Royal Albert Hall Bill [HL]

Lord Moynihan of Chelsea Excerpts

Wednesday 29th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Carrington of Fulham (Con)]

If noble Lords will forgive me, I am probably a fairly isolated member of your Lordships’ House in opposing this amendment. If the Front Benches will forgive me, I think somebody at least ought to speak on the other side of the debate that has happened so far.

I do not have a registered interest in the Albert Hall. I do not own a seat. I am not a member of any body involved in the Albert Hall. My own interest in it is purely that I live very close to the Albert Hall—as do many other local residents in that part of Westminster. My real interest is to ensure that the Albert Hall is run properly: that the building is maintained properly, that the security around the building is properly assessed and implemented and that crowd control is put in place in such a way so as not to harm the residents round about.

All of those things happen at the moment. The Albert Hall is very well maintained. As we have heard, it has a wide range of very successful events: pop concerts, classical concerts, sporting events, charitable events and private events such as the degree-giving ceremonies for universities. It is a very well-run body.

It is unquestionably true that, as a Parliament, we would not have set up the Acts which govern the Royal Albert Hall in the way that they were set up in 1867. It is a very odd and possibly unique institution in the way it is set up by an Act of Parliament, subsequently amended by further Acts of Parliament down the ages to reflect progress, time and changes in custom. We have to remember that it was set up at a time when those who are of a literary bent will know that Anthony Trollope was writing a very good book on corruption in the City of London called The Way We Live Now. Well, you can draw parallels to the Act that set up the Royal Albert Hall in the way it was done.

The way it was done was very straightforward. They decided to build the Albert Hall on the back of the Great Exhibition. Their ambition went way beyond their financial resources and the hall was in the process of going bust, so they decided that the only way to cope with this, because Mr Gladstone was certainly not prepared to put money in to bail it out, was to sell seats in perpetuity for 999 years from around 1867 to 1870. And that is where we are. The seats do not belong to the Royal Albert Hall, they belong to the seat-holders. We would change that; we would consider that to be the wrong way of doing it, but that is the way the Acts of Parliament are worded, and if that is going to be changed, we need a proper piece of legislation to change it.

That brings me on to my noble friend’s amendment, which I think is trying to address an issue that is more theoretical than it is practical. I say that because the Albert Hall, while it is a charity—and it gets financial benefits from being a charity, as we have heard, on rates and VAT and so on—is a commercial operation of an entertainment venue and it has to make a profit. The way it makes a profit is by getting people to come and use the hall to put on events, which it does extremely successfully. It makes a profit; it washes its face; it does not get any money from the taxpayer; it runs a commercial entity.

We can all object, perhaps, to the way that some parts of it are run, but it is run well and there are internal procedures in place to ensure that the perceived interests of the seat-holders on the council cannot influence who is going to book the hall. But it is not just internal procedures that stop it; it is the commercial reality. I have the figures. Some 1,268 seats out of 5,272 in the hall are owned by seat-holders. If you are trying to fill 5,000 seats in the hall, you have to get commercial sponsors of entertainment who are going to put on very large events to attract very large audiences. It is much bigger than most other venues in London. The way to do it, if you are running an event like that, is to maximise seat sales and sell every seat in the venue.

What happens at the Albert Hall is that to attract major concerts—the rock concerts that the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, attended in the past—it has to make sure that seat-holders, who, as I say, represent 24% of the seats but 46% of the high-priced seats, have no right to attend that concert. It happens at the moment because it could not attract the promoters of the major pop concerts unless it did.

I think my noble friend’s amendment is unnecessary at this stage. I think it also runs into the problem that unquestionably the Royal Albert Hall would withdraw this Bill if that amendment was passed. As we have heard, this Bill is to try to increase the number of events that it can put on without seat-holders having the right to attend. It is also designed to stop some seat-holders taking the Royal Albert Hall to court because it is currently acting outside its existing legislation.

I hope that we do not accept this amendment. I hope that we pass the Bill because I am very keen to ensure that the Albert Hall carries on running as it does now, regardless of whether in the future we come back to review the whole structure and ownership of seats of the Albert Hall, but that would take primary legislation in this House to do, and it should not be done by a, frankly, cobbled-together amendment to the Bill. My interest is purely to ensure that the Albert Hall is run properly and profitably, is not a burden on the taxpayer and, above everything else, is a pleasant neighbour to people such as me who live close to it.

