Museums: Funding

Lord Addington Excerpts

Monday 26th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Monks, surprised me in his opening remarks by describing the Liberal Democrats as not being bureaucratic. That is something that I have never heard them accused of before, although the Liberal Party may have been able to stand up for itself—but I thank him for that.

When the noble Lord talks of the importance of regional museums, or museums outside the centre of London—the first megacity, and the one that dominates our transport structure, which things go in and out of, making it easier than actually travelling across the country—he is, of course, right. There are good reasons for this historically, and we should be trying to change it where we can. However, we are where we are, and I for one am not going to suggest that the National History Museum is moved. I do not think that many other people would either. Indeed, if the noble Lord would care to try it, I would quite like to watch, because it would be a pretty good show. But the regional structure should be seen as underpinning the rest of the museum service—the creation of local history and local knowledge, no matter where that national museum is based. This is a very important resource, and we must try to make sure that it feeds in.

I am sure that in the People’s History Museum there is some very interesting stuff about agricultural workers and their attitude towards the vote, different from workers in earlier unionisation—and how that would tie into different practices in regional museums in my part of the world, Norfolk. There would be a different structure and dynamic there; all of them are required to make the whole work properly. So I suggest to my noble friend that it is vital that the Government take this on board and look at it as a whole.

Let us be perfectly honest. When I looked at funding, I was astounded at the number of potential sources. There are two lottery funds, five different ones from Europe that I found—I gave up after that. Then there is the National Trust and there are local authorities. I could go on for quite a while on this, but there are lots of them. How on earth can a smaller museum under a stressed bureaucracy and a stressed service, looking after curators, get the best out of these streams? It is not surprising that those at the centre with better resources will get more. What steps are being taken to make sure that all local museums have access to the national funding available for museums? That is something that goes across parties and Governments—that with these divergent streams, the best should get more.

I have talked about sport on many occasions. We discovered in the early stages of the lottery that tennis clubs did rather better than football clubs for resources. If you have the people there and the resources to fill out the forms, you will do well. Please can we bring this together and look to get the best out of it? The noble Lord has put his finger on a problem that has been there for a long time.