§ Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Boscawen.]
8.12 am§ Mr. Michael Marshall (Arundel)I am glad to see the Under-Secretary of State looking so fresh at this hour of the morning. I know that he is here in the absence of my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Arts, who, with his typical courtesy, wrote to me to explain that due to a previous overseas commitment he could not be here. I do not want to downgrade the Under-Secretary's role when I mention my right hon. Friend the Minister, but the Under-Secretary is as well aware as I am that this debate is of special interest to my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Arts. I am grateful for the support of a number of my hon. Friends at this time in the morning, including my hon. Friend the Member for Welwyn and Hatfield (Mr. Murphy), with his interests in the art and heritage committee of my party. Beyond that, it would be invidious to go round this morning's packed assembly.
I do not wish to repeat all the developments since the publication of the Rayner scrutiny, the report associated with Mr. Gordon Burrett. I single out three manifestations of what I believe is almost unparalleled interest in the future of a museum in this country. They are perhaps best summarised by the debate in another place on 8 July in which, as far as I could work out, every living ex-Minister for the Arts expressed his concern about the matter. There was the collection and handing over of about 15,000 signatures last week collected by The Standard and presented to the Minister for the Arts by leading figures from the West End theatre.
Finally, we have before us the fifth report of the Select Committee on Education, Science and the Arts. I congratulate hon. Members on both sides of the House on the report made available this week on the future of the theatre museum. It is a timely and balanced document. It is a model of the way in which Select Committees can make positive contributions to important issues of the day.
When I speak of the existing theatre museum I am referring to the Victoria and Albert theatre museum reflecting the existing collection, which comes from many sources and which is awaiting transfer to the British theatre museum that is to be built in Covent Garden.
I also declare my interests. I have a general interest as chairman of the all-party group on the theatre. I also have a more direct and personal interest. I hope that the House will bear with me if this appears to be a commercial; it is not intended in that sense. I am a theatrical historian. I have been fortunate enough to publish four theatrical books in the past four years. That has involved the collection and use of a great deal of theatrical material, much of which has been gathered through the Victoria and Albert theatre museum, although material has been gathered from other sources and other parts of the world, particularly the United States. Thus, from direct experience I have been able to compare many theatre archives.
I am also the declared donor of what is to be termed the Jack Buchanan collection. It consists of material which I have put together and which has been donated to me by the family of the late Jack Buchanan and many of his admirers. Like the collections from Lord Harewood and from many other sources it has been pledged in the full 1443 expectation that the British theatre museum will go ahead. It would cause a great deal of ill-feeling if it was suggested that the collections which have been acquired from many sources may be rejected. There is no way in which the great volume of material can remain where it is to any effective purpose.
I wish to bring out three aspects of the British theatre museum's future. First, for me the question of sponsorship is based on a personal commitment, but I see important implications for other forms of sponsorship. As the recent letter in The Times from Sir John Sainsbury clearly stated, he felt that commitments entered into by successive Governments should be honoured. The Lord Harewood collection particularly involves ballet material and the Rambert bequest. A number of other collections have already been put in the Victoria and Albert theatre museum awaiting more effective collation and availability to the general public.
Secondly, it is well nigh impossible to undertake the fullest range of research in the present facilities. I do not decry the efforts of Mr. Alexander Schouvaloff and his staff. I pay tribute to them. I have benefited from their help and encouragement. But all theatre historians who have used the Victoria and Albert's present theatre collection find that it is constrained in a number of directions. The present resources are cramped and are inadequate for the ever-growing collection. There is great difficulty in following other than the most obvious line of inquiry.
For example, if one wishes to study the work of a theatre director or actor, one can, if one knows the names and dates of the productions with which that person was concerned, look at a great deal of information about those productions. However, if a general across-the-board study of a particular part of the theatre or even of that person is wanted, there is a problem. The whole collection has been waiting to be catalogued in detail over a number of years and to be housed in a way that would make it accessible to serious students and the wider general public. Therefore, I do not decry the efforts of the V and A staff. Indeed, the success of the British theatre museum depends on their enthusiasm, energy and ideas for the future.
But the present collection is bursting at the seams. There are vast treasures of existing material, apart from the new material that has been pledged, which is not available at present. In the transfer of the existing, open and working Victoria and Albert theatre collection, together with the bequests, some of which I have instanced today, vast opportunities will open up for the scholar and the general public.
I shall put that in the context of the hoped for and, I believe, certain commercial development of the British theatre museum. I accept part of the Burrett analysis. He was right to look at the ways in which the museum could be, if not totally self-financing, at least contributing substantially to its recurring costs. I should like to use my experience to try to suggest a few ways ahead.
I support the analysis in the Select Committee's fifth report, when it refers in paragraph 13 to
current tendencies in arts funding which in our opinion are towards a pattern of plural funding, including proportions of money coming from sponsorship, trading activity and from the public paying for admission.I support admission charges. I am delighted that my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Arts has said that that 1444 should be a matter for the trustees' discretion. I know that the present and future Victoria and Albert management has it in mind that that is a possibility. That is the way in which it is likely to move.There is some force in the Select Committee's argument that some free availability might be possible for pensioners and students up to a certain age. There is also something in the free day argument. Two free days is a little excessive. Perhaps a free day on Sunday would be sensible and might act as a trailer to people who come to see the museum, who might come back on a contributing basis.
