HL Deb 01 December 1983 vol 445 cc804-5

3.34 p.m.

Lord Kennet

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.

The Question was as follows:

To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will remove the obstacles which now prevent Calke Abbey from passing to the National Trust in the usual way with endowment.

Lord Skelmersdale

My Lords, the National Trust have indicated that they would require approximately £8 million to provide a capital fund and an endowment, if they were to take on Calke Abbey. The Government would be willing in principle to accept Calke Abbey, together with its contents and essential adjoining land, in lieu of tax at a cost of about £2 million. However, they could not agree in addition to provide the £8 million or so requested by the National Trust, whether directly or through the acceptance of other "non-heritage" property offered in lieu of tax by the trustees of the estate.

Lord Kennet

My Lords, if the difficulty is non-heritage land, is it not the case that the Government did accept non-heritage land in endowment for Hardwick Hall? If the difficulty is the "bunching"of grand houses—Belton the other day, Calke Abbey now and perhaps Kedleston in the near future—could not the Government devise some system of ironing out the money over a period of years? People do not die at regular intervals. Also would it not he possible for the Government to consider helping the trustees of Calke Abbey, who I understand want to make the endowment money available if they can but are held up by the fact that they are legally bound to find a putative missing heir in America, which may take them months? Would it not be a shame to let Calke Abbey be lost because of this delay and could not the Government help the trustees to tide over the delay in some way?

Lord Skelmersdale

My Lords, it is some 25 years now since Hardwick was accepted by the Government. In that case—the noble Lord is quite right—non-heritage land was involved. But since that time the history of our care as a nation of heritage properties has moved on and we have the National Heritage Memorial Fund, which was created as a body to provide support for important heritage causes, together with much improved fiscal arrangements since this Government came into office. I must be the first to congratulate them because they are doing a magnificent job; but I should point out that the fund is an independent body and there is no guarantee that the trustees, even if they had the money, would come to the conclusion that this was the right way to spend it. Neither the Government nor anybody else in the House could put that obligation upon them.

Lord Strabolgi

My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that the whole question is really the acceptance of the agricultural land, which would provide sufficient endowment? Will the Government really take this seriously and try to alter the arrangements? Are they aware that Kedleston was going to be lost because of a quibble about VAT which was raised by the Customs and Excise and was saved because the rules were changed on the intervention of the noble Lord's right honourable friend the Prime Minister? Will the noble Lord also try to take this a little further and show some effort and imagination?

Lord Skelmersdale

My Lords, that is a most unfair charge. The Parliamentary Under-Secretary in charge of these matters has been in constant touch both through officials and on his own behalf with the Harpur-Crewe Trustees. He and they have constructively explored every avenue that has been put to us, but the avenues that have been put to us have been made on the assumption that the Government will continue to fund these heritage estates out of their own pocket, though many other people—and indeed your Lordships, who have great expertise in this matter—have managed through their own efforts, with Government help, to make provision for their estates. I cannot see any good reason why that should not happen in this case.

Lord Gibson

My Lords, would the Minister agree that it is possible that this estate, having paid £1,300 a day in interest during the one and a half years or so that this great property has been on offer to the Government, may be feeling that it has had enough?

Lord Skelmersdale

My Lords, all sorts of things might persuade them that they had had enough and, as I have said, the Government are fully open to all reasonable approaches. So far as the £1,300 goes, that is an estimate, but it is a statutory duty of the Inland Revenue to recover unpaid tax; and so long as the tax is unpaid there is no way of varying this interest charge.