HL Deb 26 June 1974 vol 352 cc1479-93

3.14 p.m.

THE DUKE OF GRAFTON rose to call the attention of Her Majesty's Government to the importance of taking adequate measures to preserve country houses and their collections of works of art in any proposals which may be put forward for a wealth tax; and to move for Papers.

The noble Duke said

My Lords, having initiated this debate. I feel that I should state my own position over this extremely difficult and delicate problem. I am Chairman of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, which position I have now held for 13 years. The Society was, of course, founded by that great man William Morris, one of the founders of the Socialist Party, nearly 100 years ago, who incidentally at Kelmscott in Oxfordshire lived in a romantic country house, now the property of the Society of Antiquaries, where he carried out his incredibly many-sided work, particularly, perhaps, designing his textiles, and from where I think we can say he derived his greatest inspiration. It is interesting, for instance, to know that the willow pattern design now so popular, which we see on so many walls, was in fact designed from the willows growing on the banks of the river at Kelmscott.

I am also Chairman of the Joint Committee of the National Amenity Societies, including the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, the Georgian Group, the Victorian Society, the Civic Trust, the National Trust, the Ancient Monuments Society and the Council for British Archaeology, who regard themselves as the mouthpiece of the amenity world. We have quite recently sent a letter to the Chancellor expressing our very grave apprehensions as to the possible results of a wealth tax on our heritage in this country.

When William Morris founded the Society in 1877, the future of the country houses seemed presumably safe and secure for generations to come. But, of course, since then the pendulum has swung very far in the opposite direction. Two world wars and a complete change in society has confronted the country houses with acute dangers, and it was, of course, because of those dangers that very shortly after the last war, in 1948, Sir Stafford Cripps commissioned Sir Ernest Gowers to make a report on houses of outstanding historic or architectural interest, their immediate surroundings and their contents. I am sure it is unnecessary to quote to your Lordships part of the Gowers Report, which was finally published in 1950, but there is one quotation which I never cease quoting and which sums up what we are trying to discuss to-day: It is not too much to say that these houses represent an association of beauty, art and of nature, the achievement often of centuries of effort, which is irreplaceable and has seldom, if ever, been equalled in the history of civilisation. Certainly nowhere else is such richness and variety to be found within so narrow a compass. The English country house is in fact the greatest contribution made by England to the visual arts. The only recommendation of the Gowers Committee which was really carried into effect was the setting up of the Historic Buildings Councils, one for England, one for Scotland and one for Wales: In 1953 the Historic Buildings and Ancient Monuments Act was passed, which set them up and the noble Lord, Lord Holford, and I have in fact sat on the English Council now for 21 years. I am very distressed that Lord Hailes, who was our very able Chairman for 10 years, is not here to-day owing to illness.

We started life with a paltry allowance of£250,000 a year. which has now risen to £2½ million. In fact over the some twenty years of our existence, over £10 million has been spent on repairs to all sorts and kinds of buildings, starting very largely with the country houses—and when I speak of country houses I am not speaking only of the great country houses; we have dealt with country houses of all sorts and kinds and sizes in this country. We have in fact recommended grants for over 400 country houses. We have also helped barns, dovecotes, groups of cottages, and now increasingly whole streets and areas of historic towns. Many of the houses which we have helped I really think would now be in ruins without this help. It has been a massive rescue operation, a delicately poised operation of collaboration between the private owner and the Government, which in my view has really been outstandingly successful.

I can remember when we started off in 1953 all sorts of difficulties were foreseen which in fact never came to pass. I really think it would have been difficult in any other country to have achieved this, because in many cases owners have to submit to a means test; owners have to tell the truth because they are getting grants from public money. Incidentally, as a result of the grants which we have recommended, many more houses are now open to the public, because the one condition, obviously, attached to the grant is that there should be public access.

