Lotteries Regulation

Baroness Andrews Excerpts

Tuesday 16th July 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

I am sorry to hear that the noble Baroness’s cathedral has not received what she hoped it would get. That is, of course, the problem with the lottery: it gives out an awful lot of money, but sometimes it also has to say no. I say only that it is worth trying again. I have heard of cases where requests have been denied but when they try again they are successful. It is not up to Ministers to take up special cases and treat them unlike others, but I encourage her to try again, because Ripon Cathedral is obviously a good cause. I hope she succeeds next time.

[Baroness Andrews (Lab)]

My Lords, I hope your Lordships will allow me: unfortunately, I was detained and did not hear the Minister’s Statement. I welcome what he has said about the principle that, while the society lotteries are very worthy and excellent in their way, the Government still have a care to protect the National Lottery, for all the reasons he said.

I declare an interest as a member of the board of the National Lottery Heritage Fund. I will talk to the noble Baroness afterwards about how we have had to make decisions, but I emphasise the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Cormack. We have had an extremely hard few years planning our commitments in the face of declining incomes, and the competition has been extraordinarily tough. We still make every effort to fund places of worship. We are incredibly lucky in this country—we have so much heritage and so much ecclesiastical heritage—and we try our very best to be fair in all that we do. There are so many excellent and equal claims on our resources that we have to be scrupulous and transparent in our decisions. I hope the noble Baroness will forgive me if I leave discussing it for a later occasion.

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness for her question—or perhaps her statement—and for her efforts in the very difficult job that she does.

The consultation which preceded this found that views were very polarised. Supporters of the National Lottery were fearful that an increase in limits to society lotteries could affect it. We were very careful to strike a balance between the interests of the National Lottery—and all its good causes—and society lotteries, which are very important for individual charities, and have a place. By doing what we have done, we think we have struck the right balance. The Gambling Commission has confirmed that there is no evidence so far that society lotteries have affected the National Lottery. Indeed, over the years, both sectors have increased. The noble Baroness talked about National Lottery funds, and sales going down. That position has now stabilised, following the actions that the National Lottery has taken. It is about £1.6 billion on a stable basis every year.

Armistice Day: Centenary

Baroness Andrews Excerpts

Monday 5th November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Andrews (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a great privilege to follow the Minister and to have the opportunity to thank him and his department for their extraordinary leadership over the past four extraordinary years. Imagination and inclusion seem to have been exactly the characteristics needed, and were indeed what his department provided.

We have had four extraordinary years, and it is now time to reflect on the Armistice. We have to admit that it was an armistice that ended one war but opened the path to another. Commemorating it requires us to look beyond the Armistice to the world we inherited, and what we have done with it. Commemorating a war which was, in so many ways, unbelievably cruel and futile, but which we remember and honour for the courage, sacrifice and dignity shown, has been a conflicting experience. The Great War lives in our memories and imaginations like nothing else. However, of necessity, most of the personal memories are long buried.

The past four years have enabled people across the community to reach into the past and their own histories, bringing to life the countless names, diaries, poems, photographs, letters, songs and stories in a way that simply could not have been imagined. It has revived old griefs but it has also, as the Minister said, provoked magnificent new art, new understanding and new heritage. It has enabled us to look beyond the statistics and into the eyes of those who were there.

In his book on the Armistice, Joseph Persico wrote that if all the men who had died in the war were to march four abreast, the column would stretch 386 miles from Paris, half way through Switzerland, and it would have taken from 9 am on Monday to 4 pm on Saturday to pass. There would have been scientists marching past in that ghostly column; men such as Henry Moseley, who reinvented the periodic table, and who was probably the most brilliant scientist of his generation. This was indeed a scientists’ war. There were poets of every nation: Alfred Lichtenstein, the German poet; Hedd Wyn, the Welsh poet; Apollinaire, the French poet; Edward Thomas and Wilfred Owen, our own poets, who we grew up with. There were composers such as George Butterworth. We can only imagine the sort of world that they would have created if they had lived.

