Science and Discovery Centres (Funding)

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Mr. Willis) for introducing the debate. I am also grateful to the other contributors to it, particularly my hon. Friends the Members for Bolton, South-East (Dr. Iddon) and for Norwich, North (Dr. Gibson), who, over a long period, have shown a deep interest in the issues under discussion. Before I respond to the key points raised, I shall set out the Government's views on science centres and our plans for the future. I stress that it is a Government-wide view. We acknowledged in the response to the Select Committee's report that the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills will take the lead on science centre issues within Government, but we will work closely with the Departments for Culture, Media and Sport and for Children, Schools and Families, because they share an interest in that agenda. Indeed, both DIUS and the DCSF funded Ecsite-uk's recent science centre enrichment activity grant scheme, and officials from all three Departments maintain contact on the issues and worked together to formulate the response to the Committee's recommendations. I am a bit disappointed by how negative hon. Members seem to feel the Government response was. I do not believe that to be the case, but Government funding is finite and we need strong, robust evidence that our interventions can make a difference, are well focused and serve the public interest. As hon. Members themselves argued, short-term financial fixes do not help the sector, the recreational visitor, or the educational user. We need to understand more fully the contribution, role and influence of science centres. The Committee recognised that fact back in October, when it agreed that a Government commitment to long-term revenue support for science centres should not be considered unless independent evidence of their effectiveness was obtained. I shall say something about that in a moment. I have met and corresponded with representatives from several science centres and, before becoming Minister for Science and Innovation, I visited about 14 of them. I also met representatives of Ecsite-uk earlier in the year to discuss its vision for the future. I therefore know about some of the problems and opportunities facing the sector. My Department continues to fund Ecsite-uk, and I trust that it will take forward important work on fostering and disseminating best practice in the sector. As hon. Members will be aware, between November 2006 and March 2008, DIUS and the DCSF jointly provided almost £750,000 for a project to enhance financial sustainability and help the network to develop an approach to best practice and benchmarking. Of that funding, £250,000 came from the DCSF and the remaining £490,000 from DIUS. We never expected a magic bullet solution to emerge from the project, but I understand from the final reports that it has enabled significant outreach work to be conducted by the centres that were successful in their grant bids, and it has facilitated the development of consortiums that would benefit from the collaborations and new approaches to working together throughout the country. Results suggest that everyone involved, including children and teachers in targeted hard-to-reach schools, thought that they had benefited from the experience. As a result of the funding, Ecsite-uk has also completed a project to begin work on a new approach to benchmarking in the sector. Ecsite-uk has stressed that the project is not a panacea, but it feels positive and believes that it is a start and will help the sector to become more rigorous about best practice and measurement. A common theme in today's debate was the need for greater measurement and assessment of impact. Several of the Select Committee's recommendations were directed at Ecsite-uk, and I again take the opportunity to encourage Ecsite-uk and individual science centres to work collaboratively, to learn from best practice, wherever it comes from, and to work to obtain greater diversity in funding streams. I know that there is a commitment in the sector to do that. Comparisons were made with the museum sector—indeed, that was a major theme of the speech by the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough. I understand the arguments about museums and the comparisons drawn between science centres and museums, whether they relate to their public engagement work or their funding. I stress that museums clearly have a public engagement role; they are not just about collections. However, it is important to dispel some misconceptions about museums and science centres. I do not think that those misconceptions are found among members of the Select Committee, but they might be found in the wider community. The first misconception is that the two types of institution are essentially the same. It is true that a number of museums, perhaps most notably the natural history museum and the science museum, are affiliates of the Ecsite-uk network and can be classified as science or discovery centres. However, in the Government's mind, there is an important distinction between a museum and another type of visitor attraction: the possession of a collection, as we heard. As my hon. Friends will be aware, the Museums Association gives this definition:"““Museums enable people to explore collections for inspiration, learning and enjoyment. They are institutions that collect, safeguard and make accessible artefacts and specimens, which they hold in trust for society.””" I hope that it can be seen from that definition that a museum exists because of its collection. That is not its only role, but the collection is at the heart of its activities, whether it is inspiring and informing visitors or supporting the learning of schoolchildren, which a museum also undertakes. Museums have an equally important additional curatorial duty to maintain and preserve their collections for future generations. In contrast, science centres often have no permanent artefacts or items and aim to present science to the public via temporary exhibits or displays. The second misconception arises from the fact that many people believe that the Government fund free access to all museums in England and are therefore duty-bound to fund a similar scheme for all science centres. The simple fact is that only a small number of museums in England are funded directly by central Government. The Museums Association estimates that there are about 2,000 museums in England. The vast majority either are funded by local authorities—689 museums in total—or are independent charities; that is the case for 811 museums. The policy on admission prices for those museums is a matter for the relevant council, its councillors and the local community, or the trustees of the organisation, depending on its status. The DCMS is the Department with lead responsibility for museums in England and it directly sponsors only 21 museums, 13 of which are defined as national by virtue of the importance of their collections. DCMS supports those national museums for their pre-eminent national collections, which are held by the museums in trust for the nation and for future generations. Of those 21 museums, nine could be categorised as science centres. It is not the case that DCMS does not give equal treatment to science and the arts when funding our national museums.