Artistic Heritage (Hansard, 15 June 1992)

§ 1. Mr. Carrington
To ask the Secretary of State for National Heritage what measures he is taking to enable the United Kingdom to retain outstanding items of the nation's artistic heritage.

§ The Secretary of State for National Heritage (Mr. David Mellor)
As this is the first Question Time for the new Department, I hope that you will not object, Madam Speaker, if I preface my answer by saying that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State and I have been delighted by the positive response to the creation of the Department. It has been welcomed on both sides of the House. I wish to make it clear from the outset that we welcome advice and assistance from all hon. Members. Views will be listened to on their merits. I hope that there will be the very minimum of partisan argument; certainly, I intend to proceed on that basis.
The Waverley system of export controls is the foundation of our policy. Significant grants are made to the national heritage memorial fund. Several important tax concessions are available to assist the retention of pre-eminent works. I have, however, decided against listing certain works of art as a means of prohibiting the export of key heritage items.

§ Mr. Carrington
My right hon. and learned Friend will be aware of the considerable concern about the inability, because of the high prices that now obtain, of our major public collections to purchase works of art that people attempt to sell on the open market. Will he examine closely the level of purchase grants of our national institutions and the rules that govern the acceptance of works of art in lieu of tax, which are frequently very restrictive and applicable only in certain clearly specified circumstances?

§ Mr. Mellor
I am grateful for my hon. Friend's question. Purchase grants have been frozen since 1985, largely because the substantial additional resources that have been made available to museums and galleries have gone into refurbishment and towards increasing the sums available for running costs. I note what my hon. Friend said, however. He knows that we have considerably increased the sums of money available to the national heritage memorial fund, which was of great assistance recently in the purchase of the Holbein portrait for the national gallery. I certainly intend to look at the various 632 ways in which we can ensure that pre-eminent works are not lost to the nation. I hope to have something further to say about that in due course.

§ Mr. Sheldon
I look forward to hearing what the right hon. and learned Gentleman has to say in due course, but is he aware that many great works of art were obtained in the last century when, by comparison with other countries, this country was far more wealthy than it is ever likely to be again? It is important that we do not lose important works of art. As the right hon. and learned Gentleman is opposed to listing, we shall have to produce far more substantial sums of money than have been thought of so far. How does he intend to deal with that?

§ Mr. Mellor
In recent years, we have managed to retain just over half the items that were listed under the Waverley rules. I accept that that is not good enough. For instance, I should like the acceptance-in-lieu scheme to be more widely used. We have a provision of £10 million a year. Although the amount was doubled, last year it was only £3.8 million. The right hon. Gentleman will know that the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art made the point about the availability of extra public resources. When I dealt with the question of the list, I was not in a position to say that extra resources would be made available, but I have not rejected that application. I have the need to meet the challenge of keeping such items in this country well in mind when I frame my public expenditure bids, although how far they will succeed in a difficult period for public expenditure remains to be seen.

§ Mr. Brooke
In that context, does my right hon. and learned Friend make any distinction in his mind between British works of art and those works of art of other lands that were brought here at some stage in the past?

§ Mr. Mellor
That point is certainly taken into account as part of the Waverley rules. The Waverley rules apply to pre-eminent works that originated from outside this country. Origin plays a part in the interesting judgments that have to be made according to the Waverley rules.

§ Mr. Fisher
I join other hon. Members in congratulating the Secretary of State on his appointment and on the creation of his Ministry, which will be widely welcomed. I am less optimistic than he is about not resuming political hostilities. Before such hostilities resume, may I say that I hope that he gets a great deal of pleasure from, and does something with, his job? I also congratulate the right hon. and learned Gentleman on rejecting the idiocy of the listing system and on his statement last week. Only his predecessor and Benito Mussolini thought that the system was a good idea.
I am disappointed by the right hon. and learned Gentleman's response to the question about unfreezing national galleries' purchasing funds. He knows that the increase in funds elsewhere does not address the problem. When he was Arts Minister before, he listened to the chairman and directors of those national galleries constantly urging him to unfreeze those funds. Will he now call together the chairmen of the trustees, the directors of those national galleries and the chairman of the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art to discuss, on the basis that those funds will be unfrozen, how best to unfreeze them? If he does not do that, his Department will soon be known not as the Ministry of National Heritage but as the Ministry of National Heritage and Humbug.

§ Mr. Mellor
The hon. Gentleman's intervention deteriorated during its course. On his first comment, if I can help him into the shadow Cabinet by my appointment, that will be a job well done.
I have noted the reviewing committee's view that extra public resources should be available for intervention. I have not rejected that view, although I have to fit it in with the various other things that we have to do. There is a range of ways in which heritage items can be kept in this country. We have heard about the acceptance-in-lieu scheme and we know that there is a douceur available for sales by private treaty which has been of great use in relation to, for example, the purchase of the Holbein. We know that, when I was last Arts Minister, the national heritage memorial fund received a substantial boost in resources which has been deployed very usefully. We also know that, in a prosperous nation in which wealthy people no longer have to go into tax exile, it is possible to have individual acts of beneficence, such as the decision by Sir Andrew Lloyd-Webber—I congratulate him on his knighthood—to purchase a Canaletto, which is now on public display. There is a range of ways in which things can be done. However, I do not ignore the role of public resources.