The far greater number were those who, in Kipling’s words, were known only to God. Among them were the 360 ordinary men from Lewes in Sussex—foundry workers, farm labourers, clerks and teachers—who also died and who stand for the ordinary. Whereas we know the legacy of the writers, artists, philosophers and scientists, because we live with that every day, we have not known much about those men and what they might have done—until now. The 360 men of Lewes were brought back to life in a truly remarkable event last Armistice Day by Lewes Remembers, a small group of local people, including our historic bonfire societies, who meticulously researched each of the men and their families. They knew where they lived and what they did; in some cases, they knew what they were like. On the evening of Armistice Day last year 360 men, matched in age with those who had died and leaving wherever possible from the homes that they had left, marched silently with blazing torches through the streets to converge on our war memorial. As each name was read out, one man stepped forward and extinguished his torch. It was done with immense dignity and it was unforgettable.

All over the country during the past four years, over 2,000 such projects have been funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund—I declare an interest as deputy secretary of its board—with £97 million contributed by lottery players who made this national conversation possible. We know now for the first time about the sports clubs, the church groups and scout groups that lost their young men; about the men who were simply fading names on a war memorial; about the lives of children in care, the contributions of women and the role of ethnic and faith communities, such as the Sikhs. We know that history has been expressed in every form of art and music, in brilliant new work commissioned as 14-18 NOW projects, as the Minister said, and in the way that old and new have joined hands across history to rediscover what they have in common.

The past four years have made possible no less than a new way of doing history: a way of uncovering the human spirit and the personal truths about that awful war and its aftermath that would have lain buried for ever. That is one form of legacy for which we are richer in every way but I am hopeful, as I think the Minister is, that this will not be the end. The Armistice commemorations this week give us the chance to take the next step: to build on what we know we can find out to understand and uncover more of what was involved after the war in the making and keeping—and the losing—of peace, and apply those lessons.

The aspirations for a peace which, as the treaty of Versailles put it, would be “firm, just and durable” were not realised. In its first article it created a League of Nations built on international co-operation, peace and security but it failed to outlaw war. It took another war before it could be rebuilt on firmer foundations.

Wales has a particular story to tell. I hope that your Lordships will indulge me because it is not well known. In many ways, it is the story of one man: Lord Davies of Llandinam, soldier, philanthropist and politician, whose experience in the trenches made him determined to pursue in all the ways he could the idea of a stable international order and, in particular, a League of Nations. He founded the Temple of Peace in Cardiff to house the Welsh council of the League of Nations. He founded the first ever department of international politics, in Aberystwyth in 1919,

“for the study of those related problems of law and politics, of ethics and economics, which are raised by the prospect of a League of Nations and for the truer understanding of civilisation other than our own”.

I declare another interest as a graduate of that department, which has been at the cutting edge of thought leadership over a century and continues, in its centenary year, to ask the difficult questions.

One of our HLF flagship projects in Wales has been about peace. Wales for Peace is uncovering the stories of how, in 100 years, people from Wales have contributed themselves to the search for peace—not just by digitising the names in memory of all those who died but by looking for the peacebuilders and writing about them as well. They are great stories, not least of the teachers of Wales who invented the first peace and global education curriculum, the principles of which were integrated into the founding of UNESCO. These stories need to be better known, because they have in their own legacy the instinctive desire that young people have to grow up in a just and peaceful world. Understanding what prevents and makes an end to conflict should be a far more explicit part of our national curriculum. That indeed could be a great legacy.

In that context, I am bound to say that it is hardly credible that we in the UK now stand on the brink of detaching ourselves from the one European institution formed deliberately to maintain peace, based on shared laws and values. In the current state of our post-truth, post-law, post-rational world, we must listen to what the past tells us. We are knee-deep in explanations for what caused the Great War among which, as Margaret MacMillan has said, is the lack of conviction that there were better alternatives. To that I would add rampant nationalism.

