Museums and Galleries: Financial Sustainability Debate

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Department: Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport

Museums and Galleries: Financial Sustainability

Lord Dubs Excerpts
Tuesday 8th October 2019

(4 years, 5 months ago)

Lords Chamber
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Baroness Barran Portrait Baroness Barran
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The Government do not have any plans to designate any other museums as national museums. Moves have been made to increase funding, particularly to regional museums, through Arts Council England; obviously, we are very keen for them to thrive. We have seen new museums open regionally, and important loans have majorly boosted visitor numbers. We are keen to see that continue.

Lord Dubs Portrait Lord Dubs (Lab)
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My Lords, many other large cities have a hotel tax. One only has to go to New York to see that it is quite a large percentage of what one pays. What about having a hotel tax in some of our cities—particularly London, which is awash with tourists all the time—and using at least some of the proceeds as a contribution to our museums and galleries?

Baroness Barran Portrait Baroness Barran
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Again, the noble Lord makes an interesting suggestion. Our broader view is that we expect museums and galleries to continue to be funded by a mixture of public money, philanthropic money and other forms of fundraising.