and galleries "can contribute to the quality of life of our citizens" and "to champion the role culture can play in national identity". You have touched a bit on that in the exchange about archives, but could you tell us what you are doing to support the Secretary of State in that? Mr Lammy: I think the key to our position on museums is set out in Understanding the Future and there were five key pillars to our priorities in that document. One was education and learning, and I think you have had some discussion and I am sure we will have more in relation to Renaissance in the Regions. That has been a key success. I did not quite contemplate when I took up this job the amount of work that both our national and regional museums are doing with young people. At this time of the day all of our museums are full of young people and also in the evenings there is outreach work into young people in care and really vulnerable young people particularly that our museums are doing, so that was one of the priorities. The other priority was identity and I think that if you look at Renaissance, it is not just about the building itself, it is about what the particular regional museums and their partners in the local area say about that community's identity, and I believe that that is absolutely central at this point in the 21st century, and we are responding to that agenda through my Department and I think contributing much to the narrative that is about social cohesion. We also raised the issues of collections and I am sure that the Committee will want to press me further in relation to the conservation, preservation and the acquiring of works for our collections. We also isolated workforce as an issue. Leadership is important in this area and we have got the cultural leadership programme for the sector which the Chancellor announced a few months ago - £12 million has gone in to make sure that we have got the next generation of leaders. That supports things like the Clore Fellowships which I think are key, and indeed Renaissance which is really development out there in community. Then also structure and structural issues will be important for the sector going forward. So those are the priorities that deliver on that commitment that has been made by the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister, and I am very grateful indeed to the many, many people working within our museums and in outreach to the community that are making a huge, huge contribution to the national life of this country. Q357 Janet Anderson: Your Department met its 2002 spending review PSA targets comparatively easily. Do you think that was to do with the performance of the Department or do you think perhaps the targets were maybe not quite as testing as they could have been? Mr Lammy: I would say two things. First, we are talking about a backdrop of huge success: 43 million visits last year; 42% of the population saying that they have been to a museum or a gallery during the course of a year. That is more than a football match and we are not occupying the back pages of our newspapers in quite the same way but more people are visiting our museums than are going to football games (and I say that as the MP for Tottenham so that is hard to say!) but, that apart, it is clear because of free entry to our museums that people from the poorest socio-economic groups that were never going anywhere near a museum previously are now doing so. If you look at the figures coming out of the nationals in Liverpool and in Birmingham, it is amazing, frankly, the percentage rise in those coming from socio-economic groups D and E, and obviously that is what the Government is very pleased about. We have set other PSAs in relation to people with disabilities and ethnic minority groups and I think our museums are responding to that. They are responding to that with the sorts of exhibitions that they are having to bring people in; they are responding to that in terms of outreach. In cities like Manchester you have the Black Victorians exhibition which was wonderful and actually shifted the camber in actually discussing the issue of black people existing and living in Britain in the Victorian period. Of course, much of the public consciousness is that that began at the Windrush and after the War when in fact it did not, it began before then. I think our museums are doing a lot in this area. We have just got the results of the Taking Part survey which give us a benchmark from which to measure the success of PSA3 particularly going forward, so we must see what develops but certainly across the sweep it does look like the museum sector is responding well to its PSA targets. Q358 Janet Anderson: And as you say, free entry has had a big impact and we must not forget that. The MLA were very complimentary about your enthusiasm for your portfolio. Could you tell us which are your favourite collections? Which ones do you visit the most and can you give some examples of ones that you think are the very best of their kind? Mr Lammy: Actually I would say that as Arts Minister the greatest privilege particularly is going to museums and galleries that otherwise I probably would not have gone to. I must begin by saying that my local museum, the Bruce Castle Museum, is a fantastic community resource for the people of Tottenham and I am there very often and I was there before I took up this job. I have personally been incredibly impressed by the Big Pit Museum in Wales, by the National