Museums and Galleries

Viscount Younger of Leckie Excerpts

Wednesday 12th September 2018 Grand Committee

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

My Lords, I am pleased to respond to this debate and I thank the noble Lord, Lord Freyberg, for raising discussion on this interesting subject. I know that he holds strong views on it, as was apparent in his speech.

I declare an interest as I was previously Minister for Intellectual Property; I am also a patron of the Bucks County Museum and the Scott Polar Research Institute. I have a keen interest in the Museum of Brands and the Sir John Soane’s Museum, our smallest national museum. I put on record my sincere thanks to all the museums and galleries up and down the country for the work that they have been doing in digitising their vast collections, and the unique and interesting ways in which they are using digital tools and content to engage with wider audiences.

There are over 2,600 museums in England. These include national, local authority, independent, university, military, National Trust and English Heritage museums. It is quite a complex range but, for the purposes of today’s debate, we are focusing on the 13 national museums in England—those established by legislation and directly funded by government—the British Library and the two non-national museums. All these are sponsored by DCMS and collectively have over 200 million objects. That is quite a number and it is growing.

Public access is critical to everything that the 15 DCMS- sponsored museums and the British Library do. The strategic review of DCMS-sponsored museums, published last year, highlighted that those museums have made, and are making, great efforts to extend and deepen their reach to different audiences. As well as continuing to educate, inspire and entertain audiences young and old, sponsored museums play a key role in attracting international and domestic visitors to sites across the UK.

In 2017-18, DCMS-sponsored museums welcomed around 47 million visitors, including more than 22 million from overseas, demonstrating their value to tourism and the economy. In fact, seven of the most visited attractions in the UK were DCMS-sponsored museums and three were among the top 10 most visited museums in the world. Loans were made to over 4,000 venues, two-thirds of them overseas. This shows what an extensive reach they have, in the UK and internationally, and how well loved they are. They contribute significantly to their local economies and communities, and of course to tourism. They are also significant in helping the UK to be top of the global soft-power index.

Let me attempt to address some of the issues raised by the noble Lord, Lord Freyberg, and his focus on balance. I start by trying to address the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths: what do we mean by public access? There is a short description here but I am sure we could have a whole debate on what a definition might be. The Government have been clear that it relates simply to free public access to the permanent collection—a fairly short definition.

As arm’s-length bodies, national museums determine their own operational matters, including the decision to charge fees for the reuse of images of items in their collections. They need to cover their costs and generate revenues for the large amounts of free activities that they provide. My noble friend Lord Eccles spoke about the economies in museums and gave the V&A as an example. Independence and impartiality are critical to our national museums, and indeed to the whole arts and cultural sector. It would be highly unusual, even inappropriate, for the Government to intervene in an operational matter such as this. As my noble friend Lord Eccles said, museums differ greatly in their needs in both incomes and costs.

In 2016-17, the DCMS-sponsored museums had a combined total income of £981.6 million including just under half—£435 million—from central government. To deliver their full activities, develop new audiences and ways of engaging with people, including digitally, the national museums have always taken a blended approach to generating income, including philanthropic and commercial approaches. This is not a response to government cuts, as has been mentioned, but a key element of how they have always operated. It is crucial to ensuring that access to museums by the public and researchers is free. Commercial income includes catering services and retail activities, events such as weddings and corporate hire, sponsorship, charging for certain exhibitions and other fund-raising activities which noble Lords will be aware of. This can include charging fees for certain reuses of images that they have produced.

The noble Lord, Lord Freyberg, referred to international museums such as the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, while the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, made comparisons with museums abroad. The Rijksmuseum charges for entrance and therefore has a different funding model. It is not something that we are considering here. The Louvre in Paris is owned by the French Government and 50% of its annual income is provided by the state, but it is not free to enter except, apparently, for one Sunday a month. The entry fee charged is €15.

I shall answer the question put by the noble Lord, Lord Dannatt, who spoke eloquently as the chair of a national museum. As I have said, the funding of our national museums is very different from international comparisons and is a small but important income source. It was therefore interesting to hear his views from his standpoint.

