Kew Gardens (Leases) (No. 3) Bill [HL]

Baroness Tonge Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 21st May 2019 Lords Chamber

I hope that noble Lords will see the sense of this proposal. Like my noble friend Lord Whitty, I would, if the Minister felt so inclined, very happily talk about the precise wording that these guarantees might take, which could be put on the face of the Bill to reassure ourselves and all noble Lords that the criteria will be in keeping with Kew’s very special status.

[Baroness Tonge (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I support Amendments 2 and 4, at least in spirit. I first apologise for not having spoken at Second Reading; I had an unavoidable appointment so was unable to do so. Had I been here, I think I would have agreed with all the remarks made in that debate, which was excellent.

I have lived in Kew for 45 years. I was a local councillor for nearly 10 years and an MP for the area. I can claim to know Kew and Kew Gardens pretty well. My husband always used to say that I knew every letterbox in Kew, which indeed I still do. I am not sure that I could claim to know every tree in Kew Gardens but I know a fair number of them and I certainly know Kew Green very well. It is a very precious place, dear to residents and the nation.

I would like to go back very briefly to 1983. I remember well attending as a local councillor a public meeting in a school hall in Kew that had been called by the director of Kew Gardens and his team—they were not trustees then—to explain that Kew Gardens was going to become a trust. They explained the system of becoming a trust with trustees and no longer being directly funded by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, as it was then. I rather disgraced myself at the meeting by being very outspoken; as noble Lords will know, I tend in that direction quite often. I said that I was terribly afraid that this would lead to Kew becoming a botanical theme park.

Of course, that has not happened. I was shouted down, quite rightly. However, over the last 30 to 40 years, I have noticed how much Kew has changed. If you come to Kew at Christmas or during the school summer holidays, it is geared to making money by getting children to spend lots of money on popcorn, ice cream and rides in pretty-coloured boats on the lake in front of the Palm House. It has been commercialised. The people who have spoken are quite right to worry that other forms of commercialisation could occur. It is a creeping sort of process and we need to beware of it. The present director, Richard Deverell, is absolutely terrific. He is a wonderful person and he is doing great things for Kew. However, we cannot guarantee that future directors will be as careful and as caring as he is.

I understand that Kew has to raise more money. Indeed, my noble friend Lady Kramer made the point at Second Reading that the entrance fee has now gone up to £16.50. It used to be a penny when I was a local councillor. Everyone loves to say that. Of course, £16.50 is hugely expensive for most families and we want to make it more widely available. Kew has to make more money, but we have to be careful. These amendments in particular say that we must make sure that this is not the beginning of more commercialisation at Kew Gardens, and a loss of the emphasis on the huge amount of botanical and scientific work that goes on there.

[Viscount Eccles]

My Lords, I have a great deal of time for what the noble Baroness, Lady Tonge, just said. I also have a great deal of time for this amendment. To me, the crucial thing is the words,

“compatible with the core … scientific … activities of the Royal Botanic Gardens”.

As I said, the balance at Kew is the crucial issue. It is primarily a scientific institution. The people who work for scientific institutions are not necessarily very good at defending their own wickets. Their minds are on other things—higher things, very often.

In supporting this amendment, I should like to talk about change. There has been quite a lot of talk about Kew’s funding. Kew is now 60% bigger than it was in my day, on three measures. A change has taken place. We employed about 500 people at that time. Kew now employs over 800 people. If you look at the Defra grant, as opposed to the MAFF grant from my last year, it is now over 50% higher in real terms than it was then. Noble Lords will find that if they look at almost anything at Kew. Its total budget or turnover—£111 million—is also about 60% higher in real terms than it was in my final year there, 1991. Kew has had a very good run. A lot of that is due to the support it has had from MAFF and then Defra, the tremendous support from the public and its own foundation, and its ability to attract funds from many sources, including partnerships.

However, a lot of other changes have taken place. Climate change, environmental damage and worries about food security have gone up the agenda—you name it: biodiversity, species extinction and so on. My concern is that Kew has the capacity to do much more. Indeed, I do not complain about it being much larger in real terms. It has the capacity to be much more proactive and to be engaged in some of the solutions to some of these problems that we all face. But if the balance shifts too far in favour of estate management and parks management, science will go down the agenda relatively. If noble Lords look at what is happening at Kew and the management structure in the round, they might come to the conclusion that the balance has shifted too far in favour of the sixth general function—the parks function—and too far away from the first five, notably the first two about the investigation and dissemination of science.

Therefore, I come back to the point that if we are removing the Charity Commission as some sort of umpire, which we are for legal reasons, that makes it even more important to deal with the dimension of the gamekeeper—Defra—and the poacher—Kew—which, between them can come to whatever conclusions they want about what is to the public benefit unless there is some other way of monitoring that situation. Clearly Parliament has a role, as do some of the movements out there, such as the Green Party and Extinction Rebellion.

The most important thing to achieve with the Bill is to have something in it that commits Kew and Defra to work out the appropriate state-of-the-art interpretation of Section 24, to publish what that is and to have it debated in whatever forum wants to debate it. At the moment there is no clear interpretation of Section 24. At Second Reading I referred to Professor Ghillean Prance’s vision of 1993. He had, and set out, a pretty clear definition of what Section 24 meant and how Kew should respond to it. Reading today’s much glossier and more expensive publications does not give me the same clear understanding of how Kew and Defra interpret Section 24.

I have a great deal of time for the amendment. If my noble friend on the Front Bench were willing, we would welcome a government-drafted amendment that covered the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Whitty. If not, we will have to return to this subject on Report.