[Lord Moynihan of Chelsea (Con)]

My Lords, I support the Bill but oppose the amendment, which would undermine the Royal Albert Hall, its finances and, indeed, its future. I declare my conflict of interest as a seat-holder at the Royal Albert Hall and as having previously worked unpaid on its council for seven years, for four of them as president of the hall. Noble Lords trust each other to behave impeccably with regard to such conflicts, and I hope they will trust me similarly. In the case of the conflict of interest at the Royal Albert Hall’s council that the amendment seeks to address, it is again precisely of a type that we deal with every day in this House, and it is dealt with there, just as this House deals with its own conflicts. When president, I instituted a conflict of interest committee whose members are non-conflicted trustees. They meet after every council meeting at the hall to ensure that there has been full compliance with the hall’s ethics code. Noble Lords will understand that that is a more rigorous process than our own House sees necessary to apply to itself. That conflict committee has not once expressed concern about how council members have behaved at any meeting.

The entire governance set-up, including this inherent conflict of interest, was approved by Queen Victoria herself, who stated that she believed that the recently deceased Prince Albert, after whom the hall is named, would have approved of it. It was initially presided over by the then Prince of Wales. When he resigned as president, his successor was the then Duke of Edinburgh. The governance structure then and since is precisely what has led to the hall’s great success. Had Simon Rattle attempted to build a modern concert hall in London under the same structure, it is likely he would have succeeded and we would have another great concert hall in this capital city of ours, but he sought government funding instead and has now abandoned the attempt.

Misunderstanding was created and repeated at Second Reading and again now, originating from a petition that misread the purpose of the Bill. The misinformation about the hall I have heard today would take me far longer to correct than your Lordships’ patience would ever allow. For example, the petition asserted that the petitioner resigned from the hall’s presidency

“because he had serious concerns about the way the Hall was being run”.

That is not so. He left because he was asked to leave by his own council after a no-confidence vote, due to his rudeness both to them and to seat-holders. There is talk of “sustained public criticism” of the administration of the hall, but that criticism sprang mostly from that one individual. It is hard to see how the allegations can have force when opinion polls show the hall to be Britain’s, and the world’s, best-loved concert venue.

--- Later in debate ---

[Noble Lords]

Shame!

[Lord Moynihan of Chelsea (Con)]

If noble Lords will hear the end of my sentence, they might understand why I caught that impression. The Bill Committee allowed someone with no locus standi to address the committee for half an hour, and then refused to allow the hall’s representative to present the other side—

[Baroness in Waiting/Government Whip (Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent) (Lab)]

My Lords, I remind all Members of your Lordships’ House that we are to be comradely— although that is probably not the appropriate language. The use of language and how we refer to each other is very important, especially when it comes to being accurate.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

My Lords, I was not going to speak because the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Hale, did much better than I could in explaining what we did on the committee. But I have to note that on the night before we met, having prepared for this for some weeks beforehand, the Royal Albert Hall tried to get me to recuse myself on the allegation of something that had happened 10 years ago: that somebody had praised me on a website. The night before, the hall thought I should stand down from the committee. That is how the Albert Hall dealt with us as a committee. We did not hear from the people whom we then decided did not have locus standi. Therefore, I hope the noble Lord will withdraw what he just said about our committee.

[Lord Moynihan of Chelsea (Con)]

I express my regret to the noble Baroness for any inadvertent inappropriate language, but I repeat that an individual who it was agreed had no locus standi was allowed to speak for half an hour before the Bill Committee, and then the Royal Albert Hall was refused permission to put its own side of the story.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

I am really sorry, but I do not think we can allow that to be said. Maybe it would be better for the chair of the Committee to say this, but I do not think an allegation like that, which is so inaccurate, can be made.

[Baroness Hale of Richmond (CB)]

My Lords, I did not expect to have to answer that sort of accusation. The Select Committee was formed because there was a petition against the Bill from three people. The hall objected to the locus standi of the petitioners, and we heard both sides of that. That was when we heard from the petitioner. He was allowed to make his case for having locus standi. The hall was allowed to make its case that he did not have locus standi and nor did the others, and we determined that they did not have locus standi. Nevertheless, the hall went on at enormous length to address us on the virtue of its current arrangements. Because of what we learned as a result, we decided that the situation—the impasse—was sufficiently troubling to draw to the attention of the House. That is all. We certainly heard both sides of the story. I have to say, having spent decades of my life as a serving judge whose job it was to hear both sides of the story, I have been particularly upset by the noble Lord’s accusation.

[Lord Moynihan of Chelsea (Con)]

I regret any upset that I may have caused the noble and learned Baroness. Recollections may vary.

I have not completed my speech. As we have heard from my noble friend Lady Stowell, the Charity Commission also wishes to hijack this Bill. However, the commission has the power to intervene directly if it believes there is a problem but has declined to do so. The Bill is straightforward and simple, seeking to regularise an informal arrangement, already prevalent for many years, whereby seat-holders voluntarily vacate their seats for scores of shows each year. The hall’s executives—not, as has been alleged, the seat-holders—choose which shows they vacate.