I have already referred to the importance of personal contributions. I shall consider some of the direct commercial opportunities that will be opening up. I discussed the problem of the present cataloguing. In the cataloguing of the new theatre museum there will be opportunities not to catalogue the mass of material which would be unrealistic in the early stages. However, discreet parts of the collection could be made available to a wider public with a commercial return, which would be of great advantage to the collection as a whole.
For example, the Anthony Hippsley-Cox circus collection, the finest private collection of such material in the world, has been pledged to the theatre museum. To publish a cataloguing and illustrative document about that material would be of great interest not just to scholars but to the wider public and circus lovers around the world. Similarly the Bridget D'Oyly Carte design collection will be of wide interest to many who are active in that area, amateur as well as professional users.
On the more popular front, I know that the British theatre museum has in mind to join in commercial publishing partnerships for what one might call the more popular theatre book. Several hundred such books are published annually and the prospect of underpinning that part of the publishing industry is of great importance, not only to the museum, but to the health of publishing and employment in the industry.
The adaptation of new technology in microfiche will allow the sale and general development of posters and programmes and there will be a range of souvenir sales on the widest basis, from Yorick's skull to Cinderella's slipper. With the retail point of sale, as presently planned, the museum will be a live and active part of the development of Covent Garden, to be open to the public outside normal office hours, with refreshment facilities and so on. All who have seen how Covent Garden has become a notably successful development will regard the museum as a major asset and an important commercial as well as cultural opportunity.
To sum up, I ask my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary to urge our right hon. Friend the Minister for the Arts to make an early announcement of continued commitment to the British theatre museum project. That is important, because of the uncertainty that has been generated by the report. I recognise the validity of a critical look at these matters, but the uncertainty is causing considerable difficulty, and a hiatus has been caused in regard to further collections that are on offer to the museum.
If my right hon. Friend will announce continued commitment to the project he will be fully justified in looking for strong evidence of the sort of commercial return that I have described. Too little attention has been paid to the commercial prospects, though these are some 1445 of the plans and ideas on which the present staff of the Victoria and Albert theatre museum are working for the new British theatre museum.
I have tried to show the sort of commercial developments that could be readily forthcoming. I do not pretend that they will meet capital costs or even all the recurrent costs, but the commercial possibilities and the special exhibition admission charges, as well as other admission charges, can show a much more direct return for taxpayers' investment than could be achieved at almost any other museum in this country.
When we add to that the British theatre museum's obvious draw as a tourist attraction and as a source for school visits and education in the performing arts and consider the value of the archives—£20 million and rising—any reasonable cost-benefit analysis must suggest to my right hon. Friend the Minister that there will rarely be a better opportunity to show the way in which the public purse can yield a positive return from the private consumer, and it is in the interests of getting a positive cash return and of public good-will that I urge my hon. Friend the Minister to use his best endeavours to bring the situation to a satisfactory conclusion.
§ The Under-Secretary of State for Education and Science (Mr. William Waldegrave)The House is grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Arundel (Mr. Marshall) for providing a timely opportunity to discuss this issue. Decisions will be made relatively soon and it is useful to have a chance to discuss the matter.
I hope that I shall be forgiven if I point to the slightly surprising fact that, after all the campaigns that have been waged, the public interest, the letters to The Times and the excellent and public-spirited campaign by The Standard, all the hon. Members present for the debate are on the Conservative Benches. The New Testament tells us of those who were surprised by the arrival of the bridegroom in the night. Some were at weddings and some had merely failed to put oil in their lamps and so on. Surely that is what has happened to the combined forces of the Social Democratic and Liberal Alliance and the Labour Party, not to speak of the Irish in their various manifestations. The Conservative Party, when it matters, is here, and I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for giving us the opportunity to be here to discuss an important issue.
For the past few days my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Arts has been at the UNESCO conference in Mexico City and has delivered there an interesting and thoughtful speech, as one would expect of him. In his absence I have had the pleasure of taking the Ruritanian title, temporarily, of Deputy Minister for the Arts. It has allowed me to escape for a moment from the acerbity of the academic debates in which I am normally involved into the more friendly debates—although occasionally acerbity creeps in—of the arts lobby. I have had the pleasure of being briefed by officials and learning about new issues.
The two museums on which I have had the pleasure of delivering short speeches to the House—the Bethnal Green museum and the theatre museum—are rather different cases, although we are discussing them both because of the same report, the Rayner study, done by Mr. Burrett. The issues are different. Both theatres have their strength and both have a strong case to be made in favour of them.
My hon. Friend the Member for Welwyn and Hatfield (Mr. Murphy) has heard me make some of these remarks 1446 before, because he is always here when these matters are discussed. I assure the House that my right hon. Friend is a doughty champion of his Department. Those of us in the rest of the Department watch with awe the skill with which he defends his budget. As he is far enough away to be unable to stop me paying him a tribute, I can say that he is not a man given to much self-advertisement, but he has been, and is being, an extremely effective Minister for the Arts. We do well to pay tribute to him.