I understand that all DCMS-sponsored museums offer an image reproduction service. These differ depending on use and on the different collections and business models. Image size and purpose are key considerations. Many images, usually of low resolution, are available online for free for non-commercial use, with further options for academic use and where high-resolution images are requested. National museums offer a range of licence prices which are dependent upon the purpose and quality of the image. Several offer a lower price where a reproduction is for academic purposes. For example, the National Gallery offers a scholarly fee waiver while the National Portrait Gallery has an academic licence option. All national museums have images available for free on Art UK and many, including the V&A and the British Museum on the Europeana Collections, mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Freyberg. Knowing how important this is for any museum, the Government Art Collection which the noble Lord, Lord Freyberg, referred to, is currently considering this issue for a review of its own model. It is due to report shortly, which I hope will reassure the noble Lord.

There are significant costs in producing high-resolution images, particularly if an item is not already digitised or in 3D. National museums invest significant amounts in providing high-quality images. Given that this is a rolling programme, it is understandable that museums often cannot quantify the costs of providing a specific image digitally. The noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, raised the issue of digital access and costs. While the noble Lord and others have found this difficult to understand, through my discussions I can appreciate why it is difficult to be precise on a case-by-case basis. In fact, as I mentioned earlier, the museums have control over their costs and incomes.

High-specification equipment, studio space and lighting to portray an artwork with accuracy and consistency are all things to be considered. Even the careful removal of an artwork from its location and its frame is labour-intensive. It needs to be done carefully, often in controlled conditions, so as not to damage the work. Museums need to ensure that specialist staff are available, a point made by noble Lords in the course of the debate. This service is significantly above and beyond the government policy that our national museums should provide free access for all to the permanent collections. The noble Lord, Lord Freyberg, suggested that charging limits access, but in reality we believe that the opposite is true. Any money earned above the costs from image licensing fees goes back into the museum to help people continue to enjoy the wonders that it possesses. If museums were not able to charge for this activity, I understand that in most cases that would result in services being severely limited or withdrawn, a point that my noble friend Lord Eccles alluded to.

The noble Lord, Lord Addington, asked what is academic and what is commercial, perhaps wanting a definition. I am sympathetic to the noble Lord’s comments about the definition of academic versus commercial, but this is a matter for the national museums to decide. I understand that each provides guidance on their website about the definitions that they use.

[Lord Addington]

Would it not be helpful, however, to encourage them to decide among themselves what that is, because it would at least remove some of the doubts? You would know what you were arguing about.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

That would be helpful. Again, it would be up to the museums to get together to decide on a generic definition. I will certainly take that back as a useful idea to have come out of this debate.

The noble Lord, Lord Freyberg, asked about the possibility of a round table of national museums, an idea I have sympathy with. I will liaise with the museums and the Government Art Collection to encourage them to meet. The noble Lord, Lord Dannatt, might like to join in, as a way forward; that would be helpful, I hope, from his Royal Armouries perspective.

As for the future, the culture White Paper set out the aspiration to make the UK one of the world’s leading countries for digitised public collections. We have already seen that digitisation is having a significant impact: 61% of museums have digitised up to 50% of their collection. I understand that many larger museums have formed partnerships with technology companies—for example Google Cultural Institute—to help digitise their collections and allow access to items that have never been exhibited.

The Government’s Culture is Digital report, published earlier this year, set out policy commitments which help support the strands of work on digital capacity and innovation that were identified in the museums review last year. Particularly relevant is the task force, which included museum representatives such as the Natural History Museum and Wellcome Trust, convened by the National Archives to develop a new strategic approach to the digitisation and presentation of cultural objects. This will make collections more interoperable and sustainable, building on previous initiatives such as the Heritage Gateway, the National Archives Discovery Project and Art UK. The National Gallery is also creating and disseminating the benefits of a new innovation lab to enable cultural organisations, especially museums, to make best use of advanced digital technologies in enhancing visitor experience and creating content.

In conclusion—I am afraid that time is a bit short—national museums provide free, in-person access to the permanent collections as a condition of government grant-in-aid funding, but need to be free to generate other revenue in whatever ways they see fit. The noble Lord, Lord Freyberg, spoke about Striking the Balance, and that is something I also alluded to: it is important to balance what national museums are required to do by Government with being independent and impartial.

Digital technology offers unprecedented opportunities for UK cultural organisations to engage new and hard-to-reach audiences, to become global leaders in the production of digital cultural content and to increase access to their world-class collections. Through the Culture is Digital project, the Government will work with our national museums to ensure that they are world leaders in digital content for now and the future. I again thank the noble Lord, Lord Freyberg, for raising the subject and bringing it into the public eye once again.