It is almost commonplace to say that in 1914 the nations did indeed sleepwalk into that living nightmare, and that perhaps is the greatest lesson we can learn. Thanks to President Macron there will be a new opportunity this week to restate our faith and invest in international law and institutions, through his concept of the Paris Peace Forum, which will offer the opportunity to reflect on world governance while we commemorate the end of World War I and recognise our collective responsibility:

“Let us never be sleepwalkers in our world”.


Can the Minister give me an assurance today that our Government will be a full and enthusiastic participant in this initiative, as part of the legacy of the Armistice itself?

Museums and Galleries

Baroness Andrews Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Andrews (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to take part in this debate. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, on obtaining it. It is not only timely but right that we should address these issues in the context of the national interest in general. The noble Lord has been such a splendid champion of the arts and shows no lack of energy in the pursuit of everything he chooses to do.

I want to concentrate on a few aspects of the Mendoza review and on the work of the Heritage Lottery Fund, of which I am a deputy chairman and chairman of the committee for Wales, so I declare my interest. The Mendoza review is a good report. It demonstrates a breadth and depth of understanding of the character and culture of museums. It is the first report of its kind for 10 years, and it does a great service. It is extremely welcome. Its delight in the infinite variety of our museums, from pencils to gasworks, from historic houses to coalmines, is patently evident on every page. It delights, too, in the stories that museums tell of people and place, and in the space they provide not just for heritage and memory but increasingly for health, enterprise and learning. I welcome the report.

This debate focuses on the challenges facing museums and galleries, and they are, by definition, identified in the nine priorities the report sets out. Right at the top of the list is funding, a changing funding landscape and the need to adapt to it. It also identifies the need to engage more widely, to diversify audiences—that is a common theme—and to contribute to place making, which is relatively new. It is the positive relationship between these three elements that I will focus on.

As the noble Lord said, the report does not shy away from the hard fact that there has been a 13% drop in funding in real terms since 2007 and massive cuts in local authorities. The axe has fallen differently in different places, but every local museum and gallery is struggling to care not just for rare and deteriorating collections but often for fragile historic buildings. They are struggling to keep curators and expertise. In many instances, they are struggling to keep the doors open. We know from the Museums Association of 40 museums that closed between 2005 and 2014, and of 11 in 2016 alone. It all adds up to a lack of resilience and capacity, and means that no exhortation to adapt to a new funding regime is going to shift the reality, particularly outside London, that finding more commercial funding or philanthropic income, wealthier partners or new organisational structures is often extremely difficult and sometimes impossible. That is why I welcome two particular recommendations in the report: that the funding agencies should give priority to the existing estate and to sustainability. But although there is always scope for improvisation, I could not agree more with the noble Lord when he said that there is a limit to what can be done within the existing resource structure. It is time now for the Government to play their part, as a full partner, in what they recognise contributes so much to national economic prosperity and social resilience.

Sustainability depends not least on museums being valued and used as exhaustively as possible. Museums and galleries are already doing that and have become very good at it. Organisations such as Kids in Museums are taking children into museums to be curators, actors and front of house. There is tremendous innovation there, including in what local museums are doing, for example, with dementia groups. I must reference Wales. The National Museum Wales is doing fantastic work, particularly in the new St Fagans museum, as it will be, involving unemployed and homeless people in forming the vision and the practice of the new museum.

Strong partnerships are emerging, but we need stronger partnerships and all museums and galleries to develop them. That is the key to future sustainability. The other key is embedding museums and galleries not just in place but in policy. Perceptions are changing. It is no longer all about Wakefield and Margate, although they have been pioneering in what they have demonstrated culture can achieve. Culture can make for great places, as the Local Government Association says in its recent report on this. However, it is crucial not just to have a national strategy across all departments which optimises that fact but for local authorities to develop local strategies. Here I think the report could have been more aggressive in urging all local authorities to capitalise on the assets in their place as part of their explicit social and economic planning, not least as a way of addressing the false choices that are so often made between investing in culture and investing in social care.

