HL Deb 26 March 1984 vol 450 cc113-23

10.21 p.m.

Lord Strabolgi rose to ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will provide some financial assistance to help the Ashmolean Museum Oxford, the Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge, the Whitworth Art Gallery Manchester, and the Dulwich Picture Gallery, in view of the difficulties being experienced by these institutions in protecting and displaying their collections of national importance.

The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper. I welcome the opportunity to ask the Minister, the noble Earl, Lord Gowrie, whose presence here we welcome, whether he can be a little more forthcoming than he has been on the two previous occasions when I have raised the matter. The three university museums, the Whitworth, the Ashmolean, and the Fitzwilliam, are all dependent on university funds, while the Dulwich Picture Gallery, as we know, is part of Dulwich College.

None receives any central grant, either direct from Government, or through the Arts Council, although all four institutions have collections of national importance. The three university museums have become victims of the cuts on universities imposed by the Government. The Whitworth Art Gallery has already had a Government cut of 13 per cent., and, in consequence, has lost three posts. If the GMC grant were to be stopped, then the gallery's exhibition programme would also be very substantially reduced.

The gallery has a fine exhibitions record. It has shown, for example, master drawings from Leningrad, and, incidentally, I had the honour to open that exhibition in 1974 on behalf of the Government. It has also shown seventeenth century drawings from Brussels and an exhibition of medieval and early Renaissance treasures in the North-West (to name a few) and David Hockney's first public show was organised at the Whitworth. Should the GMC funding be removed, the Whitworth would no longer be able to mount such exhibitions, which have attracted great numbers of visitors, and it would also have to close its conservation department and its travelling exhibition service. The Whitworth contains the greatest collection of English watercolours outside the British Museum and the V & A. All that will be put at risk.

The Fitzwilliam at Cambridge faces similar problems. The museum is closed on Mondays, and on the other days the whole of the museum is never open at the one time, as it cannot afford to employ sufficient warding staff. This is extremely inconvenient and irritating for visitors, in particular those from outside Cambridge who go specially to the museum, only to find it closed. The national standard for adequate security is not less than one attendant per gallery. The standard at the Fitzwilliam is two galleries to be covered by one attendant, which is the lowest acceptable from a security point of view.

At Oxford, the city and county funds are apparently entirely committed to the county museum service, and the Ashmolean is dependent on UGC funds, and it, too, has suffered from the Government cuts. In consequence, the Ashmolean has had to close on Mondays for the first time in its 300 year-old history. At least two assistant keeper posts have had to go. The staff strength is now less than it was in 1970 although public expectations and interest have increased. If the present cuts continue, the museum may have to be closed entirely to the general public except by special appointment. This would surely be a tragedy, as the Ashmolean has a collection of national importance which I am glad is now to be further enriched by the generous bequest of a painting by Bellini by the late Lord Clark, as announced two days ago.

The problems facing the Dulwich Picture Gallery and its important collection—indeed, one of the most important collections in Britain—are similar. I am informed that the future of this enchanting gallery is seriously at risk. Already, some galleries have had to be closed and pictures removed entirely from public view as the trustees say that they can no longer be responsible for their safety following the recent theft of an outstanding Rembrandt portrait. All these paintings at Dulwich were donated for the public's benefit in earlier centuries. Surely, the least that we can do as a nation is to look after them properly for the benefit of future generations. I hope that this is something the Government will consider seriously.

An appeal has been launched, and here I should declare an interest, although not a pecuniary one. I am a honorary member of the appeal council. This appeal may help in the immediate future but it is not enough in the long term. What is to be done? As I have suggested in the Question on the Order Paper, the time has surely come when the Government will have to provide some financial assistance to these four institutions; otherwise, we shall be failing in our duty towards these collections. The sums are not large. There would be no objection, I am sure, if the Government reserved the right to appoint some of the trustees. What is wanted is the will to do something.

