Covid-19: Museums, Galleries and Historic Buildings

Lord Mandelson Excerpts

Thursday 21st May 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mandelson (Lab)]

My Lords, I chair the trustees of the Design Museum, which opened in 2017 in the iconic former Commonwealth Institute building. There is no other design museum like it in the world, with its exhibitions and its learning and entrepreneurial programmes, which are inspiring a whole new generation to forge their professional careers in arts and science in order to design a better world.

Design is Britain’s great competitive advantage, so I say to the Government: please do not just support the venerable publicly funded institutions, with their endowments and reserves, through this crisis, at the expense of the new. You also need to support the independent and hitherto privately funded entities, which the lockdown is depriving of all their revenue and pushing towards a precipice. If the Government fail in this responsibility, museums such as the Design Museum will go under because they do not have a big enough financial cushion to fall back on. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s reassurance.