Coal Mining Museum and the experience of being able to go down a mine and to think about that powerful part of our social history, what that has meant for this country, what it has meant for the Labour movement, what it means for social identity in those parts of the world, and the huge, huge contribution that museums like that are making to their local community. Of course, I have got the great privilege of going to our national museums and seeing exhibitions. Last year was a year of huge blockbuster exhibitions from the Velázquez to the David Hockney to the da Vinci and onward, which were absolutely fantastic, and clearly it can only get better because the ambition of this sector to respond to the Olympics and to put on some really fantastic shows up to 2012 is considerable. Janet Anderson: Thank you very much. Q359 Chairman: Minister, you listened patiently to the MLA who gave evidence before you and you heard them talk about the success of the Renaissance programme, which I think we have heard from a number of witnesses but they also expressed great concern about the potential impact of any reduction in funding, which again has featured in previous evidence sessions. Would you like to tell us how you are getting on in persuading the Treasury to continue to support the Renaissance programme? Mr Lammy: No, in short. The nature of a spending review is that obviously one is in negotiation until that discussion is complete. We are demonstrating, I hope, the success of this programme which I think has cross-party support and I think has been key to a revival of regional identity, and I certainly hope that colleagues saw that in Manchester at our last Labour Party conference up there. It is true of course that the Treasury have required our museums to provide further evidence of the work that they are doing and indeed to estimate different scenarios that might affect them going forward, but the nature of these things is that the Secretary of State and I must be in dialogue with the Treasury as we go forward and my advocacy for what we are doing in this sector is absolutely clear - and that is a considerable amount - but I have to accept that it is right that the Treasury consider priorities across government. We have particular priorities in relation to education, health and international development and I accept that all of those are priorities to members of the public, but I do believe that the cultural identity of this country is important and it is something which I know from the figures and the numbers that the public value greatly but not just for intrinsic value; it is about regeneration of communities, it is key to identity and it is key to the lives of our young people in this country, so that is the case we are making to our colleagues in the Treasury and I am sure that Ministers will know from their own constituencies that this stuff is important. Q360 Chairman: Do you agree with the witnesses who suggested to us that were the Renaissance programme now to suffer a significant cut in funding that might actually leave museums in a worse position than they were before the Renaissance programme began? Mr Lammy: No, I do not think I would accept that. In the first of those areas in the South West, the North East and the West Midlands there has been huge and considerable progress and I would say that that progress is now bedded in. Renaissance was not just about funding, it was about capacity, it was about skills, it was about expertise, it was about partnership because it had also been the case perhaps that there were parts of the regional museum sector and then into local museum sector which were a little bit blinkered, not quite looking out in the right way, not making the partnerships with schools and seeking private investment into the sector, and I am sure that that work is embedded, that development work has grown and can continue. Q361 Mr Sanders: But it was also about infrastructure, as we have heard, and there is a fear that that will not been maintained unless that commitment of resource is also maintained. Mr Lammy: I appreciate that resources in this area have been important. The £147 million that we found for the Renaissance programme over the period has been absolutely key to a part of the sector that was really struggling desperately prior to that money going in, absolutely. Q362 Chairman: You will be familiar with the discussion that is on-going about whether or not the DCMS carries sufficient weight in Whitehall and is able to argue the case strongly enough, but we have also heard some concern expressed about the internal working of DCMS. Just to give you an example, the Museums Association pointed out that "museums and arts and built heritage are dealt with by separate divisions within DCMS but the co-ordination, synergy or even an overview beyond these division boundaries does not seem to happen." There was also evidence that perhaps there needed to be a closer relationship between DCMS and MLA. Do you accept that there is scope for improved co-ordination both inside your Department and between the Department and, say, the MLA? Mr Lammy: I would say a couple of things and the first is that the Travers report, which was in a sense independent from government because it was commissioned by the MLA and NMDC, was absolutely clear and they say that Britain's museums sector has among the very best museums in the world and they are keen to emphasise the public value that museums play, they stress