HC Deb 24 May 1960 vol 624 cc405-14

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Colonel J. H. Harrison.]

12.47 a.m.

Mr. Martin McLaren (Bristol, North-West)

I am sorry to impose an Adjournment debate on my hon. Friend the Financial Secretary to the Treasury at this time of the morning, when he has been so valiantly dealing with the Finance Bill in Committee, but he will know that the timetable is beyond my control. My researches show that it is many years since the House has discussed the work of the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments—England. I thought that it would be useful to see whether, in a co-operative spirit, we could further its work.

The Royal Commission was set up in 1908, fifty-two years ago, and its original terms of reference were as follows. To make an inventory of the historical monuments and constructions connected with or illustrative of the contemporary culture, civilisation and conditions of Life of the people in England, from the earliest times to the year 1700, and to specify those which seem most worthy of preservation. Five years later, the closing date of 1700 was altered to 1714. After the last war, in 1946, the Commission was given discretion to include such monuments later in date than the year 1714 as seemed to them to be worthy of mention. It has so far exercised that discretion by including buildings erected up to 1850, so that now all Georgian and some early Victorian buildings and monuments of the Industrial Revolution are within its ambit. For example, in its recent volumes on the City of Cambridge, the Commissioners have treated as monuments a home for fallen women and also the railway station.

Twenty distinguished persons are members of the Royal Commission, the chairman being Lord Salisbury, and I am sure that the thanks of the House are due to them for the valuable work that they do in a voluntary capacity. There is also a small staff of investigators who do the actual work of writing the inventories and I see from this year's Estimates that the amount which we voted for the expenses of this body is about £50,000. The volumes which the Commission has published are undoubtedly of high quality, as one may see from a look at the books on the City of Cambridge, which I have mentioned.

The principal matter which I want to raise this evening is that the rate of output of the Commissioners has been disappointingly slow. That may not be emir fault. It may be our fault for not nourishing them with enough resources in the way of staff. I know that it is difficult to expand a staff rapidly, owing to the need to keep up the high standard of scholarship which is required. I believe that the Commission now has several more volumes on the stocks.

Nevertheless, it is a fact that in the fifty-two years that the Commission has been in being it has managed to cover only nine out of the 40 or so counties of England, plus the Cities of Oxford and Cambridge and a guide book to the Cathedral of St. Albans. In the last twenty years, a period which has admittedly included the last war, it has managed to produce only one volume on Dorset, and the two volumes on the City of Cambridge, plus St. Albans. I understand that the Commissioners give as an excuse the fact that they lost some of their papers in a fire in 1945.

At the present rate of striking, the Commission will still be busy a hundred years from now. There seems to be rather a sardonic ring in the words of the Warrant, where the Commissioners are required as follows: Our further will and pleasure is you do, with as little delay as possible, report to us your opinion on the matters herein submitted for your consideration. The complaint of slowness is nothing new, because in 1912, only four years after the Commission began, an hon. Member addressed a Question to Mr. Lloyd George, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, and pointed out that at the present rate of progress the labours of the Royal Commission would in all probability take some forty years. He was an optimist, because those forty years have come and gone and the Commission is not yet nearly through half its work.

Why should the pace be so slow? I find myself reminded of the obituary notices of dons which one so often reads in The Times. We are told that they were scholars of first-class intellect and yet, at the end of a long life, owing to the interruptions of teaching and academic administration, their actual output of printed work has been confined to a few articles in learned journals. Notes for the magnum opus were in existence, but the book never saw the light of day. Perhaps the same spirit of perfectionism may be found in the rooms of the Royal Commission.

There may have been too much emphasis on recording the totality of the evidence and too much emphasis placed on perfect revision. Perhaps there is too great a rigidity of method. I have been told that an investigator who is an amateur photographer and who goes out with his Leica is not encouraged to take photographs, as he might willingly do, of monuments which he investigates and that an official photographer has to be separately sent for. I believe, too, that there may be too much centralisation of editing at the Commission's headquarters in London.

Another difficulty may be the delay in making any publication until a whole book is ready. One intelligent suggestion which, I believe, has been made is that there should be continuous publication in periodical parts as in the case of the Law Reports. This would have the advantage that those who are members of a college, or who live in a particular parish, could buy separately the part dealing with their college or parish and would not have to buy the whole volume, which might be beyond their financial resources. Furthermore, they would get it earlier, and this plan would also encourage the investigators who now know that the work which they are writing may never see the light of day for years to come.