The noble Earl is able to act in a positive way when he wants to. He saved the Theatre Museum project when all seemed lost, and the other day he gave £50,000 to the Courtauld Appeal and a similar sum of £50,000 to the Soane Museum for the warding staff. That is very much to be welcomed. Actually, that is the sum that Dulwich needs for its own security. Last but not least, he played some part in saving Calke Abbey for the nation. We are grateful for these constructive and positive actions. I urge him also to go into the whole problem of the university museums and Dulwich, to do something about the situation and to treat this matter with equal urgency and seriousness.

10.28 p.m.

Baroness Faithfull

My Lords, I must declare an interest in that I love the Ashmolean Museum. I know the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge, but as I do not live at Cambridge I do not inhabit it in the same way as I do the Ashmolean Museum. In this day and age, when there is so much change, surely, in every sector of life, there must be flexibility in our ways of dealing with, keeping and respecting our old institutions. As the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, to whom we are deeply grateful for initiating this debate, has said, the Ashmolean has been in existence for 300 years. Oxford University, through its statutes, has acknowledged and does acknowledge a responsibility for the Ashmolean Museum, for its education and its primary research. However, times have greatly changed. For instance, Oxford has a population of 110,000 and covers 13 square miles. I am informed by the Thames Tourist Board that last year there were 1,200,000 visitors to Oxford. Of that number it is impossible to say exactly how many visited the Ashmolean, but 1 am told that a very large proportion did so.

Speaking from a very practical point of view, it takes money to keep a place in good order for visitors from all over the world. Oxford University has a great sense of responsibility towards the Ashmolean, but although, as the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, has said, a grant comes to Oxford University from the University Grants Committee, no special grant is allocated for the museum. Therefore, Oxford University is in some real difficulty. Is it to allocate money to the museum at the expense of the students? Or is it to keep its students at the university? These are changing times and, like the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, I would implore the noble Earl to take account of our changing times and our changing way of life, so that we can look to the Ashmolean and expect it to have some help from outside the university.

We have had the reorganisation of local government, and that means that the Ashmolean stands in the middle of Oxford county. The county, too, is mindful of the museum, but at the same time interest is now much wider spread with very much less money. It could be said that perhaps the education authorities who use the museum for the purposes of educating the children in schools both in the city and in the county should make a contribution, but they, too, are in financial difficulties. I know that when valuable pictures or articles now come up for sale it is very difficult for the museum to be able to keep up and to purchase anything of value because of the running costs of the museum.

Surely we have a responsibility to the future to guard that which our predecessors have so wonderfully and so marvellously set up. I would beg of the noble Earl to think carefully about how we are to maintain and look after the heritage that has been left to us so that we in our turn may leave to those of the future the heritage from which we have benefited and which our children will have looked to us to keep and maintain.

10.34 p.m.

Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge

My Lords, I should like to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull. Normally, as a Cambridge man, I should have taken the Fitzwilliam as my example, but as I knew that the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, was going to do so, I want to make a few comments about the Ashmolean.

It is worth beginning by saying that the plight of the university museums in general has been recognised as miserable for a very large number of years. In 1977 the Standing Commission on Museums and Galleries reported very gloomily, saying that nothing had produced: the hoped-for results and the situation of these museums is progressively deteriorating to the detriment not only of the academic activities of the universities but also of the interests of the public generally". This was re-echoed by the Drew Report, which came on to my desk just before the 1979 general election—in fact in November 1978—and in the time remaining we, I think perhaps excusably, took no action beyond asking for comments on the report. I cannot prove that, had we been elected, we should have done more than the present Government have done, which is precisely nothing. But 1 flatter myself—perhaps optimistically— that I should have picked out of the Drew recommendations the urgent need to do something about these fine and starved university museums. Five years have gone by, but it is not too late, and I reinforce the appeal of the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, to the noble Earl not to wait any longer.

I am speaking of the large university museums. There are 50 or 60 university museums altogether, but the problem diminishes with size, and it is when one gets huge museums, like the ones we are speaking about, with world-famous collections, that the expenses become very difficult for universities to deal with. The fundamental difficulty is that whoever they apply to for help always has an alibi. As the noble Lord said, the Ashmolean applied to the local authority which said that it was already giving all it could to the county museum service—in itself very valuable and important—and suggested that the museum should apply to the national Exchequer. But the national Exchequer and its Ministers, though freely admitting the international importance of the Ashmolean, have finally said that, international or not, basically it has to be regarded as an Oxford responsibility.

