Queen’s Speech

Lord Smith of Finsbury Excerpts

Tuesday 18th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Smith of Finsbury (Non-Afl) [V]]

My Lords, I begin by reminding the House of my interests as master of Pembroke College, Cambridge, and chair of the Art Fund. Before I turn to issues of culture, I want to record my serious disappointment at one item in the gracious Speech: the decision to undertake a period of further consultation before bringing in legislation to ban conversion therapy for LGBT+ people. I have to ask the Government: what on earth is there to consult about? Conversion therapy is wrong. It is deeply damaging to those it is imposed on. It should be banned as rapidly as possible. This is an unacceptable delay and, worse, it might be a way of smuggling in exceptions to a ban. The legislation should be brought forward without exceptions now.

I want mainly to address issues of culture, especially the Government’s rather obvious decision that culture war is their thing. They are at it with universities, flagging up in the gracious Speech the imposition of a duty to promote free speech, with an enforcer appointed by government. I am all in favour of free speech, especially in universities, where education is surely enhanced by the expression and contest of ideas and opinions, examined, tested and challenged as appropriate. But the last thing we need is the Government deciding what free speech should be allowed and what should not.

Every bit as worrying, however, is what appears now to be a government-directed imposition of their version of correctness on our national museums and galleries. We have seen it in the recent decision not to renew a distinguished academic’s term of office as trustee of the Royal Museums Greenwich simply because his work focused on issues of decolonisation. We have seen it also in the letter sent by the Secretary of State a few months ago to museums and others telling them that they should not explore issues of contested heritage with a critical eye. The Government are trying to tell museums what they can and cannot do. This really is not on. There is a very precious thing called the arm’s-length principle, which is supposed to define the relationship between government and museums. The Government are tearing this principle apart.

Our national museums and galleries are the great storehouses of our nation’s culture, history, science and wisdom. They contain the things of beauty that we have collected over generations. They reflect our nation’s identity in all its complexity, diversity and glory. It is vital that this complexity, diversity and glory are displayed and explained to the public in the best and most effective way, and the people who know best how to do that are the curators and directors of those museums. The last people to know how to do it are Governments and politicians. I say this in all earnestness to the Government, as a former Secretary of State: I would not have dreamed of trying to tell museums what they could display and what they could not, or what they could say about it and what they could not. The Government, quite simply, must get out of the way.