It has really been an extraordinarily interesting experience to see working of the 1953 Act, and the one thing which has been impressed on me is the tremendous devotion of the owners to their houses. It is clear to me that people care far more about their houses than they do about their wives and families! They are seriously prepared to devote their lives, and, incidentally, incredibly hard work, to looking after these houses. One of the many encouraging things has been the number of young people who have plunged into this really very difficult field, and whom we have managed to persuade, with grants, to take on houses which would otherwise have been lost. It is not only the middle-aged and the people looking backwards who care about these things. I think that youth has a great feeling for history and that they really care about these buildings.

May I remind your Lordships for a moment of the sort of dangers which were threatening country houses, immediately after the last war? Let us take a house called Igtham Mote, near Seven-oaks in Kent—many of your Lordships may know it—one of the earliest moated houses in the country, which immediately after the war was in a deplorable condition. It has a 13th century chapel, one wing of the house was built in the reign of Edward IV and it has a very perfect Tudor chapel with all its original fittings. This house was really collapsing in the late 1940s, and bodies such as my Society and the National Trust were besieged by people saying, "What on earth are you doing about Igtham Mote?", to which we replied that we could do nothing because we had no money. Luckily, Country Life published an article about Igtham Mote, which was read by an American, Mr. Robinson, living in Portland, Maine, who said, "I remember that house. It is the most romantic house in England." He cabled the National Trust, took the next boat across the Atlantic, and the end of the story is that he bought Igtham Mote, made a flat in it for himself, and has left it to the National Trust. I should add that in the meantime, while it was rotting, the local builder and the local farmer were so distressed by what was happening that they had got together and bought it. The Builder had repaired the roof and the farmer had cut the grass, and they had waited, like Mr. Micawber, "for something to turn up". I think that that shows something of the great dangers threatening some of the most important houses, which induced Sir Stafford Cripps to commission the Gower's Report.

Let us take three examples of houses helped by the 1953 Act. Let us take Rockingham Castle in Northamptonshire, originally a royal castle built by William the Conqueror, where the Watson family have lived since 1540, and are living still; the centre of an estate. At Rockingham Castle you can see a list of the equipment taken by the Watson of the day to the Field of the Cloth of Gold for which. so far as I can make out, he was a kind of chief caterer. You can see hanging in the hall the portrait by Clouet of Francois Premier, presumably brought back from the Field of the Cloth of Gold. You can see how a Norman castle developed through the years, through an Elizabethan manor into a country house. You can see one of the most perfect of all stone villages in England. You can see the tilting yard, and you get the whole feeling of the development of history. You can see an extraordinarily interesting collection of contemporary paintings, and it is a very good example of how taste changes. Ben Marshall has painted a lot of pictures there, and the complete collection is a thing of the greatest rarity. Incidentally, you can see King John's chest, which he left behind before his ill-fated crossing of the Wash—without the treasure in it!

Take a house like Newburgh Priory in Yorkshire, where one of the extraordinary things is that on the stairs is buried Oliver Cromwell himself, because his daughter was married to the owner of Newburgh. Newburgh Priory, fifteen years ago, was becoming a ruin. The Wombwell family, who owned it, were living in a small house, and without the aid of the Historic Buildings Council they would doubtless be living there still. As a result of grants they were persuaded to embark on repairing the Priory, some of which had got into such a bad state that it had to be de-roofed and is now turned into a garden. But the house, with its wonderful contents, has been rescued and is of very great benefit to the public.

Finally, my Lords, take Holkham Hall in Norfolk, the great work of the architect William Kent—who of course was much more than an architect—who designed, built, decorated and made the furniture for this house in 1734, for Thomas Coke, Earl of Leicester, who collected there the marvellous collection of sculptures, pictures and the library. Kent also, of course, landscaped the surrounding land, built temples, and changed the landscape. Everything remains today as it was left in the 1730s. If you go through the door into the hall at Holkham you will read this inscription: On this hitherto barren estate, Thos. Coke, Earl of Leicester, planned, planted, improved, built and inhabited this house in the middle of the 18th century. He was, of course, great uncle to the great Coke of Norfolk, who revolutionised the system of agriculture in this country, and was a great friend and admirer of George Washington. You can see at Holkham the great Gainsborough portrait, of Coke of Norfolk, dressed in the suit in which he approached King George III to ask for the independence of America after the War of Independence.

