Local Museums
Debate between Anne Main and Bill Grant(6 years, 9 months ago)
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Deidre Brock
I am glad to take the opportunity to mention—and I am sure the hon. Gentleman will acknowledge—the work of Museums Galleries Scotland in providing funding for local museums in Scotland. He will be pleased to see that it is distributing nearly £750,000 in capital grants to small museums in this round of funding, which is one of four in the year, and will, I am sure, want to congratulate our Cabinet Secretary for Finance on finding an extra £200,000 for this round of funding. He will also be delighted by the range of funds available to museums from Museums Galleries Scotland—particularly, perhaps, the funding for collections in the programme to deliver against the national strategy.
Alistair Darling, in the dog days of the last Labour Government, said he planned spending cuts deeper and more savage than anything Thatcher had done. The response of George Osborne and the current incumbent of No. 11 Downing Street seems to be, “Hold my beer,” with little regard for the cultural carnage that could follow.
The hon. Member for Stirling bemoaned becoming a museum artefact, but he might think upon that and consider it better than the alternative. I grew up in Australia, where the ownership of history is a contentious issue, and the different attitudes often create conflict. I suggest that there is a bit of that in Scotland as well. Those who would remember the whole of Scotland, including its working people, its poor and its dispossessed, do not necessarily sit comfortably with those who would laud royalty and wealth. Similarly, there is little in the way of commemoration of the Gaelic heritage of Scotland. I asked earlier whether the hon. Gentleman would support the repatriation of the Lewis chessmen. I wonder whether he believes that collections held centrally should be sent back where they came from, and whether he supports the repatriation of items such as the Elgin marbles—not to Elgin, before some wag starts up—but back to Greece.
Bill Grant
Again, I am old enough to be an exhibit, but does not the hon. Lady agree that the greatest risk to museums and heritage centres in Scotland is the continued and repeated unnecessary cuts to council budgets by the Scottish Government when there is no need to do so, and when they can find £115 million at the drop of a hat to support their equivalent of the DUP, the Green party?
Mrs Anne Main (in the Chair)
Order. Interesting though it is to cover the minutiae of politics between the SNP and other parties, I hope we will stick with the subject of the debate, which is museums.