Lord Shipley
Main Page: Lord Shipley (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Lord Shipley (LD)
I, too, thank the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, for initiating this debate and I concur with the points made by him and other speakers. I should remind the Committee of my vice-presidency of the Local Government Association. I want to address two issues: first, regional cultural resources that have national and international importance; and secondly, the role of the private sector in supporting culture outside London.
We have heard a little bit about Manchester. I was there recently, visiting Mrs Gaskell’s house and the home of the Pankhursts. Both are wonderful to visit, but both have limited public opening times—three days a week and one-and-a-half days a week respectively. There might be perfectly good reasons for this that I am unaware of, and I pay a huge tribute to those running them for their achievement. It might simply be a lack of finance, but whatever the reason, will the Minister look at this issue to see if everything is being done that can be done to support longer public opening hours for such important international visitor destinations?
Right across the country, similar buildings that are major international resources can be underused and under-visited. In Newcastle, where I live, we have the Mining Institute, where the electric light was first demonstrated and which could become a major public destination in its own right. Does DCMS have a register of such key buildings across England that could be invested in? If there is not one, might one be created?
The Arts Council has a good record in starting to address the regional imbalance that we have heard about, but it needs to keep going. I noted in the recent culture White Paper that, while total DCMS grant in aid from 2009 to 2015 has declined in cash terms, non-public investment has doubled in that period. That is very good to see, but I suspect that corporate giving mostly benefits London, where so many company headquarters lie; yet corporate responsibility should be to invest in culture across the United Kingdom because profits might well derive from outside the immediate area of a company HQ. Will the Minister tell us what data the Government have on the extent of non-public investment for each part of England? Would it be possible to publish those data if they have them, or to secure them if they do not?