Each university has a notional allowance in the UGC block grant for the museum's needs, but it is not quantified and it is not earmarked. As the noble Baroness said, when the university is pressed on its primary duties of teaching and research, obviously it is matters of this sort which get squeezed, and the unqualified notional allowance becomes more imaginary than notional.

In the good times in the 1970s, when the national museums expanded well and some even doubled their staffs, the university museums, having no access to central funding, failed to expand equally and, in fact, the Ashmolean today has one employee fewer than it had in 1970. As I think the noble Lord said, it has had to cut two and a half curatorial posts.

University museums have two functions. This point arises from both speeches that we have heard so far, but has not been stated entirely clearly, so there is no harm in repeating it. Their primary raison d'etre is to be available to the university as a tool in its teaching and research functions. It is not denied that the university should be responsible for the cost of this. But a museum like the Ashmolean houses a collection of national and international importance and must be available not only to scholars, but also to the ordinary public, nationally, internationally and of course locally. Locally its contribution to schools at primary and secondary levels is of growing importance, as anyone who goes there during school hours can see from the throngs of school parties going through the corridors. The cost of these non-university public functions is estimated at about £250,000 or, say, one-fifth of the total cost of the museum's running costs.

I want to fix on this as something which it would be reasonable to try to persuade the noble Earl to do something about. Clearly, it would not be enough in itself, but it would be of the very greatest assistance if some way could be found which does not involve the local authority, which in the end comes from the centre and which could deal with the non-university public functions of these museums. Without that, we have a deterioration which is really getting quite serious. Certainly the collections that I know best—the Fitzwilliam and the Ashmolean—are of world importance; in many cases they are equal to and in many more cases are second only to the British Museum, which, after all, is properly funded. Let us make no mistake about this; although there may be a certain amount of grumbling from the national museums, they are properly run. It is the ones that are not that give rise to such a serious situation.

I want to suggest to the Minister in all seriousness that he might get together with his very able and hard-working staff and come up with a proposition. I worked with their parents, as it were, some time ago, and I know that if you give them the task they will come up with an answer. Something really has to be done. It is not an incredibly expensive thing, and it would not be a complete solution, but it would stop the deterioration which is going on now (and the deterioration in morale) and, as the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, said, the inability to increase the collection in any particular direction.

The Minister is now in the middle of new and pressing deliberations about funding museums and galleries whose financial future is threatened by the proposals for the dissolution of the GLC and the metropolitan counties. As the noble Earl will have to pick up a good deal out of this, I want to suggest that, while he is at the job he should pick up a bit more, including these university museums and the Dulwich Gallery for the small marginal amounts which the public funding requires. I could not speak more seriously about this. Some of the things which one asks government to do are too difficult. This is manageable, and I hope very much that the noble Earl the Minister will feel he can admit that, without promising exactly what he will do, he will do something.

10.42 p.m.

Lord Wolfenden

My Lords, may I add my thanks to those which have already been expressed to the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, for giving us the opportunity to discuss these matters this evening? They may seem parochial and trivial by comparison with the affairs of the European Community, but to many people (perhaps more than is generally recognised) they represent an element without which our lives would be very much less worth living. Secondly, I must declare two interests. I am chairman of the body which is responsible for the Dulwich Picture Gallery, and I am also president of the nationwide British Association of Friends of Museums.

May I deal first with the smaller of my two "canvasses", if that is not an inappropriate metaphor? I will not take the time of the House with an exposition of the constitutional complications of Alleyn's College of God's Gift. Briefly and broadly stated, the financial management of Edward Alleyn's original benefaction and subsequent additions thereto is in the hands of a body known as the estates governors. A separate body—though there is cross-representation—the school governors, have responsibility for Dulwich College, Alleyn's School and the Picture Gallery, as well as for other institutions which do not concern us this evening. There is, of course, a specialist committee for the Picture Gallery, the chairman of which, Dr. Greenhill, until lately Director of the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich, has brought to our affairs his wide and deep experience. The estates governors, then, hold the purse strings.