These are just four houses. One could go on quoting English country houses for ever, and I think that this is perhaps the moment to say that the National Trust themselves have received from the Historic Buildings Council very large grants for many of their houses, because, naturally, they are some of the most difficult country houses to maintain. I do not know whether many of your Lordships would care to look after the roof of Knole, which consists of seven acres. I think that without the 1953 Act the Trust itself would be in very severe difficulties. I have worked for the Trust myself for over 21 years, and it is no good thinking that the National Trust can solve this problem. We are already at full stretch, and we cannot take on all the country houses in England.

Perhaps one should also say that as well as repairing the houses, in certain cases the Historic Buildings Council have recommended grants for buying houses and some of the contents. The Government actually bought Dyrham Park in Gloucestershire, with most of the contents, which have now been handed over to the National Trust, and a very expensive enterprise this has been. In other cases, such as Coughton in Warwickshire, the Government, on our recommendation, bought the great Largilliere portrait of Sir Robert Throckmorton so that it should stay in the house for which it was painted. When one goes to the National Gallery in Washington, it is a constant grief to see there the beautiful portrait of his daughter as a nun by the same artist. In certain cases, we have repaired furniture and cleaned pictures, and we have done all this with the sole object of keeping these collections together.

What I have quoted surely shows that what we are discussing to-day is the actual fabric and texture of history. If a wealth tax is imposed—and until the Green Paper we have to admit that we do not yet know the details of how it would work if such a tax were introduced—it seems to me that this whole delicately poised collaboration between private owners and the Government may be smashed; and, indeed, the many more private collections that have not received grants may be smashed. Having looked up the details, I see that there is a wealth tax in other countries, mainly Scandinavian, but most of these countries have nothing like the collections that we have here. For instance, there is Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Holland and West Germany. In Sweden and West Germany, works of art and jewellery are certainly exempt. I can remember years ago going to a house in Holland where I was astounded by my hostess pulling back some bogus panelling in the dining room which revealed her best china, which she said she could not show because of the wealth tax.

I have travelled a good deal in talking about the subject of preservation, and I remember in New York some years ago meeting Philip Johnson, the well-known American architect, and telling him that I had just been lecturing in Australia on this subject, to which he replied, "What business have you going round lecturing on preservation when you are allowing Seaton Delavel, by Sir John Vanbrugh, one of the most famous buildings in the world, to collapse?" I was delighted to be able to tell him that, thanks to grants from the Historic Buildings Council Seaton Delavel was now being repaired.

I have had a good deal to do with the setting up of an international council for preservation, the International Council for Monuments and Sites, which has now got headquarters in Paris and which held its Second General Assembly in Oxford in 1968, attended by delegates from 37 countries. Among other places we visited on that occasion was Wilton House, near Salisbury, and I remember the amazement of the delegates not only at the extraordinary beauty of Wilton itself but at the marvellous collection inside it. Can one contemplate without horror the removal of a picture from the double-cube room at Wilton?

In particular in Eastern Europe I have seen the problem of country houses at quite close hand, especially in Czechoslovakia. There are a great many of them. The Czechs, the Hungarians, the Poles, and the Russians themselves are spending huge sums of money on the actual buildings. Outside Leningrad the Russians are doing the most amazing job in rebuilding the palaces destroyed during the war. But I find visiting those country houses a melancholy experience. In many cases the Governments concerned have difficulty in finding any use for them, and they are only dead museums. In many cases they are very well looked after, but there is absolutely no feeling of life in them and they always seem to me to be the negation of what we here have in our country houses, with continually developing collections and with families living in them and caring for them.

