HL Deb 19 March 1986 vol 472 cc961-3

2.44 p.m.

Baroness Elliot of Harwood

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 encourage museums to boost their funding through their own enterprise.

The Minister of State, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Lord Belstead)

My Lords, yes. The Government propose to change the system of funding the nine national museums and galleries supported from the arts programme. The aim is to give the institutions greater incentive to maximise their receipts and to use them more effectively.

Baroness Elliot of Harwood

My Lords, I thank the Minister very much for that reply. Will the Government encourage museums to organise independent exhibitions and other things for which the public can pay and which will bring in money to them? Will the Government allow that money definitely to go to the museums themselves?

Lord Belstead

My Lords, the answer to that is definitely yes. Perhaps I ought to remind my noble friend that there is a Private Member's Bill in your Lordships' House which would seek to end that, but that the Government do not agree with that particular Bill.

Lord Paget of Northampton

My Lords, do we really want to "boost" museums?

Lord Belstead

No, my Lords; in that sense I do not like the word either. But we want to improve their independence and their general financial state; and, if I may say so, nothing could have done more to that end than the Budget of my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer yesterday.

Lord Harmar-Nicholls

My Lords, is my noble friend aware that, as his answer indicated, there is some contradiction in this House asking the Government to encourage the museums to use their own initiative to increase their fundings when within the last ten days noble Lords have given a Second Reading to a Bill which would knock the very base from underneath the trustees of museums being able to do just that? Is he aware that, fortunately, the House has the chance to mitigate some of the excesses of that Second Reading tomorrow night when it goes into Committee?

Lord Belstead

My Lords, the Government believe strongly that the trustees of the institutions must have the freedom to introduce charges if they believe that that is right in the particular case of their own institution. At the same time, in 1983 the Government gave a manifesto undertaking that we would keep up Government support for the arts, and this we have done. This Question is about museums and galleries. Since 1979 Exchequer funding of national museums and galleries financed by the office of arts and libraries has increased by 19 per cent, in real terms.

Lord Jenkins of Putney

My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that we on this side of the House support all methods of fund raising, including business fund raising, which I was instrumental in starting when I was Minister for the Arts? Is he also aware that we are wholly opposed to charges for entry to museums, and that such charges should not be associated with fund raising? There are the two things to be considered: on the one hand, fund raising by all legitimate means; but, on the other, charges for entry to museums, and even invitations of a semi-compulsory nature of that sort for entry, are to be opposed as they have the effect of reducing very rapidly the numbers of people visiting the institutions.

Lord Belstead

My Lords, perhaps this is something that we ought to discuss on the noble Lord's Bill tomorrow. I congratulate the noble Lord on introducing the concept of business sponsorship for the arts in, I think, 1975. At that time, business sponsorship for the arts was running at about half a million pounds. Today it is running at £20 million.