Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what estimate his Department has made of the cost to the public purse of publicly-funded reviews of cultural monuments and institutions in response to the Black Lives Matter campaign by (a) Leeds Council, (b) Wakefield Council and (c) nationally.

Government does not hold this information. The vast majority of total funding for councils is not ring fenced, and as such councils are best placed to decide the most efficient way to fund their services in order to meet the needs of their communities.

The Government has set out a clear policy position, and DCMS has written to its arms length bodies to make this clear, that statues and memorials, however contentious, should be retained and their presence explained in order to help educate people about all aspects of Britain’s complex past.