Finally, a word about tourism. I sit on the Historic Houses Committee of the British Tourist Association, from which has lately sprung another association, the Historic Houses Association, composed of country-house owners who open them to the public. There are some 600 of them. We have recently commissioned a report by Mr. John Cornforth to bring the Gowers Report up to date. I think it is available in this House at the moment if anybody wants to read it. The British Tourist Association realises only too well the importance of these houses. The figures speak for themselves. Last year, 43 million people visited historic buildings and properties in this country. Surely this is a colossal figure by any standards! The income derived from tourists last year was £84 million, 12 per cent. of all our invisible exports. Surely these figures must be taken seriously? I do not believe that tourists come here for our weather or our food. They come to look at things.

It may not be generally known that in the autumn the Victoria and Albert Museum will stage a very important exhibition, to be entitled "The country house: Going, Going, Going?", to draw public attention to this problem and, I hope, to the unique treasures we possess in this country. This is in preparation for European Architectural Heritage Year in 1975, which is being promoted by the Council of Europe to alert the European peoples to the steady erosion of their historic buildings and to halt this process. This exhibition will also include a publication with contributions from 20 experts, including your Lordships will be glad to hear, Mr. Osbert Lancaster. The publication reveals an already alarming picture of 800 country houses having vanished during the century, 250 of them since the war. I should like to ask your Lordships whether, by envisaging taxation such as this, we are really prepared to jeopardise the whole future of our surviving houses and their collections, which I believe to be the envy of the world, and to condone what one critic has described as possibly the greatest act of sacrilege since the Dissolution of the Monasteries. My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.

3.35 p.m.

LORD SHEPHERD

My Lords, the House will be grateful indeed to the noble Duke, the Duke of Grafton, for having introduced this Motion this afternoon and for the quality of his argument, and, if I may say so, the sensitivity with which he approached this subject. He was topical, in that he declared his interests. He referred to a number of councils and organisations with which he has served, and in particular the Historic Buildings Council, of which I believe he has been a member since its inception. Successive Governments and the nation must be grateful to him for 21 years' hard labour on those matters that the Council is interested in. One interest he did not declare: that he has successfully managed his own country home, Euston Hall, a building that has given great pleasure to very many visitors.

I am also conscious that following the speech of the noble Duke there is a long line of noble Lords who will speak with passion about these matters, with which they themselves have been intimately concerned. None the less, I could have wished that the timing of this important debate had been different. In a few weeks' time, in the form of a Green Paper, the Government will publish their proposals for a wealth tax, and I hope that this will provide the foundation for a wide-ranging discussion. The House will then understand the inhibitions of my noble friend Lord Strabolgi and myself on this subject this afternoon. We know that this Government intend to introduce a wealth tax. We know it will not be introduced until after the Green Paper has been published. Of course, we promise that this debate will be read as one of the first, and no doubt one of the many significant, glosses to that Green Paper as soon as it is published; but what we cannot do is to help this House at this time with hard information about the likely contents of that Green Paper.

But after questioning the timing of the debate I commend the phrasing of the Motion on the Order Paper. There the words very properly draw our attention to the special place of the country house and its content in the national landscape, and we are offered to-day an opportunity to review what we understand by a national heritage. We are not, I think, invited to question the Government's decision to consider and then to introduce a wealth tax. We are all rightly striving to live our lives and to bequeath to our children a proud and graceful environment; but we must all surely at the same time be striving for a fair and just society. The people of this nation must be treated fairly, in a fair and pleasant land.

Since the war we have faced grave economic and social problems. Many are of the sort that we have tolerated for far too long. We still have a society where great wealth is held in few hands. There are conflicting statistics, but I saw some figures the other day that showed that in 1970–71 some 8 per cent. of all the taxpayers of this country received three-quarters of the total investment income, which amounted to some £2,000 million. I know that there are some, and I am one of them, who are deeply concerned at the strains within our society, the atmosphere of conflict, the sense of frustration and an underlying sense of grievance. We cannot be a whole nation in such conditions. To be fair is not sufficient. We need much more consciously to even out the position of privilege with the general mass of our people.

