Learned Societies at Burlington House

Chris Skidmore Excerpts

Tuesday 8th June 2021 Westminster Hall

[Chris Skidmore (Kingswood) (Con) [V]]

I start by thanking my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) for having secured this important debate, and put on record my interest as an elected fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. The hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) should not worry: I am not going to blackball him in his election. I also put it on record that I will also speak in my capacity as chair of the all-party parliamentary group for museums.

The Society of Antiquaries, along with the other learned societies in Burlington House and the courtyard, is undoubtedly a national treasure. I am glad that the Minister is going to take the opportunity to visit that society, because he will be dumbstruck by the wealth of cultural heritage there. Some of those manuscripts managed to escape even the dissolution of the monasteries, yet they are now being threatened by the financial situation that the society finds itself in. When he goes on his visit, he will see remarkable portraits, including not only the earliest surviving portrait of Richard III but Hans Eworth’s portrait of Mary I. He will see the processional cross that was rescued from the battle of Bosworth, which is one of the reasons why I held the launch of my book, “Bosworth: The Birth of the Tudors” at the society in 2013. He may also know from his notes that as a Government Minister—the Minister for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation—I held a keynote address at the Society of Antiquaries in 2019, in which I underlined the Government’s respect for the arts and humanities.

The society’s collection is unique, with 40,000 artefacts and 130,000 books and manuscripts. It simply cannot be replaced: three of the earliest copies of Magna Carta are among them. My concern is that, with the ratcheting effect of the rent going up, following the supposed agreement over eight years to reach market rent, as my hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire (James Gray) mentioned, the society cannot even afford to pay the current rent of £150,000 a year, which has risen from £4,800 over an eight-year period—a 3,100% increase. The society is asset-rich and very cash-poor, and money that could be spent on preserving these artefacts or on future research projects for early-career researchers is being drained to pay the rent. An agreement should be found—perhaps an in lieu payment of artefacts could be made to the Government, and those artefacts could then be preserved for the sake of our national heritage.

This Government are committed to standing up against cancel culture—they are absolutely right to do so—and to stopping statues from being pulled down so that we can respect our heritage and learn from it, but one of our greatest national assets, artefacts and institutions is being pulled down in front of our very eyes. That is the exact opposite of what the Prime Minister, who so values cultural heritage, would wish. I urge the Minister to look seriously at what could be done to protect the society for the future.