the 42 million visits and the 43% of the population attending our museums, so in a sense I hope and I would like to say that my Department has had some role to play in a renaissance that has taken place in this sector, notwithstanding that of course it can always get better. We had a peer review of MLA, MLA have responded to that with a new partnership arrangement out into the regions, a stronger identity for MLA in the regions, a stronger board structure nationally. My own belief is that in partnership with the Department the MLA has proved successful in a number of areas. It has proved successful clearly in relationship to Renaissance in the Regions; I think the Committee accepts that. It has proved successful in relation to the People's Network. You will remember that five or six years ago we were talking about the digital divide and how poor people were going to get access to the internet but we solved that problem largely because of MLA and largely because of the People's Network and free internet access across our 3,500 libraries; that was a key success. The MLA have told you about the money that their offices have been able to lever into the sector from the Heritage Lottery Fund. I think just under £1.5 billion since the inception of the Heritage Lottery Fund has come into this sector, so there are some real successes there, notwithstanding the change that rightly had to occur as a consequence of the peer review. In relation to our relationship with other departments, I would expect the Committee to spotlight the key relationship of this period which is with the Treasury, and I understand that, and there is not much I can say about that except that negotiations continue. There has been real partnership with the DfES. We have a joint programme board on creativity and culture being set up as a consequence of the creativity review. Renaissance in the Regions has been a programme where we have had to work with them very closely because of the role that our schools play and the partnerships with our museums. There is Engaging Places where there is a raft of activity. I cannot remember the amount of local government conferences I have been to since becoming the Minister but I think it is more than other colleagues. I am becoming a bit of a fixed feature in local government to try and stress the role that I think my sectors can play and the added value that they have to the area. We are also working jointly across government and of course we also have - remembering that in the culture area for all that my Department and we are doing nationally most money is spent locally by local authorities in relation to culture - £2 billion spent locally, if I have got that figure right, and the CPA block and the performance measures locally have been important both in relation to libraries and in relation to museums. We have been able to take that forward and of course we are in discussions with colleagues in DCLG in relation to the White Paper, so I do think that the Department has been doing well, notwithstanding that in this area there has been a 16% increase in funding to our museums over the period, and that takes into account inflation. Q363 Chairman: Accepting that, and you rightly pointed to for instance the Travers report which highlighted some very positive developments in recent years, at the same time it also sounded some alarm bells. In particular, it pointed out that income has not been going up as fast as costs have been rising; it pointed out that one-third of museum displays and facilities need significant renovation; and it pointed out that the amount being spent on acquisition is very small. How do you respond to those points and can you offer any hope of being able to address those problems? Mr Lammy: John, in this area I do not accept the premise that underlines some of what has been said. I have got Travers in front of me. I think this is really very important stuff. The first thing to say is that no-one is arguing that income has not risen from round about £205 million to £294 million this year, no-one is suggesting the inaccuracy of those figures. On those figures that is an increase of round about 30 something per cent. Taking into account inflation, that is an increase of 16%. That is taking into account inflation so on any analysis the grant-in-aid has increased and it has increased beyond inflation. This sector has done well in relation to the amount that the Treasury and therefore my Department has made available to it, that is the first thing. Then if you look at Travers and you look at tables 4 and 5 which dealt with their acquisitions and their collections - and I was obviously very keen to look at this - if you look at their figures on table 4, it is clear that over the last ten years our national museums and regional museums have had available to them round about £30 million a year to spend on acquisitions. That has fluctuated: in the financial year 2003-04 it went up to just under £65 million that they spent on acquisitions; last year it was just under £23 million; in 1999 it was just under £34 million. It goes up and down depending on the nature of the art market, what works are available, whether there is a Madonna of the Pinks that people are going to try and find money on or one of our master artworks, so it will fluctuate but as a whole, generally speaking, that figure has remained round about the same for the last ten years. If you look at table 5 and you look at the money that