Examination of Witnesses (Question Numbers
80-99)
DEPARTMENT FOR
CULTURE, MEDIA
AND SPORT
AND ENGLISH
HERITAGE
9 NOVEMBER 2009
Q80 Chairman: There is no particular
reason why this should be, is there? Or is there?
Dr Thurley: You are on Figure
8, are you?
Q81 Chairman: I was particularly
interested in disabled because that seems to be particularly bad.
That is at Figure 9: "Declaring themselves as disabled"
has been particularly bad.
Dr Thurley: In terms of employment
or at our sites?
Q82 Chairman: Both really.
Dr Thurley: In terms of at our
sites, many of our sites are fundamentally unsuited to people
with physical disability. We make a big effort to try and make
sure that they are as accessible as possible, but walking round
the ramparts of Framlingham Castle is impossible if you have any
type of physical or mobility difficulty. As I was responding to
Mr Hill, you can help people who have other types of disability,
and I talked about blind people, but it is hard. That is why that
one scores less well, I think.
Chairman: That is a fair answer. That
is fine, it is on the record.
Q83 Mr Mitchell: I cannot see why
you should impose these three objectives in the Public Service
Agreement of 2004, number 3, on English Heritage in the first
place. It is straight forward with sport perhaps and music, perhaps
ballet not as a participation sport for the disabled but you can
perhaps increase participation by these three minority groups.
What is the relevance of them and their activity to English Heritage?
Mr Stephens: You are asking me
essentially about government policy.
Q84 Mr Mitchell: I am asking you
why you did it. It seems daft. You were implementing this policy
and imposing it on English Heritage.
Mr Stephens: It is my job to implement
policy, it is not my job to decide it. That is decided by ministers.
Q85 Mr Mitchell: David Curry reckons
it is very sensible government policy, of course, David has just
reminded me, but is it sensible to apply it to all areas of the
Department's activities?
Mr Stephens: In applying it to
English Heritage we were consciously asking ourselves how do we
achieve this target that has been set by the Government, by ministers,
for the sector as a whole. We were consciously ourselves saying,
"Right, we need to bring together the sector to contribute
to and achieve this target. English Heritage has an important
role. Its role includes, in respect of its own properties and
its own visitors to those properties, a role which has seen them
achieve an increase in participation by priority groups in visits
to their properties but also a role in leadership of the wider
sector, such as Dr Thurley has been talking about, in demonstrating
how the sector as a whole can engage in this.
Q86 Mr Mitchell: What can you do
to increase the visits by black and ethnic groups to Fountains
Abbey, Clifford's Tower, to any of the other things you have got?
How can you interest those groups in those monuments?
Dr Thurley: One of the absolute
keys to this is what I have said about education. The one thing
that we absolutely know from this big survey the DCMS has been
doing called Taking Part is that if children have an opportunity
to visit heritage sites, ideally with their parents but even at
schools, it means they are much more likely to do it as adults.
A really crucial part of our strategy is to work with schools
which is why all the questions around education are very important.
Q87 Mr Mitchell: I accept that, but
what you are saying there is you increase the participation of
these minority groups by increasing general participation?
Dr Thurley: Yes.
Q88 Mr Mitchell: Is that how you
do it?
Dr Thurley: General participation
but also we want to make sure that school children of whatever
race, colour, creed, come to our sites.
Q89 Mr Mitchell: That should have
been a general target, "we will increase participation—
Dr Thurley: It is.
Q90 Mr Mitchell: "—and
involvement and visits" rather than saying "We will
increase it by 3% for this group or that group".
Dr Thurley: It is a general target.
In our current funding agreement we have agreed to increase education
visits by 3.2% and family visits by 6.3%.
Q91 Mr Mitchell: Good. Splendid.
I am all in favour of that. Why did you manage to hit the target
with black and ethnic groups and not with the other two groups?
Dr Thurley: I tried to answer
that question in a very inadequate way to Mr Hill. Actually it
is very difficult to know exactly why that change took place.
We do not understand the mechanics.
Q92 Mr Mitchell: I do not think you
know even after the focus group. I am not sure how many you have
asked from these groups but you did have focus groups. That was
focus groups with groups representing these groups, not with the
groups themselves.
Dr Thurley: That was the NAO's
focus group and I agree with you the significant weakness of those
focus groups was they were very limited and were of groups representing
people. The work that is done in the much, much more extensive
and statistically reliable survey which is Taking Part gives us
a great deal of information about why people either do or do not
want to go to Fountains Abbey.
Q93 Mr Mitchell: The obvious one
for these three groups, as for a lot of other people, is that
they are not interested, is it not? They are either not interested
and some of them are expensive to get to.
Dr Thurley: I think that is absolutely
right, the people are not interested, well why should they? I
have absolutely no interest whatsoever in football and the chance
of me ever going to a football match is zero.
Mr Mitchell: That is pretty bad news.
Q94 Mr Curry: You had better get
him sorted out.
Mr Stephens: He is our heritage
expert. There will be other people who will go to football matches.
Mr Mitchell: In this panegyric of government
policy David Curry came up with an interesting suggestion to tie
it in to television programmes. There is an obsessive interest
in The Tudors, why do you not use that to promote your
Tudor sites?
Q95 Chairman: Do not let us get on
The Tudors again!
Dr Thurley: The one thing I would
say is perhaps slightly different in terms of trying to encourage
people to participate in sport and be interested in heritage is
actually heritage is the concern of everybody because it is around
everybody, it is the streets where people live.
Q96 Mr Mitchell: Do you tie it in
with television themes? Since the Chairman does not want us to
go on to The Tudors, why if Up Pompeii comes on,
do you not then immediately promote visits to Halsteads and Hadrian's
Wall?
Dr Thurley: Television is a very,
very important element of what we do.
Q97 Mr Mitchell: Why do you not use
it to encourage people to visit these sites?
Dr Thurley: We do and we rarely
do a big project without having a television programme made of
it in some way. We have just opened a big project at Dover Castle
and we have a Time Team special that has been filmed of
the whole project and that will be broadcast in the next month
or so. I am sure it will have a huge effect on visitor numbers
at Dover Castle. We always look and see what we can do with television.
Mr Mitchell: Why are there so few of
your sites on the map in Humberside?
Chairman: Are you surprised?
Mr Curry: Do you want to know!
Q98 Mr Mitchell: Come on!
Dr Thurley: I could give you quite
a long and complicated explanation. English Heritage sites were
amassed from the 1880s onwards.
Q99 Mr Mitchell: What are the two
sites in Humberside?
Dr Thurley: One of them is Thornton
Abbey and the other is St Peter's Barton, it is an Anglo-Saxon
Church and one of the greatest Tudor gatehouses. You have presumably
visited both?
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