As potential beneficiaries, the Picture Gallery is in competition with two distinguished independent schools—and the parents of the boys and girls in them do not welcome increases in their fees term by term. The only income to the Picture Gallery from public funds is an annual grant of some £6,000 from the Greater London Council. This is indeed very welcome, and we are most grateful for it. But, necessarily, it is on the basis of annual renewal (or discontinuance) and that fact does not make for security in forward planning. (I have often wondered, exactly what backward planning is like, but I must not take your Lordships' time by pursuing that hare.)

The gallery's other income is from entrance fees and sales of catalogues; and this is regrettably small because of the geographical location, outside London and off the tourist circuit. Out of this minute annual income we have to provide for the conservation, display and protection of an important collection in a delightful building. I must not slide into a commercial, but I would simply ask your Lordships to pay us a visit, as I know has been done by the noble Earl who is to reply. I am confident that you would agree that we are worth more than £6,000 a year of public money.

We do what we can to help ourselves. As has been mentioned, we have just launched an appeal to help to establish a capital fund. Is there any hope that some support for it might come from central Government, as I understand is happening to a certain institute of fine art in London? The major nightmare, of course, is security. We have had some grim experiences over recent years, and we have spent more than we can afford in trying to preserve for the present and the future the treasures that have come to us from the past. But this is an expensive business, and we sometimes feel that it is rather odd that this should all fall on one private trust. The temptation, of course, is to sell a picture every now and then to provide the cash which is currently needed to preserve the rest. But there are those among us who would resist to the death this impoverishment of the future of the gallery and of its visitors.

We deserve some little help from public funds. Especially pressing is this appeal at the present time, because we never know when the GLC, our one public benefactor, will disappear and our own annual grant with it. We are not talking about billions of pounds. Perhaps that is part of the trouble—that the sum of money involved is so small that it seems not worth worrying about. But a matter of a few thousands of pounds a year is a matter of life and death to one of the most attractive and rewarding picture galleries anywhere in Britain, which also makes, I may add, a significant contribution to the teaching and appreciation of art in two considerable schools.

Now I can take off my domestic Dulwich hat and speak very briefly under the banner of the British Association of Friends of Museums. I can be brief, because I am sure that many of your Lordships belong to the body of friends associated with your own local museum or gallery. I simply want to call attention to the probable future plight of some of the most well-known of them. I suppose that the Whitworth is one of the most notable of the 160 members of the British Association of Friends—lively, enterprising, popular and of the highest standards of conservation, security and display. What will happen to the finances when the Greater Manchester Council disappears? I understand that there is imminent danger of the loss of four posts, with all that that means in neglected conservation and restricted exhibition space to the deprivation of both the university and the general public, with whom the Whitworth is deservedly popular.

It is over-optimistic, surely, to expect that the separate borough and district councils will be able to assume the responsibilities which the metropolitan council now carries. In the years since 1974, it has made great strides in the improvement and provision of museum and gallery facilities for the good of the population of its region, and is proud to have done so. The Association of Friends of Museums put in a great deal of voluntary work in conservation, running the shop, guiding parties, organising events of all kinds, fund raising for particular purchases and so on. But they cannot be expected to shoulder the gallery's total annual budget. That is the responsibility of the whole community—a responsibility which must be carried by government, national, regional or local.

I venture to hope that the noble Earl will be able to give some encouragement to the thousands of volunteers who give of their time and skills in these activities, and to the millions of our fellow citizens who benefit from their labours.

10.50 p.m.

Lord Walston

My Lords, I apologise for detaining your Lordships yet longer, but I promise not to keep you for very many minutes. I intervene for three reasons: two of them are purely personal and one general. The personal ones are, first, that I have lived within six miles of the Fitzwilliam Museum all my life and therefore can claim to have some knowledge of it, and certainly enormous respect for it. The second is that 101 years ago my father became the second director of that museum, and so I have a strong family connection with it.