our museums are spending in relation to their international colleagues, all of our museums are spending more than our colleagues in Europe. The Louvre is spending half what the National Gallery is spending on acquiring. Save for the Van Gogh Museum in Holland we are doing extremely well. It is the case that it is hard, because of the relation of the art market, to compete with some of the private museums in the United States and indeed there are going to be pressures in relation to what private money can do in relation to museums in Russia and China over this and the next period, but if you total up what our museums have been able to spend, if you add on to that the National Heritage Memorial Fund money and the money from the Heritage Lottery Fund, and you add the acceptance in lieu programme in relation to our tax regime (that was just £25 million gifted this year) then our museums are spending just shy of £300 million on acquisitions and I am afraid that is a large sum of money and it certainly does not suggest that there is a crisis in acquisitions. There may be issues for our regional museums and I am pleased about the £3 million that HLF have found particularly to support that, and of course there are going to be issues in relation to the art market, but the flip side of the art market for which we have responsibility as well is that we have the second biggest art market in the world, and that has grown considerably over the last few years and has made a lot of money for our country and our GDP, so it cuts both ways. I think on any analysis there are successes there but yes, there are challenges ahead. Q364 Helen Southworth: In that answer you have described very clearly the impact that a highly inflationary art market has on purchases. I am wondering whether we could put that to one side because that does distort and it does fluctuate and look at the base collections of museums, which in many ways is not just art, it is about archeology and social history and archives and all those sorts of things. Mr Lammy: Absolutely. Q365 Helen Southworth: Part of the evidence we have been getting is that there is considerable difficulty in those areas in terms of maintaining collections and developing collections in important areas and losing literary collections for example or losing local archeology of value to local areas. What do you think you can actually do within the Department to develop public funding to help to support effective purchasing so that curators can actually develop relationships with people who own things with some degree of understanding that they will be able to negotiate and negotiate probably at a lower price than they would do if things went to auction? That is one question and the other is in terms of developing philanthropy because we have been excellent at it in the past, absolutely brilliant at it in the 18th century and in the 19th century and pretty good at it in the 20th century, but as we get towards the end of the 20th century we have been poor and in the 21st we have just not been players. Mr Lammy: Let me start on a regional and local basis; I think there are three things regionally and locally which have been important developments. The first is the Portable Antiquities Scheme and I launched the Treasury report just last week and I think again that been a huge success with material that has been found by metal detectors and treasure hunters coming to market, with some of it being given to museums and reviving some of our local collections. Renaissance has had an impact here as well because it has also been (as I think underlines some of what you say) the skills base regionally to acquire, to negotiate, to be increasingly sophisticated in the way that you grow your local collections and exhibit your local collections in new and interesting ways for your public. It is also important in refreshing collections that there is more sharing across the regions. One of your earlier questions indicated the role that nationals can play with our regions to get that spread of collections, bringing things to people that they would not otherwise have seen. There is scope for more of that regionally as well and Renaissance has been important. In Understanding the Future we do not duck the issue of collections, it is there as a priority. The sector will respond to Understanding the Future and come up with its action plan later on this year, so notwithstanding what I have said about acquisitions as an entire picture, there was just under £300 million spent in the period on acquisitions, yes, there will be challenges locally that I think we are responding to, and there is more assistance that we can give, and of course I welcome the extra funds that the National Heritage Memorial Fund have found for acquisitions and I welcome the HLF finding an extra £3 million for acquisitions and prioritising our regions particularly over the next period, so I think if you look at that entirety the picture is one of progress. Q366 Helen Southworth: What about philanthropy? Mr Lammy: Sorry, in relation to philanthropy we are working with Arts and Business to produce a leaflet that demonstrates the range of tax reliefs available for philanthropists. I think there is more that we can do with Gift Aid. You suggest that philanthropy is a problem at the end of the last century and the dawn of this one. What I want to explore further and why this work with Arts and Business is particularly important, and also why the