Examination of Witnesses (Questions 80-99)
RT HON
MARGARET HODGE
MP AND DR
SIMON THURLEY
2 JULY 2008
Q80 Philip Davies: I am quite happy
to bring Simon in because I think the feeling seems to be that
enforcement very rarely takes place when things go wrong. It is
no good having anything in place if it is not going to be enforced.
I wondered whether the Bill was perhaps slightly lacking on the
enforcement side of things?
Dr Thurley: Our view is the same
as the Government's on this which is that the powers are all there;
the difficulty is persuading those who have the powers to use
them. The fear very often is, particularly with the powers that
local authorities have (which are actually quite extensive) that
they will exercise those powers and then be left with the responsibility
for dealing with a building which has huge liabilities attached
to it. One of the things that English Heritage is exploring is
whether on those occasions where there is a real need for enforcement
and where a local authority is very anxious about doing it because
of the financial liabilities, in some way, whether we can underwrite
that to try and make it less frightening, if you like, for a local
authority to take action. I think the issue is not about new powers;
it is about helping local authorities to have the confidence to
use those powers, and I do see that certainly in the cases of
Grade I and II* listed buildings that is a role for English Heritage;
it is a role for the national agency.
Q81 Philip Davies: In that sense
it seems to me that makes a mockery of the projected cost of £1.72
million of the Bill because if the Bill is actually to mean anything,
and it is going to be properly enforced, and the thing that you
have described is required for it to be properly enforced, ie
some underwritten cost to help local authorities persuade them
to take the action, £1.72 million is neither here nor there.
That seems to me like a massive potential cost for one body or
another.
Dr Thurley: Of course the enforcement
issue is a planning issue and it is not a heritage protection
issue. By the time enforcement takes place it is part of the planning
system that needs to be operated. I do not think the intention
was—and it is not my purpose to speak for the Government—that
that cost should be swept up in the Bill. This is really for budgets
elsewhere to be considered. It is not part of the heritage protection
legislation.
Margaret Hodge: Can I just come
back. On the whole the enforcement powers are being replicated
in this Bill. There are some new assets which will come into the
register but the actual powers are the same as they are now. On
the whole we think this Bill actually will save money because
of the changes we are making in streamlining procedures, so I
think the assertion that because it is a new piece of legislation
that inevitably will require new resources for enforcement is
slightly misplaced. I think we are hoping that the Bill will help
people work smarter. Let me take another example—Heritage
Partnership Agreements—if we get those off the ground that
is a way in which we can work in partnership and save money. I
think you had evidence yesterday from UEA, I understand, who have
used that as a mechanism effectively. You work in partnership,
you save money and enforcement becomes less necessary. If we can
get more of that sort of approach and more of that sort of culture
going in the system, enforcement should not be the one that costs
a lot of money.
Q82 Janet Anderson: I just wanted
to ask you something about where the onus was to step in when
serious neglect is involved. I understand that in maintaining
an historic building the onus is currently on the local authority
to step in when serious neglect has occurred, not on the owner.
Will that change under this Bill?
Dr Thurley: The onus remains on
the local authority although there are powers in extremis
for English Heritage or the Secretary of State to step in. English
Heritage would require the consent of the Secretary of State to
do that. There are new powers but I do not think that either the
Secretary of State or English Heritage intends them to be powers
that are regularly used.
Q83 Janet Anderson: It is just I
have a case in my own constituency of someone who has a listed
barn next to her home. She cannot afford to repair it, she simply
does not have the means to repair it, so in fact at the moment
the onus will be on the local authority, and that will stay the
same?
Dr Thurley: The onus is on the
owner to repair their barn. It would be on the local authority
if the barn gets into a dilapidated and dangerous state and risks
the integrity of the heritage structure.
Q84 Janet Anderson: And she cannot
afford to repair it herself.
Dr Thurley: There are grants available
from both local authorities and from national government but they
are pretty heavily circumscribed.
Chairman: I think we will suspend for
ten minutes whilst we go and vote.
The Committee suspended from 3.01 pm to 3.12
pm for a division in the House.
Chairman: We seem to have dropped two
who may or may not re-emerge but I think we will resume in which
case can I invite Nigel Evans to ask the next question.
Q85 Mr Evans: Minister, Peter Hinton,
who is Chief Executive of the Institute of Field Archaeologists,
who I am sure you know, said to us yesterday that in nearly all
other European countries there is a system of archaeological licensing
which we do not have in England and Wales or Scotland and basically
he thought that would be a good idea. The main thrust of it was
that it would prevent some of the cowboys coming in or other people
coming in and undercutting what proper professional archaeologists
would do and therefore help to ensure the maintenance and preservation
of our heritage sites. What do you think about that?