My general reason for intervening is because while I yield to no one in my admiration for our great national museums in the capital, I believe it is of enormous importance that beautiful things should be available for people to see who do not live within striking distance of the capital, and who live in the more benighted areas of East Anglia or the Thames Valley, or the even more benighted areas of the Midlands or the North of England.

The universities in particular, especially with the happy spread of universities over the past 30 or 40 years, have a huge part to play in helping this objective and in making it possible for people who normally would not go to a museum and who, if they came to London, would be doing all sorts of other things such as shopping and going to Madame Tussauds, and so on, but who will go in to their local town or local university town and will spend happy hours—their children more particularly—looking at lovely things which otherwise they would never see.

We are wonderfully endowed in this country with a large number of such places, all of high quality, and some of the highest quality. It surely is, if not a crime, a sheer waste of possibilities that those lovely things, which are available for people to see and which they wish to see, cannot be seen because of the reasons which have been so graphically described to us.

I do hope that the noble Earl, in company with all those who have spoken—and I appreciate full well his enormous problems and the calls on the restricted funds at his disposal—will be persuaded by the arguments that we have listened to this evening. I hope that he will be able to do something, however modest, not only to help the museums which have been specifically mentioned but the other provincial and local museums throughout the country which have played, and will continue to play, such a great role in the cultural part of this country.

Lord Montagu of Beaulieu

My Lords, I intervene only briefly, and I apologise first to the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, for not being in my place to hear his opening remarks. I speak on behalf of the Museums Association to express their deep concern about the plight of these four museums and indeed other university museums. They appreciate the dilemma that faces the vice-chancellors and others who are determining the spending of university funds, when they have a terrible choice to make between a new academic post or a new research post and perhaps the founding of a museum post. What is of no doubt at all is that they are of far wider interest than just to the citizens where they are situated. There is international interest in them.

The noble Lord, Lord Walston, talked about Dulwich being off the tourist track, which is correct. But at least they make great efforts. One could hardly say that Oxford and Cambridge are off the tourist track. The Fitzwilliam is a great attraction; but, strangely, the City of Cambridge makes practically no contribution to that museum. And Oxford does not do very much better for the Ashmolean, our oldest museum. It is quite right that the Whitworth makes splendid efforts to raise funds. They all do try. But the question which should be asked is whether in the long term universities should be in the museum business at all. University museums have grown up almost by chance. If they are to remain in being and if they are there and very fine, the question is: how they should be funded? If they are so popular, I wonder whether they should try more aggressively to use the system, so well used by the Metropolitan Museum in New York, of a kind of voluntary, compulsory charge for everybody other than students. I can assure your Lordships that the many overseas tourists who visit these museums would not resent such a charge.

I have made this brief speech tonight in order to express the concern of the Museums Association and their staff about this particular problem. I shall look forward to the noble Earl's reply.

10.57 p.m.

The Minister of State, Privy Council Office, and Minister for the Arts (The Earl of Gowrie)

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, for raising this issue. It is an uncomfortable issue and it is one which 1 am extremely exercised about and worried by. I am glad to say that I have a little comfort tonight, but it is pretty small. The financial problems of university museums are well known to me, as they were well-known to my distinguished predecessor, the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge. I very much admired the candour with which he confessed that he had not been able to do much about it.

The difficulty is that these museums are integral parts of their parent universities. Therefore they are on the books of those universities. It is easy to say that instead they should be on the books of central government or the Arts Minister. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge, knows very well, Arts Ministers are peculiar animals. They are Ministers with clients—specific, existing, itemised, earmarked clients for whom they negotiate funds. I have been assured by my colleagues in the Government that I am not in this post to make cuts. But equally I am, like all my ministerial colleagues, liable to have to operate under considerable constraints in growth. It would be very rash indeed of any Arts Minister to seek to take on new clients when he has difficulty funding his existing ones.

