Covid-19: Museums, Galleries and Historic Buildings

Lord Wood of Anfield Excerpts

Thursday 21st May 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wood of Anfield (Lab)]

My Lords, this is what the German Government are doing to support museums and galleries. On 30 April, €10 million was provided for adaptation measures to enable reopening, with special time slots for vulnerable visitors, spatial redesign, extended opening hours, masks and increased cleaning. From 4 May, museums and galleries have been gradually reopening, and the German Government are now negotiating a cultural infrastructure fund of up to €500 million.

In the UK, recovery must follow this German commitment to significant emergency support, but because the UK’s national museums and galleries remain committed to free admission, their reserves will quickly be exhausted. The special exhibition-based business model adopted by so many of them is now not viable. If we want not just to protect some of our great national cultural institutions, but to protect them from returning to the necessity of routinely charging visitors, they will need hundreds of millions of pounds—not to avert a downturn but to avert a catastrophic cultural cull.