Margaret Hodge: I know the archaeologists
want to insert some sort of provision in the Bill to ensure that
only accredited archaeologists can fulfil some of the new duties
that will be put upon them. I do not think it is the place of
this Bill to do that. Our understanding, and we touched on this
earlier on in the evidence I gave, is that there is not a current
shortage, there is not a market failure, so we are not convinced
that we ought to intervene at this point. The third thing I would
say is I do not think that anywhere in the planning system is
there an accreditation regime which constrains those who would
be eligible to fulfil the tasks and functions of that particular
regime, and I would be hugely reluctant in what is supposed to
be a deregulatory measure to try and introduce regulations around
the accreditation of a particular group of professionals.
Q86 Mr Evans: They have not made
their case sufficiently strongly enough for you so they had better
have more representations to you? Is that what you are saying?
Margaret Hodge: They can always
make representations, my door is always open, but I am certainly
not convinced.
Q87 Mr Evans: Dr Thurley, can I ask
you about Heritage Partnership Agreement pilot schemes. There
were supposed to be 24 but only nine were completed. How come
only nine?
Dr Thurley: Of course they were
pilots and the point about a pilot is that you are doing something
that is experimental and that in fact has never been done before
so. We had quite a wide range of pilots and as some of them started
it became apparent quite quickly that they either were not going
to work or they were not going to be saving any time or money.
We ended up focusing on the nine core ones which were working,
and in fact in the end we focused them down even further on to
a relatively small number which we spent a lot of time analysing
very carefully, as you probably know Cornish Bridges being one
of the most important of those, in order to really extract the
maximum amount of detail and benefit out of it. As a result of
that, we have now commissioned a whole series of new pilots and
we will probably pursue most of them because we have learnt so
much from the other ones. In a way it is a sign of strength of
the process that we said that is not working, let us get rid of
it and focus on the ones that are really going to tell us something
worth knowing.
Q88 Mr Evans: How many new pilots
have you asked to be set up?
Dr Thurley: About two dozen.
Q89 Mr Evans: So the Cornish project
was the one that you looked very seriously at and as far as costs
and savings are concerned, the other 24 projects now are going
to be looked at very seriously to ensure that the Cornish project
is basically something that can give us lessons about the proper
costs and savings?
Dr Thurley: Yes, I think so, and
as I think you heard yesterday from the UEA, an investment of
£70,000 delivered £250,000 worth of savings for them.
I would not imagine that the Cornish Bridges were a fluke lucky
savings pilot. I think that many of the other pilots, certainly
the one with London Underground, we know generated significant
savings. There are all sorts of other minor but significant gremlins
in the system which we want to work through with these pilots
because the aim really is to have the system in a really good
condition when the Bill is passed, when it becomes law, so that
we can get up and go and say we have done these, we know what
the problems are, and we can put the whole lot into action as
quickly as possible.
Q90 Mr Evans: You are right that
the University of East Anglia was very pleased with the regime
and the savings that it made whereas Westminster City Council
had more concerns about the number of HPAs that might come through
and the impact that would have on them. Do you share their concerns
at all?
Dr Thurley: I was not here yesterday
but I did receive a report and I was very disappointed with the
evidence that Westminster gave because certainly what we know
is that the pilot that they were principally referring to, which
is the Piccadilly Line pilot, was hugely welcomed by London Underground
themselves. It saved them a huge amount of work so I think we
might want to go back and have a conversation with our colleagues
in Westminster.
Q91 Mr Evans: I just think it is
the number because they were looking at the estate that they look
after and, as you can imagine, there are a lot of historic sites
that are involved there and I think it is the number that they
were concerned about. Indeed, they wanted the ability to say,
"No, we will not have an HPA because we just do not think
it is worthwhile." Do you think they ought to be given that
power?
Dr Thurley: The important thing
about Heritage Partnership Agreements is that they are only really
useful where you are dealing with large estates where you have
a single owner with multiple buildings. Westminster, I think I
am right in saying, has the highest number of listed buildings
of any borough in England and so I can understand that there might
be some concern there but it does not have lots of estates of
the sort of nature that we are thinking of. A very, very obvious
example is we would very much like to have a Heritage Partnership
Agreement with the National Trust who have a very large estate,
they have 375 sites across the country, almost all of them I should
think are listed, a because a Heritage Partnership Agreement will
reduce the amount of work we do, the Trust does and the local
authorities do.
Q92 Mr Evans: During the pilots that
you had were you happy that they were properly resourced or did
you find some difficulties with that?
Dr Thurley: The aim in future
will be to try and get the applicant who wants to have a Heritage
Partnership Agreement to do a lot of the work themselves. They
will obviously need advice and guidance and one of the things
that we will be doing, and coming out of the pilots, will be producing
guidance for owners to do that. A lot of the cost advantage will
fall to the owner and therefore we would expect some of the cost
of putting that together to also fall to the owner. Going back
to the UEA example, it cost them £70,000 but over three years
it has netted them £275,000 in savings.