The position is not quite so bleak for these great universities as that sounds, because the universities themselves are in receipt of very considerable sums of public money through the University Grants Committee. It is all very well for the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, to talk about cuts. Universities are subject, as we all are, to financial constraints, but the overall costs of these museums are not comparatively large and both universities have very well-off friends, not only in this country but all over the world. I sympathise immensely with their plight. I hope that they can find a solution by a combination of UGC funds and other sources. I am delighted to do all that I can to come in behind them and help in some of the ways that have been suggested.

I recognise, with the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge, that the Drew Report recommended that certain major provincial museums, including some university museums, should be designated to receive direct central Government funding. Again the difficulty here, as I have said, is mainly a matter of cost. Although the Drew recommendations have never been fully costed, my advice is that at present price levels they would cost several tens of millions of pounds.

So, while we might try to proceed in the directions recommended by Drew, we should certainly have to proceed with caution.

I can be a little more forthcoming, and perhaps offer a little more comfort, in respect of the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester. The future funding of the Whitworth Art Gallery will be looked at in the light of the evidence received during the consultation period on the proposals for the reorganisation of local government. This gallery is in a somewhat peculiar position as it is a university institution receiving a pro-portion of its funding from the metropolitan county council. In 1983–84, this represented about 21 per cent. of its funds; just under £70,000. The gallery was not singled out in the Government's consultation proposals for central funding because it is primarily a university rather than a local authority institution. However I am wholly confident that the Whitworth Art Gallery will not suffer following reorganisation.

Lord Walston

My Lords, if the noble Earl the Minister will allow me, may I take up that rather encouraging remark and ask whether the same will apply in respect of Glasgow, for instance, which I understand is facing similar problems?

The Earl of Gowrie

My Lords, Glasgow is not subject to the exercise in local government reorganisation. The problem with the Whitworth is that it is a university museum funded by a threatened tier of local government. I am confident that the threat posed to it through that particular policy can be relieved.

In the case of the Dulwich Picture Gallery, the noble Lord, Lord Wolfenden. reminded me that I had visited this gallery. Indeed, I have visited it many times because it is one of my favourite museums in the world. It is a private institution forming part of a foundation. It is therefore largely self-financing and has to rely very much on its own energy in raising funds. The foundation has, I understand, recently launched a public appeal for half a million pounds to pay for badly-needed additional security measures and repairs, and to establish an endowment for the gallery. I do hope that the gallery's prestige and the efforts of its friends will ensure that the appeal is a success. I will certainly add my voice to that appeal and beaver away in the gallery's interests, in respect of sponsors, whenever I can.

It is true that the gallery receives some small grants from the GLC, but they have not been a significant proportion of its income. Again, I am confident that any shortfall at present levels can be made good.

The Museums and Galleries Commission's terms of reference and legal status do not at present enable it to pay recurrent grants directly to individual museums and galleries. However, I will be considering in the light of the consultation on local government reorganisation and other developments, including this evening's debate, whether the commission's role could or should be extended in this or other ways—so long as we recognise that all the great museums of this country (even those which are not in current funding difficulties of the kind we have heard about tonight) have very considerable capital funding difficulties. They have been subject to squeezes on that front by successive governments, and some of the bills now coming in are very large.

I am, of course, aware of the immense public interest in and pressure for the retention of great works of art in this country. I am constantly urged to make funds available so that fewer and fewer will go abroad. I sometimes wryly wish that that same pressure could come from the public to display, retain and conserve the myriad great works of art which we already have.

I hope that I have been able to give a crumb of comfort to the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi. I do welcome his interest—which I share—and the way in which he has drawn attention to the very real plight of these museums. I think it is absolutely right of him to say that the cities of Oxford and Cambridge benefit from the two museums within their walls and I hope that they, too, will feel some greater involvement with those great centres of excellence, which are of course such notable tourist attractions. Indeed, I thought that my noble friends Lady Faithfull and Lord Montagu of Beaulieu hinted heavily in that direction and I hope their hints will be heard in local government quarters as well of course as in my own.