Olympic Games 2012: Heritage and Arts Funding

My Lords, I, too, thank to the noble Lord, Lord Baker of Dorking, for introducing this interesting debate and I congratulate the many noble Lords who have spoken. It is important for a nation to preserve its heritage. If heritage is not maintained it will wither away or fall down. If your Lordships do not believe in the cultural value of heritage, consider the enormous value of heritage to the tourist industry. Tourists do not come to look at the Dome. Ahead of the forthcoming Comprehensive Spending Review, a number of respected organisations, including the Heritage Lottery Fund, the National Trust and English Heritage, published a document, Valuing Our Heritage. It showed over£1 billion-worth of outstanding heritage work and demonstrated that spending on heritage in England is less than in Germany, Italy, Portugal, the Netherlands and other European countries. Between 2000 and 2007 English Heritage’s grant-in-aid was reduced in real terms by over £20 million. As the bulk of English Heritage’s work is with specialist craftsmen, where wage inflation runs at or close to double figures, so inflation for English Heritage is far worse than the official figures used when calculating ““real terms””. The true reduction in English Heritage’s funding over the period is probably in excess of £50 million. That reduction has been compensated for by the Heritage Lottery Fund, but, as my noble friend Lord Baker has already said, this funding has been steadily reduced from £355 million in 2004 to £290 million in the current year. That will drop to £180 million in 2008, from which the latest Olympic raid will take another £90 million. If, as has been said, the money borrowed from good causes to fund the Olympics is returned—and that is a big ““if””—will heritage be fully compensated? Old buildings deteriorate at an exponential rate. What costs £1 today will cost £2 or more in just a short time. Libraries might have to close down and their collections of books dispersed. There are many other examples, some of which have been mentioned today. The point is that money borrowed in this fashion must be returned with an adequate uplift to compensate fully for the inflation of costs incurred by postponing or delaying work. As well as the impact on the arts and heritage, there is to be—despite the ambition to leave a sporting legacy—a cutback in lottery money available for sport, as the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, has said. I declare an interest as chairman of the National Playing Fields Association. The Government pay regular lip-service to the benefit to young people of taking more exercise and playing more sport. Taking a grand total of £395 million away from those who support the grass roots of sport and using the funds to contribute to building large showcase stadiums may generate an initial enthusiasm, but the lack of facilities due to the curtailment of funding at the less flamboyant end of sport will rapidly kill off any interest. I have spoken more about heritage and sport than about the arts. Many noble Lords have spoken more eloquently and knowledgeably than I could on that subject. Although the impact of the lottery raids on the arts will be severe, they will not have the same irreversible impact as depriving children of sport—their youth cannot be replaced—or the harm that will be caused by delaying repairs and maintenance to the nation’s heritage. When my noble friend Lord Baker started the lottery, in the face of the cynicism of others, it was, as he said earlier, to raise money for the arts, charity, sport and heritage. Since its conception, the lottery has gone from strength to strength and has raised—and continues to raise—significant sums of money. Unfortunately, it has been seen by this Government as a source of funds for pet projects rather than for the purpose for which it was originally set up. I earnestly repeat the request to the Minister that there will beno further raids on lottery funds to pay for the 2012 Olympics. I realise that this is extraordinarily unlikely, but if the costs of the Olympics do not continue to escalate and the total contingency of £3.2 billion is not all used up, will those funds which have been purloined from the lottery be released back to it, and thereby to those causes that the lottery supports, rather than being snaffled by the Treasury?