Q93 Mr Evans: So you think that there
is likely to be a licensing fee arrangement on behalf of, let
us say, Westminster City Council to be able to charge somebody
what are likely to be their costs at least?
Dr Thurley: I do not think it
would work quite like that. I think an owner would employ consultants,
architects and maybe other types of consultants also to draw up
the drafts of the agreements. I do not think that a local authority
or English Heritage would be doing that themselves but we would
be responsible for giving them advice.
Margaret Hodge: We are not introducing
a system of charging anywhere because it is our view that that
could have a detrimental effect on people's willingness to protect
their heritage assets. Nowhere in the system are we charging but
it is the costs that fall to them.
Dr Thurley: The only other point
I would make is that a Heritage Partnership Agreement can only
be put in place with the agreement of the local authority, so
if there were a local authority who was deluged by these things,
they could say, "Look, I am terribly sorry, we cannot cope
with the capacity at the moment, come back next year." I
must say I do think that it is unlikely and I think that as the
word gets around and as we go on the road and explain to local
authorities the significant benefits there can be from this, more
and more local authorities will encourage the big estate owners
who make multiple, repetitious, slightly pointless sometimes,
listed building consent applications to get on and make an agreement.
Q94 Mr Evans: Can I move on to Heritage
Environment Records. The Association of Local Government Archaeological
Officers suggested to us that the costs of maintaining Heritage
Environment Records are likely to have been underestimated, what
is your view on that?
Margaret Hodge: I think we have
estimated them appropriately for this spending round. Where they
may be right is when they are completely developed, the costs
of maintaining them may be higher. All these things have a set-up
cost and then a running cost. We have given them the funding for
the set-up cost, we have given them running costs of just under
a quarter of a million, but I think as we move into the next spending
round it may well be that cost will increase and we will look
at it. We are not trying to hide anything.
Q95 Mr Evans: Can I look at the Draft
Cultural Property (Armed Conflicts) section which deals with cultural
property unlawfully exported from occupied territories and that
will become an offence under the Bill. Are you putting pressure
on the Foreign Office to draw up a list of territories deemed
to have been occupied at some stage since 1954?
Margaret Hodge: This is an incredibly
complex bit of legislation where we are trying to incorporate
the Hague Convention on this issue into UK legislation. We are
working with the Foreign Office. I know it is an issue of concern
which has been raised by the British Art Market Federation, but
we have not got that far yet. This is a UNESCO driven bit of action.
UNESCO have not yet put out conditions under which you can define
the various categories of heritage protected assets in relation
to armed conflict, so we have got a long, long way to go and it
is hugely complex. When I started to get my brain around this
one, I thought it really is a complicated bit of enactment, well
intentioned but we have got to make sure it works practically
as well.
Q96 Mr Evans: It is the aspirational
part of the Bill, is it?
Margaret Hodge: We have committed
to incorporating it into UK legislation and we will do so. We
have to wait for the rules to be set by UNESCO. I think it is
very, very difficult, it is a difficult bit of legislation but
it is important. Iraq has been the latest example of where without
these sorts of protections you have enormous damage to the heritage
assets of a country, but getting something that really works is
going to be very, very difficult. I suppose just having it on
the statute book of itself will make people very much more careful
when they are engaged in armed conflict. I hope that again would
be an appropriate expectation out of this particular bit.
Q97 Mr Evans: I am not familiar with
many of the conditions involved, but I suspect in some cases for
its own protection it might be useful to remove, clearly that
would be legally, some artefacts for protection, which then would
be returned afterwards. Is that generally accepted?
Margaret Hodge: It could be. There
is an argument as well that if you define too many, they then
become targets because who signs up to the Convention and who
actually incorporates it into their national legislation. It is
a really difficult area and removal and looking after artefacts
is right where that is appropriate. What you would do about sites
and buildings is much more difficult.
Q98 Mr Evans: Particularly as we
saw in Afghanistan where they go out of their way to destroy heritage
sites.
Margaret Hodge: That is the problem.
The more you list, is that a good thing or a bad thing, and there
is an argument to be had over that.
Q99 Chairman: Can I put to you the
general concern which has being expressed about this particular
Bill. I will give you an opportunity to reassure people. Our Armed
Forces are currently deployed in some pretty unpleasant and dangerous
parts of the world, sadly we have seen casualties. There is a
concern that this Bill will mean that if our Armed Forces come
under attack from insurgents and defend themselves and in the
course of defending themselves find that they shoot off a bit
of the local heritage, they might find they are liable to prosecution.
Can you give an absolute assurance that this is not going to in
any way restrain the ability of our Armed Forces to defend themselves?
Margaret Hodge: I think you raise
a very pertinent point and I hope you will bear with me if I say
to you, can I write to you to ensure that I do not give you a
wrong answer on what is a very complicated issue but I think it
is a very, very pertinent point you raise.
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