When all these matters are considered, a wider question presents itself, and that is whether the existence of a separate and permanent Royal Commission is the best form of organisation that we could use today. It may have been a suitable arrangement in 1908, but is it the best for 1960? There have been so many other developments in this and related fields. We have the Ancient Monuments Acts, administered by the Ministry of Works, with the Ministry's inspectorate, and the help of the Ancient Monuments Board; the Historic Build- ings Councils, and the Archaeological Department of the Ordnance Survey. There is the National Buildings Record, and there is the duty of the Minister of Housing and Local Government, under town and country planning legislation, to compile lists of buildings of special architectural or historical interest, so that local planning authorities may consider making preservation orders.

This last code seems, incidentally, to reduce the importance of one of the original functions of the Royal Commission, namely, to specify which monuments seem most worthy of preservation; there is much more knowledge now than existed fifty years ago. When one surveys the whole of this field, one sees that it presents a motley and patchwork appearance, and I suggest that there is a good deal of duplication of files kept by the different Government authorities. It may well be that the work of the Royal Commission would receive new impetus if the Commission were wound up as such and its functions transferred to the Ministry of Works, where they could be combined with the Minister's existing responsibilities.

I understand that the Secretary of the Royal Commission is approaching retiring age. That occasion might be used as a suitable opportunity to recast the administrative structure. I again acknowledge the excellence of the work of the Royal Commission and its publications, but I only wish that we had more of them. I raise this matter in no hostile spirit, but in the hope that we may succeed in helping those engaged in this work to make further progress.

10 a.m.

Major Sir Frank Markham (Buckingham)

I should like to support the plea which my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, North-West (Mr. McLaren) has made for a speeding up in the work of the Royal Commission. I speak with some difficulty tonight because the matter is, as I think the Financial Secretary knows, under consideration at the moment by the Select Committee on Estimates, but from my own experience as a local historian of many years' standing—if I may say so—with several publications to my credit, I must say that I am appalled at the slowness of publication of the Royal Commission.

My own estimate is that, considering the present pace at which the Commission is proceeding, it will take 240 years before it covers the British Isles. I reckon that from the number of volumes it has already published and the number of volumes yet to be published to cover the whole country. It may be that there are internal stresses and difficulties which the Financial Secretary knows only too well and which could be relieved by his own personal attention.

Much of what we are discussing tonight is under consideration now indirectly by the Select Committee on Estimates, but given that the present pace is far too slow, indeed so slow that by the time the last volume is published it will be time for another entire series of volumes dealing with the 240 years which will have passed between now and then, it seems that much is needed by way of Ministerial encouragement or reorganisation to achieve the results that we all hope for.

My hon. Friend has made an appeal that the Royal Commission should also publish what one might call partial publications dealing with individual parishes. This I should very much like to support. Without going further, or depriving the Minister of his opportunity to reply, I would say that none of us who is a local historian or archaeologist or architect, can but deplore the slowness of the progress of the Royal Commission. I hope that the Financial Secretary will do everything he can to improve the present situation.

1.2 a.m.

The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Sir Edward Boyle)

I should like to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, North-West (Mr. McLaren) for initiating this topic tonight and my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Buckingham (Sir Frank Markham), who is a local historian in his own right, for the comments that he has just made.

May I say, first, a word about what has already been achieved, and the back history of this Commission? As my hon. Friend said in initiating the debate, the Commission was appointed by Royal Warrant in 1908 and its appointment was extended by further Warrants of November, [913, and April, 1946. In 1946, as he said, the terms of reference were extended to include buildings down to 1850 and such further monuments as might seem in the discretion of the Commissioners "worthy of mention".

This wider scope has been interpreted by the Commission in recent years to cover monuments in the widest sense, that is to say, those which are worthy of mention for architectural, social, historical or cultural reasons. The Commissioners have regarded it as their duty to discover, assemble and interpret material on such widely divergent monuments as neolithic burial grounds, bronze age graves, Roman forts and camps, Norman castles, churches, inscriptions on stained glass windows, and later buildings of every description, even workhouses put up under the 1834 Poor Law Act—a very wide ambit.

Between 1908 and 1939 the Commission covered eight counties, Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Essex, Huntingdonshire, Middlesex, Westmorland, Oxfordshire and Herefordshire, and, in addition, has completed an inventory of five volumes on London. Since 1946 the Commission has expanded. Before the war it concentrated on one county at a time only, but now attempts work on three counties. An inventory of West Dorset was completed in 1952, and two large volumes of the City of Cambridge have just been published recently. To date, 22 volumes have been produced on the counties and Oxford and Cambridge.

Work is in progress on completing a study of Dorset, and producing surveys of three cathedral towns, Salisbury, Ely and York. In addition the Commission has in hand a complete survey of all the river gravels of England with the aim of helping local archaeologists by saving from destruction ancient works by gravel digging.

