Museums

Lord Ashton of Hyde Excerpts

Tuesday 15th November 2016 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Culture, Media and Sport (Lord Ashton of Hyde) (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, for this debate, and I thank other noble Lords who contributed. I particularly thank the noble Baroness for alluding to my non-conformist, suffragist, pacifist great-great-aunt, who was the first woman to be elected to Manchester City Council. She was a non-conformist. I think the underlying subtext is: what went wrong?

I do not know whether my comments will address the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, about Ministers’ breadth of vision and interest in relation to the arts. I will address that in a minute, but first I would like briefly to outline the steps that the Government are taking to support museums, and then address some of the specific questions that have been raised.

We think it is important that the Government still support, and are keen on supporting, the arts. Funding for regional culture is predominantly channelled through Arts Council England. Between 2015 and 2018, Arts Council England will invest about £118 million in museums. This money is used to care for collections, support work with the local community and help museums develop creative, self-sustaining financial models. Arts Council England also determines which museum collections are designated as having national significance. There are 144 such collections in England. The People’s History Museum has been one of them since 1998, as we were told. This is important because achieving designated collection status opens up new sources of funding, such as the DCMS/Wolfson fund. That partnership has already spent nearly £40 million refurbishing more than 300 museum and gallery spaces, and is continuing to do so. A new round of applications has just closed, and early next year a further £4 million will be provided to the successful organisations, helping more people to access these collections. I was very pleased that in August the People’s History Museum secured £273,600 from the Arts Council’s museum resilience fund to support its Builders and Dreamers: the Future of Ideas Worth Fighting For project.

In addition, the Heritage Lottery Fund helps museums to pay for major capital projects. Around a third of all Heritage Lottery Fund grants go to UK museums across the UK, which in 2014-15 alone meant that the Heritage Lottery Fund invested £430 million in museum projects. Against this background, the Government’s wide-ranging museums review, announced in the culture White Paper and led by Neil Mendoza, will seek a deeper understanding of museums around the country. The public call for evidence closed at the end of last month, with more than 1,500 full responses. It has three elements, two of which directly relate to this debate. It looks at the big picture in the State of the Nation report on English museums, including the role of government and arm’s-length bodies, such as Arts Council England, in working with museums. Secondly, it looks at non-national museums to examine more closely accredited local and regional museums to better understand things such as the impact of changes in funding, the new models of working, what works and why, how to deal with museums in difficulty, how to ensure that collections and expertise thrive, and the responsibilities of local authorities for the provision of services. Lastly, for completeness, it looks at national museums in undertaking a strategic review.

By next summer, the museums review will make recommendations for how government can best help and enable regional museums to flourish. The noble Baroness, Lady Royall, asked whether the review had visited the PHM. It has visited 40 regional museums as part of the review, including other museums in Manchester, but not, I believe, the People’s History Museum. The People’s History Museum was able to contribute to the consultation but I do not believe that it did so.

Another important government consultation also closed last month, on the museums and galleries tax relief. From April next year, this will help museums produce and tour exhibitions.

Last month, Arts Council England announced its 2018 to 2022 funding settlement. This will be £622 million every year, with an increase of £37 million for national portfolio organisations. Moreover, Arts Council England will increase the proportion of funds spent outside London by 4%.

For this new funding round—to an extent, this addresses the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Monks, about the position of the People’s History Museum—museums will be able to apply as national portfolio organisations, which have replaced the current major partner museums system. Applications are now open, bringing new opportunities for regional museums to access more funding, and rewarding the best and most innovative. That means making access as broad and diverse as possible in terms of both visitors and staff, and making the museums relevant to changing times and audiences. It might also mean better embracing the possibilities of digital, as the noble Lord, Lord Clark, mentioned, in order to open up collections to new audiences and put communities in touch with museums in new ways. Many museums are doing great work in these areas. For example, the Museum of London has done wonderful digital work on the anniversary this year of the Great Fire of London, including building the 17th-century city in the game Minecraft.

The favourite museum of the noble Lord, Lord Sawyer—the open-air museum Beamish in the north-east—has just received nearly £11 million from the Heritage Lottery Fund for Remaking Beamish. This creates a 1950s town populated by objects given to the museum by local people, including the noble Lord.

The Government also continue to fund exciting projects such as the Great Exhibition of the North, which will run for two months in 2018 in Newcastle. Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums will play a big part in this celebration of the very best of northern art, culture and design.

I turn to some of the specific points raised by noble Lords. It is true that in 2011 the Government said that they did not want to cut the People’s History Museum adrift, so there were a number of facilitations. For example, they facilitated discussions between the People’s History Museum, the British Library and the National Archives in 2011, following suggestions from the People’s History Museum. However, the British Library is a DCMS-sponsored body and the National Archives is a non-ministerial department, and these discussions failed partly due to funding restrictions and partly due to the British Library and the National Archives feeling that the People’s History Museum was not a good fit.

In December 2014, there were more discussions between the DCMS and the British Library, but they did not get to the point of the British Library doing due diligence and determining the feasibility of taking on the People’s History Museum. That is why, at the time, Ed Vaizey agreed an additional £100,000 beyond the termination of the agreed funding to enable the museum to continue. However, that was always on the understanding that that would be the final payment.

Various things happened and I could go on, but I would like to point out that the People’s History Museum is a great success. It attracts 100,000 visitors a year. It runs a successful programme of public events and exhibitions, which included an exhibition of parliamentary democracy in advance of the last election, and it delivers a learning programme for all ages. I mentioned that it had attracted large funding grants on the basis of that.

My noble friend Lord Cormack talked about national museums and their influence on the regions. Of the national museums which are directly sponsored by the DCMS, seven are present in the regions, and they are encouraged to work with regional museums through their funding agreements with the DCMS. National museums lent objects from their collections to 1,629 venues in 2014-15.

Regarding the Government’s view of the arts and what should be done in terms of the so-called devastating cuts, I would like to point out that the settlement for 2018-22 for Arts Council England is a budget of £622 million per annum across the three primary funding streams. This is a flat-cash settlement compared with 2015-18 and is protected in the 2016 Budget. In fact, over the spending period Arts Council England gets a 2% increase. Investment outside London will be increased by 4% by augmenting the amount of funding available through NPO funding streams by a further £37 million per annum.

There are a number of questions that I still have to address from the noble Lord, Lord Monks, about Manchester museums. There are national museums in Manchester. The Museum of Science and Industry is one and I think that the Imperial War Museum has a branch there. I have some more questions which I am afraid I do not have time to answer. However, we very much welcome the variety of such interesting, innovative, and important work in our museums, and we recognise the crucial role of arts and culture in making places communities where people want to live, work and learn, and which visitors from abroad want to visit. We wish the People’s History Museum all the best.

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

I am sorry to interrupt the Minister but after making the point that there are questions unanswered he normally adds a little phrase to say that he will write to people—he did not say that this time. For the convenience of the House, will he confirm that he will write to people to answer the outstanding questions?

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

Of course. I was going to say that I will be very pleased to answer all the questions that I have not been able to.

As I was about to say, we wish the People’s History Museum all the best under the stewardship of the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, and her team. No doubt they will make it the go-to destination for those attending the Conservative Party conference in Manchester in 2017.