This must he done not out of a sense of jealousy or envy but because unless we become a whole nation the steps required to deal with our economic and social problems will be hesitant and, I suggest. unavailing. Accordingly, the Government have announced that their intention is to achieve a major redistribution of both wealth and income. In the Government's view differences in personal wealth in this country have gone a long way towards maintaining the separation of social classes and the conflict between them. It has been at the root of so much of our economic troubles since the war.

When my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced in his Budget speech on March 26 that the time had come for a determined attack on the maldistribution of wealth in this he declared that it was his aim to use the taxation system to promote greater social and economic equality. As we know, he said that as one stage in this attack he would be introducing a wealth tax. However, because such a wealth tax will be new to this country—although there are many other countries in Europe and elsewhere who have one—there is no intention to introduce it until there has been full opportunity for public discussion on such matters as the rate at which the tax might be imposed, its interaction with other taxes and the precise form that it should take. I said earlier—but it is worth repeating—that the Green Paper will be published during the summer when public discussion can take place against a firm background and understanding of the nature of the Government's proposals and of the broad outline that the tax may be likely to take.

My Lords, I have underlined the Government's commitments to a wealth tax. I make no apology for that. What I have not done and will not do is to suggest that we have here a naïve and thoughtless confrontation between contemporary politics and history, between warring cultures, between art and life. The special and continuing identity of the British people is revealed as much in the geography and architecture of their countryside as in the parishes of our big cities, the parishes which refuse to die. We should not choose to muddle conservation with conservatism.

In a sense, the noble Duke would expect a sympathetic response from me because, as in his own speech he recalled it was a Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer, at a period of grave economic crisis for this country, a Chancellor who had adopted very tough measures and who was most cruelly referred to by his political opponents as "Misery Cripps", who set up the Gowers Committee in 1948. It was from that Committee that much of the present legislation has grown. The noble Duke knows perhaps better than I the detailed policy of this Government and previous Governments to preserve buildings of historic and architectural interest, and their contents and adjacent land, as part of the nation's heritage for the enjoyment of the public. But, as I have had the good fortune to rise early in this debate, and as some of your Lordships may not be as well acquainted as the noble Duke with the relevant definitions—and the facts and the figures—it might be of value if I were to offer a summary of the situation.

It was out of the Cowers Committee Report that legislation known as the Historic Buildings and Ancient Monuments Act was constructed. That postwar legislation has done so much to assist in the preservation of those stately homes which give so much pleasure to so many British people and provide an attraction to many thousands of international tourists. May I remind the House that the present level of grant for repairs in England alone is running at about £1.5 million a year.

A total of about 184,000 buildings in England have been statutorily listed under the Town and Country Planning Act as being of special historic or architectural interest. Of these perhaps 1,500 are country homes which might be considered as of outstanding historic or architectural interest in the terms of the Act. Of those 1,500, some are not in private ownership but in the hands of the National Trust, Government Departments, local authorities and institutions of some kind.

The Scottish total of over 20,000 statutorily-listed buildings includes between 300 to 400 outstanding country houses. In Wales the total of 5,500 includes between 50 to 60 of these houses.

Since the Act came into force in 1953, grants totalling over £9 million have been offered in England, of which perhaps one quarter has been for country houses. In Scotland for the same period the figure is approximately £1.5 million, about half of which has gone to country houses. In Wales grants totalling nearly £1 million have been offered, of which, again, one quarter has been for country houses. These grants, I should explain, are offered towards the cost of repairs and maintenance of such buildings and their contents if the owners cannot meet the whole of the cost out of their own resources. The grant is made under certain conditions, one of the most important of which is an obligation to allow the public suitable access.

On the subject of the existing estate duty treatment of works of art, at present those which are approved as being of sufficient quality are exempt from estate duty for so long as they are not sold. Then they become liable to estate duty but only in connection with the death immediately preceding the event which gives rise to the charge. An exempted work may, however, be sold by private treaty to the National Gallery, or the British Museum or to any other public collection without attracting duty. The price which is fixed for such sales ensures that the bulk of the tax savings goes to the public collection, but that some part goes to the owner in order to encourage him to sell in this way rather than on the open market.