I agree, of course, with my hon. Friends that the work of recording and of publication of the Commission's Reports have been proceeding very slowly. On the other hand, let us remember that scholarship is not something that can be hurried, and the work of the Royal Commission has consistently maintained the very high and exacting standard which it has set itself. The recently published two volumes on Cambridge are an excellent example of this work, and it must be remembered that the Commission has at present in hand work on several counties and cathedral towns, for example, Dorset and York.

I should like to emphasise the point about standards, because I know that it is true that an enormous number of volumes of syndicated history are taking a very long time to come out. It is more than a quarter of a century since the Oxford History of England was started and two volumes are still to come. I was glad to hear from my old tutor Steven Watson that the volume on the reign of George III may appear shortly. I will be frank and say that with the possible exception of the one on the Stuart period they have been rather good volumes, and one must remember the number of rather poor books that come out when one feels that the author has not taken as much trouble as he should have done.

Since 1946, the staff of the Commission has increased from 16 in 1947 to 35 in 1957, and the current number is 36. The substantial increase in 1957 was made necessary by the Commission's undertaking to survey prehistoric and early historic earthworks threatened by agriculture, forestry or housing developments. There are, in addition, Ancient and Historical Monument Commissions for Scotland and for Wales. These, like the English Commission, were appointed in 1908, and in the case of the Scottish Commission the terms of reference were extended by Royal Warrant in 1948. To date, the Scottish Commission has produced 17 volumes, covering 16 counties and the City of Edinburgh, and the Welsh Commission nine volumes covering nine counties.

I am sure that the Commission, under its distinguished Chairman, Lord Salisbury, who was kind enough to visit me privately the other day and discuss its work, will study carefully the suggestions I have seen and heard made for speeding up the work, and particularly the idea that the Commission might publish its work on counties in parts which could later be bound in larger volumes. That has happened in the case of the Victoria county histories with great advantage and the Commission would do well to consider that idea.

Further, we are at present at the Treasury considering the representations which the Commision has made to us for an increase in staff on the editorial side. It is rather nice, after discussing the Finance Bill all day, to be reminded at the moment that the Treasury is in a small way a spending Department as well. But one must ask oneself whether the problem is not really in part one of reorganisation and reassessment. For some time we have been aware at the Treasury that there were possible overlaps among organisations which operate on behalf of the Government throughout the broad field of historical monuments and buildings.

To find out more about this we initiated, some months ago, an inquiry to examine the work of the National Buildings Record and the corresponding work of the Ministry of Works and the Historical Monuments Commission for England, and the relation of this work to the requirements of allied bodies. The inquiry was also to draw attention to the possibility of improving the present arrangements. In this connection I can make an announcement to my hon. Friends which I hope will give some satisfaction and may even be noticed elsewhere out of doors, although the hour is so late.

When the report on this inquiry is available I propose to set up a small working group, under my chairmanship, to consider its recommendations and to arrange any necessary reassessment and reorganisation of the Government's various activities in this whole field. As I see it, the question at the moment is not so much one of more, or less, staff, as of reorganisation and rationalising the present arrangements.

Sir F. Markham

I would appreciate amplification of one statement that my hon. Friend made. He said that since 1947 the staff of the Royal Commission had doubled, but the pace of publication has not doubled. I would be grateful if he could bring production into line with the increased staff.

Sir E. Boyle

I am coming to that. We want to increase the rate of publication, but, on the other hand, I think that my hon. Friend will agree that in all kinds of cases there has been a great increase in standards of scholarship during my lifetime, at any rate during the last twenty-five years. A great many more sources of information have come to light. In addition, the care and scholarly skill with which sources are handled are very different from what they were many years ago.

I entirely agree, for example, that we had the Duke of Newcastle's papers available at the end of the last century, but it is only really since the days of Sir Lewis Namier and the new historical techniques that he introduced that we have been able to make the best use of this source. I am sure that that also applies to the study of ancient buildings and visible evidence of all kinds, and that is one of the reasons why publication has been slower than we would have liked.

I assure my hon. Friends that the Commission realises the need to strike a balance. The need is, on the one hand, never to sacrifice scholarly standards and, on the other, not to aim at such perfectionism as will mean that we will get too slow a production of volumes.

I assure my hon. Friends that as long as I am at the Treasury—and I very much hope that this will apply to my successors—I shall take a continuing interest in the work of the Commission. It will be a great pleasure to me to become the chairman of the working party when the report that I have mentioned becomes available.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at twelve minutes past One o'clock.