Above all, the Mendoza review addresses a gap in both analysis and approach with the recommendation that public funds need to be spent more strategically, around agreed priorities, shared intelligence and a greater understanding of impact. There has been, apart from the role of designation, a historic failure to identify in the national interest not just what we value in our museums and galleries but what is most at risk and where the most can be achieved by investing in capability and resilience.

Most help can usually be used in places where they are very used to it, but I am more concerned about more disadvantaged areas where they are not quite so good at accessing funds. The review is clear that this means deciding how scarce resources can be made to go further by national agencies and national partnerships working more closely together. That has been welcomed by everybody, including the Heritage Lottery Fund.

Finally, I will say a few words in response to what the noble Lord said about the Heritage Lottery Fund. Since its inception, it has changed the face of museums and galleries in this country. It has invested an astonishing amount, £2.4 billion. Most of that has gone into construction, buildings and refurbishment; the rest across the range of things that museums have to do. But now, because of fluctuating lottery receipts, there will be less funding for all forms of heritage projects. We have discussed this with DDCMS and our heritage partners. We do not have the historically high amounts that we used to have. We do indeed have £190 million for 2018 and it is a great deal of money, but that is why we will now clarify priorities, consult on ways of working and commit to the action plan on museums, as we are invited to.

I am very grateful to the noble Lord for creating the opportunity today to set out what I think are some of the challenges.

Battle of Passchendaele

Baroness Andrews Excerpts

Thursday 19th October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Andrews (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord on securing this debate and the very powerful way in which he has introduced it. It is an opportunity for us to reflect on this defining moment of the 20th century. I hope that he will forgive me if I cast my net slightly wider to talk a bit about the war in general as well as the battle of Passchendaele. I want, in particular, to talk about the way in which communities across the country have commemorated the war and about the role of the Heritage Lottery Fund and what it has done to make that possible. I declare an interest as chair of the Heritage Lottery Fund committee for Wales.

In introducing the debate, the noble Lord created some very graphic pictures for us. The casualty figures are of course still debated, but I think they seem to have settled at around 500,000 men lost in those first three months to October. The battle was dignified as the Third Battle of Ypres—we know it as Passchendaele. It has become associated with the story of those thousands who drowned in the mud. The mud itself became synonymous with the battle. Many others were sickened to death or froze. It was the last battle of Kitchener’s volunteer army, so it has a more poignant aspect as well. It was a reprise of the Somme, but it was worse. Although fewer men died, they died in worse conditions. It divided Lloyd George from Haig. So we must continue to ask whether it was necessary and why it was so prolonged. The noble Lord is right that much of the burden was borne by Commonwealth troops. Australia lost more men in the first few days of that battle than in the eight months at Gallipoli. The Canadians suffered equally.

The Great War continues to invade our minds, never more so than the past four years. Passchendaele is different, though. It is the battle that really grips us, and it will always do so. In the images of that hellish landscape, where the trees were—as Blunden, who survived the war, wrote—as “described by Dante”, the poetry of the war is imprinted in our minds, our imagination and our national psyche. No one who watched the ceremony at Ypres in July will ever be able to forget the words and images revealed through the incessant rain that was projected on to the great Cloth Hall. I felt then, as I do now, that in remembering the Great War we have to remember all those who fought and died. In his great anti-war novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Remarque might have been speaking of young men on all sides of the conflict when he described how his generation of young Germans was betrayed by the older generation who took them to war, when he wrote that,

“in our hearts we trusted them. The idea of authority, which they represented, was associated in our minds with a greater insight and a more humane wisdom. But the first death we saw shattered this belief. We had to recognise that our generation was more to be trusted than theirs … The first bombardment showed us our mistake, and under it the world as they had taught it to us broke in pieces”.

As I said, the Battle of Passchendaele was a defining moment for the 20th century. It is very easy to be overwhelmed by the scale. The quality of the talent lost, as the noble Lord described so beautifully, cannot be quantified: the best of physicists—men such as Henry Moseley; the best of poets, mathematicians and musicians; the brilliant son of the Prime Minister; and that golden generation. But when we seek to commemorate, it is vital that we ask who as well as what we commemorate. So far history has not given much space to the memory and experiences of the many, many more who also had such a lot to give—until now. The past three years have enabled some of this to be revealed for the first time, made possible in large part by the Heritage Lottery Fund and those who faithfully play the National Lottery, who deserve our most grateful thanks.

