National Gallery: Visitor Services

Lord Howarth of Newport Excerpts

Thursday 5th February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, this is precisely why almost all the senior and large museums and galleries in this country have gone along this path. There are no demons in this. It is all about enhancing the staff’s arrangements, including in part of the arrangement for the National Gallery to pay above the London living wage.

[Lord Howarth of Newport (Lab)]

My Lords, if even the National Gallery, which is strongly placed to raise money from non-governmental sources, is driven to such last-resort cost-cutting and unable to maintain its planned programme of opening—and yesterday galleries were extensively closed because of industrial action—does the Minister, who cares about the arts, worry that his Government’s onslaught on the culture budget if it continues will usher in, literally, a new dark age?