I very much agree with what my hon. Friend the Member for Arundel said about plurality of funding. I am sure that this is the way forward. It is the way forward in wider aspects of the Department's budget. Universities and all the other great institutions that serve the public should look carefully at the extent to which they need to use that awesome power of the State to compel those who do not use a service to finance it on behalf of those who do. It is a power that must be used from time to time. Without it there would be no State services of any kind. But it is right always to look with a careful and sceptical eye at the use of the State's power to tax and provide the money on a compulsory basis.
Therefore, it was in order for Sir Derek Rayner to put in hand a report to look at the relative merits of different kinds of funding in the museum world. Where there is a chance to bring in funds that come voluntarily, without the big stick of the Inland Revenue behind them, it is right to bring them in. One of the most attractive aspects of the theatre museum is the extent to which private donors have already, to a significant and valuable extent, backed the project in the value of the great collections that have already been given.
My hon. Friend is not so far away as my right hon. Friend, but he is none the less unable to stop me from paying tribute to him for what he said about his own potential donation. My hon. Friend is a serious contributor and historian in these areas. One sometimes feels that it is the privilege of another place always to be able to find a particular expert in a debate. It can always find a former chairman of the Atomic Energy Authority or a former ambassador to Washington. On this occasion our House has managed to find a distinguished theatrical historian to contribute to the debate. I hope that my hon. Friend will not be embarrassed if I thank him for what he has said about his own intentions with regard to the Buchanan archive.
The decisions are not finally made. Even if they were, my hon. Friend would not expect me to steal my right hon. Friend's credit and thunder if they were to be made in the way that my hon. Friend wanted. Nor, of course, would he expect me to divert from my right hon. Friend the opprobrium of the House and the Standard if the decision were to go the other way.
The types of argument that have been made are those that carry great weight with Ministers and officials. The pressure on resources is great. I was especially glad not to hear the argument that runs "Oh, £4.3 million is only a small sum as compared with overall Government expenditure." That argument always weakens the case for additional spending. There are many people in Carey Street who earn £10,000 a year and who say that £500 is a small sum. That is a good way to go bankrupt.
All the sums that we, as custodians of the public purse, take from taxpayers must be cared for. In my sort of money, £4.7 million is a lot. Perhaps that is true for my hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mr. Mitchell). 1447 I could easily spend £4.3 million on several projects in universities. It is not a trivial sum. Nevertheless, I was glad not to hear that the £4.3 million was regarded as so small as to be containable within the margin of error. All such sums of money must be guarded carefully.
Nevertheless, in terms of the value of the collection and of the opportunities that genuinely exist—the signs are that they genuinely exist—for firm sponsorship in the future or commercial involvement, the sums are not so great as to rule the project completely out of court. I am not wasting the time of the House by saying that matters are being considered when that is not true. It is not closed. It is not a case of "I have to say … " If we were discussing a project costing £50 million we should almost certainly have to say "Not now, not in the present climate". The matter is not yet settled, but it is a fine judgment.
We have received many letters, petitions and representations from distinguished actors from a programme that we do not refer to in Whitehall as it infuriates our advisers—we watch it, of course. It is clear that many people in the theatre and elsewhere have a keen interest in the matter.
My personal criticism of the report would be that I was a little surprised at the remarks about the lesser opportunities for research in this area. Although I am not a professional like my hon. Friend, I spent a good part of my misspent youth studying the origins of Greek tragedy and the relations of the dithyramb to Sophocles' early choruses. The idea that there was no opportunity for research into the history and origins of theatre therefore struck me as surprising.
The counter-case was well put in The Times Literary Supplement which correctly said that an ephemeral art such as ballet or theatre is traceable only by what is left 1448 behind—props, pictures, notices and, in modern times, photographs—and the reconstruction of its history depends upon a wide range of different types of material and objects in a way that research into a written art form such as poetry does not.
I am sure that there is room for serious scholarship in this, one of Britain's strongest cultural traditions. Without being unduly nationalistic, I have seen in one paper the claim that London is the centre of the performing arts. That may be a slight overestimate. The inhabitants of Milan might have something to say about opera, those of us who were lucky enough to see the Paris ballet this week may suspect that the inhabitants of Paris could make claims in that respect, and people in Berlin might be able to talk about orchestras. Nevertheless, in the theatre, at any rate, for very many years—and in modern times also the ballet—we have been pre-eminent and the strength of that case will not be missed when Ministers take their decision.
I am therefore grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and to my other hon. Friends who are here to support him in the debate. The decision will be reached in the not too distant future. The campaigns that have been waged have educated many people in the importance of this project. We all hope—I know that my right hon. Friend does—that the contraints of money can be overcome. One advantage of the campaigns will be to make the project a household name before it starts, which will no doubt greatly improve attendances. As I have said, the difficulties are real because constraints on resources are currently so great, but we hope that they will be overcome. The sympathetic and persuasive way in which my hon. Friend has put the case today must help the case of the theatre museum.
§ Question put and agreed to.
§ Adjourned accordingly at twenty minutes to Nine o'clock am.