My Lords, these arrangements make it possible for works of art to remain in private hands, whether on public display or not, throughout many generations. Works of art or pre-eminent quality, land, and buildings, may be accepted in payment of estate duty by the Commissioners of Inland Revenue. In these circumstances the net cash position of the executors is the same as if the work had been sold by private treaty to a public collection. The Government fully take into account the wishes of those concerned in the allocation of any such property: within this their aim is that the work should go to the most appropriate national or local contribution.

That, very baldly, my Lords, is the present situation. The present arrangements are, therefore, designed to enable the public to enjoy works of art which might otherwise have been sold abroad, by visiting those public collections which display them. There are also conditions designed to ensure that while the works remain in private hands they are well maintained and available for research. But whether these objectives should call for corresponding concessions when the wealth tax is introduced is, of course, for consideration; and so, once the overall policy is decided, is the means for carrying out whatever that decision may be. To-day's discussion about this matter will illuminate the issues. Because of pressing business, I hope the House will forgive me if I do not stay during the debate, but I shall ask my noble friend Lord Strabolgi to be my eyes and ears. I shall certainly read all that is said and I will ensure that those who are directly concerned in the matter are fully appraised of your Lordships' views.

The Government are particularly alive to all the recent Press commentaries on this subject, and to the representations made by the British Tourist Authority. We recognise the interlocking issues posed by a country house and its chattels. We know that the revenue drawn from visitors by even the most successful of all homeowners can do no more than cover routine running costs and maintenance. I acknowledge that a wealth tax may pose difficult problems for the continued existence of the historic English country house and its historic collections of works of art; but these problems can be resolved only at the right time, when the nature of the tax is clear. As to the position in those countries, those successful European countries, where there is a wealth tax—and the noble Duke himself referred to them—in the case of Sweden, Denmark and Holland works of art are exempt; in Norway, on the other hand, they are chargeable. In Austria, works of living or recently deceased Austrian artists are exempt; and in Germany works of national importance are exempt.

I am sure that the noble Duke and other Members of your Lordships' House who will be speaking in to-day's debate will understand that there is nothing that either I or my noble friend Lord Strabolgi can say which will give any indication whatsoever, either encouragingly or discouragingly, in reply. The only commitment is the one I have already given: that we shall listen to and study with the utmost care what has been said. In conclusion, may I once again express our appreciation to the noble Duke, the Duke of Grafton, for having initiated this debate. We shall now look forward to hearing what others have to say on the subject—which, I repeat, we shall study with the most infinite care.

LORD ROBBINS

My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, I wonder whether he can be coaxed into giving one piece of information about the Green Paper. Will it contain an authoritative statistical appendix relating to those figures about the distribution of wealth to which he himself referred? I ask because, as the noble Lord will be aware, there has been severe professional criticism of these figures recently—and I am not referring to information issued by people who might simply be suspect in the noble Lord's eyes. I refer particularly to an important article by no less a person than Professor Alan Day, which appeared about three months ago in theObserver

LORD SHEPHERD

My Lords, as much as I should like to be coaxed by the noble Lord, I do not intend to be and I am sure he would not expect it of me.

LORD WINDLESHAM

My Lords, before the noble Lord finally resumes his seat—and I apologise for pressing him at this point; it is not a good practice for too many people to chip in after a speaker has completed his speech, but he is speaking for the Government and this is a most important debate—he made considerableplay on two or three occasions in his speech with the timing of to-day's debate in relation to the Green Paper. I think we understand that he cannot help the House today by telling us what proposals are in the Government's mind. We accept that. But I hope he will give us an assurance that what is said in this debate by noble Lords with great experience across the whole field will influence the Government, and will influence their mind and their thinking when they prepare what appears in the Green Paper.

LORD SHEPHERD

My Lords, I should have thought that the noble Lord would give credit to this Government, in particular, for the fact that on many subjects and on many pieces of legislation, we have had an open mind and have been only too willing to receive ideas and views. I would not wish to go any further than what I have said in my speech, which is that we will study all that is said this afternoon with the most infinite care.