I will give the House some figures. Since April 2010 the Heritage Lottery Fund has awarded £90 million to more than 1,700 projects. In Wales alone, 100 grants have been made, totalling well over £1 million. Some of these have been massive capital grants, not least for the galleries and the Imperial War Museum, as well as the £15 million that went to the National Museum of the Royal Navy to save “HMS Caroline”. Just as important has been the £11 million awarded to 1,300 community projects, involving 7 million people drawn from every type of community in Britain: disability groups, Muslim groups, African groups, veterans’ groups, civic trusts, women’s health groups, YMCAs, prisoner education groups, faith groups and refugee councils. The research they have done has uncovered the most extraordinary stories of Indian, African and Caribbean soldiers, conscientious objectors, refugees in the UK, the German communities, advancements in medicine and race riots in Liverpool. For the first time they have brought into the light—as Sassoon described it—the names on the war memorials. They have told their stories for the first time, in oral and written form, in photographs, exhibitions, plays and films. With regard to Passchendaele, grants have been made, for example, to Portsmouth Poetry and Portsmouth Cathedral in partnership to put on a specific exhibition and film, and to the Whilton Local History Society to research the life of a local hero, Captain Henry Reynolds VC.

Finally, I turn to Wales and Passchendaele. Four thousand Welshmen died on the first day of the battle alone. Among those who died, as the noble Lord said, was a young man who was already a great poet: Hedd Wyn. He had volunteered to spare his younger brother from the war. He died, as so many other compatriots did, at Pilckem Ridge, not knowing that he would be shortly awarded Wales’ greatest prize—the Bardic Chair at the National Eisteddfod—for a poem that he posted from the battlefield. His bardic name was Hedd Wyn; his given name was Ellis Evans. His death, announced at the National Eisteddfod in Birkenhead in September 1917, came immediately to stand for what all Wales had lost.

As the years have gone by, more and more people have climbed the mountain to the farmhouse near Trawsfynydd where he lived with his family, which has been cared for lovingly by his nephew Gerald Williams. The farmhouse, Yr Ysgwrn, was given to the Snowdonia National Park a few years ago by Mr Williams, who deserves our great thanks for all he has done for Wales. I am delighted to say that this year the HLF, through the £3 million grant we were able to make, has worked with many people to conserve the cottage and the Bardic Chair, which he never occupied. The barns have become museums and places where young and old can learn about Hedd Wyn, his poetry and his life and times.

Contrast that with the unknown story of Mr William O’Brien, a policeman living and working in the small village of Abersychan in Gwent, who joined the Grenadier Guards and who was killed at Passchendaele just three days after Hedd Wyn. He wrote regularly to his girlfriend Rose, and his correspondence gives an intimate view of life on the front line—the routine and the traumatic—and his longing to come home to Rose. His letters are in the Gwent Archives and, with an HLF grant, children from Victoria Village Primary School and Ysgol Bryn Onnen have made a series of films. They have created a guided walk around the places that would have been known to Rose and William, and they have researched and created a roll of honour to the other men from Abersychan who gave their lives but who never had a war memorial.

Many of those who died at Passchendaele are remembered on the gravestones of Artillery Wood Cemetery. But, thanks to the huge efforts that have gone into remembering and commemorating in so many different ways, we have been able to bring the war back into the foreground of memory. People have discovered the hidden biographies and the lasting impacts. In the play “The History Boys”, one of them says that commemoration enables us only to remember, not to explain. But I think what has happened in the commemoration of the war contradicts this. In researching the war, and this battle, we have gone beyond commemoration to a greater understanding—perhaps not of the strategy of disaster but of what war did to those who fought and died or were left behind. I hope that this determination and duty to explain what we can as best as we can, to find the truth where it can be found, will intensify throughout the rest of the commemoration.