The charity benefits by millions of pounds a year from this and other voluntary benefits ceded by seat-holders. The hall’s financial success has happened precisely during the recent period in which the disaffected individual has waged his campaign against it, but the new money allows the charity at last to spend the needed up to £10 million a year to upgrade its vast Victorian grade 1 listed building.

The hall has now spent 10 years trying to get this Bill passed, eight of them in persuading the Charity Commission to give permission to proceed. It is now essential that the Bill be passed, precisely because of those disaffected three seat-holders that the noble Baroness, Lady Fraser, mentioned, who are taking the hall to the High Court in a bid to ban the transfer of benefit from seat-holders to the charity. If the High Court agrees with them, the charity will lose millions from its annual surplus. I am cutting out most of the rest of my speech and am about to finish.

[Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)]

My Lords, I ask the noble Lord to bring his speech to an end. Because of the length of the interventions I tried to give additional leeway, but we are now exceeding our time and I would be grateful if he could bring his speech to an end.

[Lord Moynihan of Chelsea (Con)]

I will do my best; I have just a little bit left. As president of the Royal Albert Hall, I think the House deserves to hear from me, as against the many who did not know.

I and so many current seat-holders have, over many years, put our hearts into making the hall and the charity a renowned success. It has been anguishing for all the hall’s members to watch misunderstanding and misinformation about the hall and its governance gain currency in this noble House. I have made an overall loss in income—not a profit—over the 30 years I have owned my seats. I made a profit for the very first time last year, partly because I spent so many evenings in this House, and I paid tax on it, of course. Many other seat-holders are the same. I feel sad that seat-holders and trustees are being so misrepresented and traduced.

I beseech noble Lords to reject this unworkable, impractical, misconceived, unreasonable, wrecking amendment and to pass the Bill unamended. Unless that is done, the Royal Albert Hall could end up badly damaged—something that this House has in its hands to prevent.

[The Earl of Effingham (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Harrington of Watford for sponsoring this Bill on behalf of the Corporation of the Hall of Arts and Sciences. He has done a tremendous job during the passage of the Bill as it worked its way through the various stages in your Lordships’ House. I also thank other noble Lords who have been involved with the Bill, notably my noble friend Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Etherton, the noble Lord, Lord Bassam of Brighton, and the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, who have all put their name to the amendment that has been tabled.

The Royal Albert Hall is a great British institution. It has hosted the world’s most celebrated and famous musicians, performers and speakers since it opened on 29 March 1871. It has seen monumental figures such as Winston Churchill, cultural icons such as Dame Shirley Bassey, and sporting events such as Britain’s first indoor marathon. It is not just the historical significance of the hall that makes it so special. To this very day, it continues to highlight the best talent from across the world. Only this week, it has hosted events ranging from classical coffee mornings to late night jazz and even “Barbie The Movie: in Concert”.

As we have just heard, all noble Lords understand and appreciate this but it is apparent that there are differences of opinion regarding the governance and ownership arrangements of the hall. When this Bill came before your Lordships’ House for Second Reading, the government response was given by my noble friend Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay, who sends his apologies for not being in his place. He set out then that the Government do not customarily take a position on private Bills. Of course, the roles are now reversed: we are on this side of your Lordships’ House as His Majesty’s Official Opposition and the responsibility for responding on behalf of the Government is taken by the Minister. Although we no longer respond on behalf of His Majesty’s Government, we do not believe that it is our place to take a firm stance one way or the other.

Many important points have been raised by noble Lords and other parties on both sides of this debate. We note that some noble Lords, such as my noble friend Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts, have concerns regarding the potential for a conflict of interest for the trustees of the corporation, owning, as they do, seats in the hall as their private property. It is an understandable objection that this arrangement conflicts with modern charity law, as has been noted by the Charity Commission and noble Lords. These concerns are reflected in the amendment to the Bill in my noble friend’s name and I am pleased that noble Lords have had the opportunity to discuss this in further detail.

We also understand the position of the corporation and the trustees. They face the unenviable situation of having to come to Parliament with a Bill whenever they wish to alter their administrative and managerial affairs. This is, of course, due to the corporation’s unfortunate entanglement with Parliament by virtue of its foundation by an Act of Parliament. I believe that my noble friend Lord Harrington of Watford will address both sides of the debate, and I am confident that we will be able to resolve the matters at hand in, I hope, a constructive and collaborative fashion that will be for the benefit of both the hall and all those people who enjoy its contributions to our national cultural life.