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Museums and Galleries

Extraordinarily, it declared a loss of £140 million pounds last year. There is irrationality about this world, some of which perhaps applies to the art world, too. Fashion, questions of attribution and provenance, and collectors’ choices all play their part. The way through—I have touched on this—is to begin by making better use of existing tax regimes and mechanisms. Take tax relief, for example. As I have already said, several good concessions are already in place to encourage private and corporate giving, but take-up has not been as wide as we might have expected. The Government are considering ways of addressing this, and I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, for securing this debate today and to all noble Lords for airing these issues once again. The most interesting thing about the debate is that almost everything that has been said has been directed not at me but at the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The noble Lord, Lord Howarth, has made several very interesting points that will definitely set us thinking. Matters of taxation are, of course, for my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer, but I welcome the noble Lord’s helpful suggestions for a number of imaginative ways to increase the resources available to allow museums and galleries to add to their collections. These will certainly be worth exploring further, although I fear that creating a new paramount list would count as unreasonable interference in the art market and in the fundamental right of owners to the free enjoyment of their property, including the right to sell it at the market price. I do not know whether noble Lords are aware of this, but France recently tried to buy a van Gogh from a private collector, arguing that the price reflected France’s inalienability. The owner took France to the European Court of Human Rights; France lost and had to pay four times the price that was originally asked for the picture.