dialogue that we are having with the Treasury in relation to the Goodison review is important, is that I do think that the public has had an appetite for philanthropy in relation to other parts of the charitable sector so that there has been growth with money going to international development charities particularly. We must look to see and make the case for the arts and culture in a particular way and I am keen to see that programmes like Gift Aid are used to the most beneficial effect, and certainly the Treasury are keen to see the reliefs that are there being used. Acceptance in lieu has been a success and that is £25 million that has come into the sector in the last year, for example. So yes, we must continue to explore this and we are, and redoubling our efforts in relation to philanthropy, but it is certainly not all doom and gloom. Q367 Philip Davies: Moving on from that about the Goodison review in particular, you touched on the fact that you were having discussions with the Treasury about the Goodison review. Given that Sir Nicholas has heard nothing from the Treasury in the four years since it has been set up perhaps you could share with us what the Treasury are saying about the Goodison review because nobody else seems to know anything. Mr Lammy: The Goodison review in the end was a policy review, as you know. My Department was able to implement the lion's share of his recommendations and we are very pleased about that. Inevitably, the nature of these things means that the Treasury prefers to look at these issues in private rather than in public. That is the nature of those tax matters. I do know that Sir Nicholas will be attending meetings at the Treasury in the coming weeks. I was able to speak to Sir Nicholas last week and it is right and proper that when Treasury ministers and officials are looking at these things they have inevitably to look across the piece and a number of things come into play. They have raised certain issues about the evidence base to support tax relief in relation to art and the art market as recommended by Goodison and also you would expect them to consider comparators across the sector and knock-on effects of tax relief in relation to one sector. For example, if you are raising funds for a local hospital for a new x-ray machine or something, how does relief in one sector affect another? These are matters rightly and properly for the Treasury but it is certainly our position in DCMS, and I suspect the position of this Committee who care passionately about arts and heritage, that this was a good report and we remain in close dialogue with our colleagues in the Treasury. Q368 Philip Davies: Do I take it from that then that you agree with Sir Nicholas that the tax reliefs that he proposed would actually make a material difference to our museums and the collections within them and you agree with him that the Treasury should do that? Mr Lammy: I have seen firsthand following visits to New York and California how a regime of tax relief in the United States has brought benefits to the United States museums. It is right to say that the nature of income to museums in America is through the tax relief mechanism and there is very little public subsidy; in this country it is the other way round. There is quite a lot of public subsidy and we have got acceptance in lieu particularly that sports some benefits. Goodison opens the window in relation to tax relief for the first time and certainly those within the museum and arts sector indicate to me that they think that there will be advantages. Sir Nicholas says to me that in writing and putting together his report, he spoke to a number of wealthy individuals who believe that these sorts of tax incentives would mean that they would give, and I have no reason to dispute that. I also respect that it is for Treasury ministers and officials to consider these things in close detail, to look across the sweep, to be clear that there is an evidence base here, and to make their determinations of when and if such measures are to be brought in. Q369 Philip Davies: I am going to take that as a yes you do agree with Sir Nicholas Goodison and I give you credit for that. Will you remind your colleagues in the Treasury that the Labour Party Manifesto of 2005 said quite explicitly: "We will explore further ways to encourage philanthropy to boost the quality of our public art collections." Given how keen I am sure you are to make sure that you deliver on all your Manifesto commitments, will you remind the Treasury of that one and in your efforts try and persuade them to implement all of the Goodison recommendations? Mr Lammy: Of course we are with our work with Arts and Business and our efforts to publish new material in relation to the reliefs available going to meet that Manifesto commitment. Q370 Chairman: But you are essentially assuring us that in the three to four years since Sir Nicholas published his report although he has not had any communication with the Treasury nevertheless lots of work has been taking place behind the scenes in private so that we can look forward to the result of this coming out in due course? Mr Lammy: I think in my first answer I said by necessity the nature of the way the Treasury works on these matters is private. Chairman: Excellent, we will look forward to seeing the results! Minister, I do not think we have any more questions for you. Thank you very much indeed.
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