HL Deb 27 January 1983 vol 438 cc373-5

3.33 p.m.

Report received.

Schedule 1 [The Boards: Part I: Victoria and Albert Museum]:

Viscount Eccles

moved Amendment No. 1: Page 19, line 23, at end insert— ("( ) The Prime Minister may, after consultation with the trustees, appoint the Director and not more than four members of the staff to the Board of Trustees."). The noble Viscount said: My Lords, at the Committee stage I withdrew an amendment which provided for the co-option of the director and not more than four members of staff on to the board of trustees. The purpose of that amendment was to bring together, as of right, the new trustees and the staff where policy is made. During the Recess supporters of that amendment had discussions with the Minister for the Arts and others, and as a result I am now moving an amendment which makes it permissible, after consultation with the trustees, for the Prime Minister to appoint the director and up to four members of the staff to the board.

It became clear that the director and the staff do not want to sit on the board. We were told that they felt strongly about that. It is difficult to be sure why they take this view, but I think it would be understandable if they expected the new body of trustees to be very similar to the present advisory body, in which case they could be satisfied by invitation from the trustees to attend their quarterly meetings. But will the new body be the same as the old body and will it be content with that form of co-operation?

When the Department of Education and Science gives up the powers which it exercises at present, those powers must devolve either to the new trustees or to the director or be shared between them. It is my conviction that the best result would be to ensure that they are shared between them. So I have to be clear what we expect of the new body of trustees, now that there will be, so to speak, no Whitehall nanny in the background. Do we want them just to be a polished-up replica of the existing advisory body? Surely not. Surely we hope and expect that the Prime Minister will appoint distinguished men and women of experience from many walks of life, each of whom will bring something of real value to the development of the museum. They will see it as their duty—indeed, it is in the Bill—to secure the right balance between the museum's curatorial and public activities. That is not going to be easy.

This will be a growing problem, because there will never be enough money to do all that the trustees and the staff would like to do inside and outside the museum. How and where are their conflicting claims to be reconciled? Should not the trustees he given the obligation to consider the views of the staff? Should not the staff and the director be given the statutory right to share in the policy-making process and, subsequently, having agreed on the policy, to carry it out with goodwill and enthusiasm?

It has been suggested to me that a finance and general purposes committee, with a trustee in the chair and a director and members of the staff as members of that committee, would achieve what I am asking for; but such a finance and general purposes committee would in a short time become a board of management and those trustees who were not on the committee would lose their influence and the museum might be deprived of their special knowledge at the very moment when it was most useful.

Of course, committees do good work on special subjects and in relation to special areas of the institution's operations; but as to big questions such as, How should the Government grant be allocated? What should be the relations of all departments with the education system? How should the policy regarding publications be carried on?—all questions of that size cannot be settled in committee; they must be brought to the central board where one would hope that all those primarily interested would be represented. It is said—I suppose it is said in the Bill—that if the staff recognise that they are responsible to the director in everything, and the director recognises that he is responsible to the trustees in everything, then everything will work well. But that is too simple a formula for a big institution with a variety of departments and a budget of many millions of pounds. I shall leave it to my noble friend Lord Gibson, with his great experience in this matter of managing large institutions, to tell your Lordships exactly why.

I think it is a fiction to say that all the departments of a museum are equal. They have different objectives, different staffs and different budgets and somewhere their valid and conflicting aims must be reconciled. Under modern conditions, that reconciliation requires the understanding and co-operation of not only the trustees but also the heads of the executive departments.

The Victoria and Albert and the Science Museum are not isolated cases. Your Lordships, I am sure, want all organisations, great and small, to improve communications between every level of their staffs and to increase, where practicable, the participation of staff in decisions affecting their work. I cannot believe that, in a sophisticated organisation like a national museum, simply to invite members of the staff to attend meetings when the concerns of their departments are up for discussion will prove sufficient, and I am sorry that the opposition of the present director and staff is such that the Minister feels it would be unwise to provide for their appointment to the board directly the measure comes into force.

Mr. Channon, for whom I have a great personal regard, and who I consider to be a very good Minister for the Arts, tells us, however, that if your Lordships decide that appointments should be permissive, he will be guided by the decision of this House. Therefore, thinking, as I do, that half a loaf is better than none and that one should listen carefully to Ministers—especially if they come from one's own party—I have redrafted my amendment to make these into appointments that the Prime Minister can make at some time in the future.

I notice with interest the amendment to my amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi. It seems to me that no Prime Minister would make such appointments if he or she did not think, after consultation with the trustees, that the time was appropriate. I cannot quite see who there would be to tell the Prime Minister that his or her decision was not appropriate. I understand, of course, what the noble Lord has in mind, but I do not think it is necessary to add those words, though one will listen to his argument with interest.

If my amendment is accepted, it will be possible for a number of members of the staff to be represented at board level by right, but it will not be possible for them ever to outnumber the part-time trustees, and I am sure your Lordships will think that that is right. I beg to move.