Mr Iain Sproat: The Government remain committed to delivering essential football ground safety improvements agreed following the Taylor report.
Mr Iain Sproat: The hon. Lady makes an extremely important point. She is certainly accurate in saying that the Football Trust has suffered because of the effect of the lottery on the pools industry. I am meeting Lord Aberdare of the Football Trust on 5 March. Today the Sports Council is considering whether or not the Football Trust can be helped by the lottery. Above all I hope that all...
Mr Iain Sproat: I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Ribble Valley (Mr. Evans) on securing this important debate. He is exceptionally well informed on tourism matters, and always works hard to ensure that the interests of his constituents and constituency are brought to the notice of the House. I am also pleased that the House has another opportunity to debate tourism generally as well as the...
Mr Iain Sproat: I wish to respond briefly to some of the points made in this interesting, if short, debate. In particular, I wish to thank all those right hon. and hon. Members, starting with the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central (Mr. Fisher), who gave a strong, warm, general welcome to the Bill. I will return in a moment to the charging issue, which was the one area of mildly abrasive acrimony within...
Mr Iain Sproat: That is a very important point, but it is not the only one. If museums care well for the artefacts in their charge—as the science museum and the natural history museum have done—it would be unfair to take money away from them to pay for those who have not performed their function. It is the parable of the virgins or the talents—[Interruption.] I was groping for the biblical quotation...
Mr Iain Sproat: Perhaps he will tell us now. Labour should tell us whether it intends to reinstate charging. Charging currently brings in £15 million; if the British museum were to put aside the charging option, it would have to find that sum from Government funds. It is yet another example of the Labour party not telling us what it would do in government. I do not care what a Labour Government would do,...
Mr Iain Sproat: That was an absolutely classic Labour weaselly pledge. Labour would like to see that happen by the end of the decade, but the hon. Gentleman did not and dare not say what Labour will do, because the right hon. Member for Dunfermline, East (Mr. Brown) will not allow him to do so. All that the right hon. Gentleman allows Labour Members to do is to speak out of one side of their mouths, give a...
Mr Iain Sproat: That was another fudge. We still do not know whether Labour will give the museums £15 million. The hon. Gentleman is wrong: the museums that have not charged have received more in the past five years. That is not because they do not charge; it is just a matter of fact. I have given the figures. As ever, my hon. Friend the Member for Swindon (Mr. Coombs) made a much more sensible speech. He...
Mr Iain Sproat: I did not make them.
Mr Iain Sproat: indicated dissent.
Mr Iain Sproat: Rubbish.
Mr Iain Sproat: Has the hon. Gentleman not seen the figures for the imperial war museum? Before it introduced charges, it made people go through turnstiles so it knows exactly how many people visited. After it started charging, the number went up. Even with the science museum, where it is claimed that admissions went down, Sir Neil Cossons does not believe that that was the case, because no proper...
Mr Iain Sproat: I did not expect to have to go through the Red Book—after all, it is not all that long since we had the Budget—but it makes it quite clear that, for years two and three, the British museum will indeed be recompensed for the removal of the British library. That is absolutely black and white.
Mr Iain Sproat: I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time. The Bill extends the powers of the trustees of the national heritage memorial fund on the projects that they can fund and the recipients eligible for funding. As the House will know, the NHMF trustees distribute the heritage share of the national lottery proceeds. Our aim is to build on the existing success of the lottery as a source...
Mr Iain Sproat: Perhaps I could come back to the hon. Gentleman on that project. The fund exists mainly to acquire, preserve and maintain tangible objects. Conservation can be part of preservation, therefore falling within the fund's current remit, but the NHMF trustees have been uneasy about any project that strays too far from the acquisition, preservation and maintenance of tangible objects. However, I...
Mr Iain Sproat: I am glad that my hon. Friend visited the natural history museum, which is one of the finest natural history museums in the world, if not the finest. Anyone who has not discovered how many angles a beetle can be seen from with information technology would not believe it. The natural history museum is far advanced in such matters. I am sure that other museums will take up similar technology in...
Mr Iain Sproat: I shall come to that in just a second. You yourself, Mr. Deputy Speaker, played an important role in that project. I shall deal with it in a few sentences. I ask my right hon. Friend to contain himself. We have identified three types of project that fulfil the purpose that I mentioned. The first is an exhibition on a particular aspect of our history. Examples might be a museum exhibition on...
Mr Iain Sproat: This is a big evening for congratulations. I thank my hon. Friend for his. It is a tribute to his original work on the 1980 Act that the new Bill is so short. He deserves credit for that. The first of the Bill's two main elements is the opening up of the NHMF's statutory terms of reference to embrace a much wider range of worthwhile heritage projects. The second element concerns who is...
Mr Iain Sproat: Not a tremor of complacency had entered my voice on the matter. The devastating report on the finances, organisation, management and general efficiency of the British museum came not from the Government but from an independent report that was commissioned by the trustees. It was in that report that the suggestion was made that imposing entry charges was one way in which to make up the...
Mr Iain Sproat: I hope so. My hon. Friend raises a very important point, which we shall perhaps be able to go into in rather more depth in Committee when we consider particular examples. The hon. Member for Linlithgow mentioned New Hailes. The NHMF has been able to support the acquisition of New Hailes by the National Trust for Scotland, because the National Trust is a public body. If the present owner of...
