Olympic Games 2012: Heritage and Arts Funding

My Lords, I start by declaring three interests, all unpaid, which have a bearing on this debate. I am vice-chairman of the Cardiff Millennium Stadium, a major project built on time and to budget ready for the Rugby World Cup in 1998; I am chairman of the Railway Heritage Committee; and a member of the board of trustees of the National Museum for Science and Industry. I join others in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Baker, on initiating this debate, and I should like to say particularly how pleased I am to see the noble Lord, Lord Coe, in his place and how much I look forward to his speech. Perhaps unlike all other speakers in this debate, I want to make it clear that I supported London’s bid to win the Olympics, and I believe that all those who were involved in the process deserve our praise—none more so than our colleague on the opposite Benches. I have no doubt that the Games will be good for London as well as for Britain because the benefits will spread well outside the capital. The Government, in their initial response to the report of the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee in another place published on 24 January, said that they hope that the benefits to the country as a whole will outstrip costs by at least two to one. That is the figure that the Australians claim for the Sydney Games in 2000. I particularly welcome the promise of long-term economic regeneration and the public transport infrastructure improvements which they will bring. I also strongly support the vision for the Cultural Olympiad as a festival celebrating the diversity and richness of culture in London, UK and around the world. But all this, of course, has to be paid for, and that is what the debate today is about. We have heard about how the costs have risen—which is hardly surprising as no Olympic Games in history have cost less than the original estimate—and it is right that everyone should be asked to pay something, including the general taxpayer and the London council tax payer. I can understand why the Government do not wish the burden to fall on any group disproportionately, and the establishment of a specific National Lottery competition for the Olympics has been tried successfully elsewhere. But it comes at a price and, speaking in regard to my heritage interests, I want to say a word about the Heritage Lottery Fund. It seems that in this process it will lose £161.2 million, not counting any loss of revenue that may come through lower sales of non-Olympic lottery games. I recognise that the effect on heritage projects will probably be more than this because the HLF is particularly effective in acting as a lever for attracting other funds, often on the basis of 50-50. In my own railway world, there are numerous examples of lottery money being used to good effect—for example, the National Railway Museum’s restoration and display of the Flying Scotsman locomotive, the creation of the Search Engine Archive Centre at York and the construction of the magnificent new Locomotion Museum at Shildon. There are many, many more examples like that. The museums at York and Shildon attract more than 1 million visitors a year between them, very many of them the children from disadvantaged familiesthat are exactly the kind of audience that theDCMS wishes to encourage to use our free national museums. The HFL makes a huge contribution to heritage railways as well and there are numerous examples of projects which would not have gone ahead without its funding. I refer in particular to the carriage shed and new engine house on the Severn Valley Railway and the new museum building at the Middleton Railway Trust. No one is saying that all this good work will come to a juddering halt because of the diversion of lottery money to pay for the Olympics, but it is undoubtedly the case that projects will have to be scaled back at least until 2012. As far as the north of England in particular is concerned, there is likely to be a five or six-year hiatus on major heritage projects. The free entry museums will find it particularly difficult to improve themselves during this period because they cannot raise money by increasing admission charges which my noble friend Lord Smith of Finsbury did so much to get abolished. So it is vital that they should have access to capital elsewhere. In particular, I hope that the Treasury will encourage the regional development agencies to be particularly generous to the regional free entry museums during the period when HLF funding is tight. The Secretary of State has come in for mixed reviews in the debate so far. I believe that she deserves great credit for ensuring that the projects to be undertaken before 2009 will be unaffected and for undertaking that the lottery will eventually be repaid some of the profits from land sales at Stratford by the London Development Agency after the Games. I understand—perhaps my noble friend will confirm this when he replies—that she has got the Treasury to agree that there will be no further raids on the lottery funds before 2012. The situation could have been much worse. The Guardian reported that, "““Ms Jowell fought a fierce battle with the Treasury which originally sought to siphon an additional £1.9 billion from the lottery, three times the sum it finally settled on””." In an article in the Observer on 15 April, the Secretary of State described the arrangement as, "““more of a loan than a withdrawal””." The noble Lord, Lord Baker, was a little dismissive of that. Perhaps my noble friend when he replies will say more about how this will work. Certainly if a substantial proportion of the funds which are—shall we say?—““borrowed”” are returned later, that will provide some reassurance to those who are concerned about their heritage and other products.