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Heritage

First, I declare an interest as the chairman of the Historic Chapels Trust—it is a non-financial interest, because it is a voluntary trust—and as the president of the North of England Civic Trust. I also represent a constituency in which English Heritage is a big player, taking responsibility for the walls and barracks of Berwick-upon-Tweed, for Norham castle and for providing advice on a huge number of listed buildings. Let me start by saying how valuable the Select Committee’s report is and how indebted we are to the Committee for identifying a whole range of issues. Not all those issues relate to money; some relate to legislation, priorities and the attention that should be given to aspects of our heritage. When we discuss British identity and community cohesion, it is important to know where we and the component elements of our community have come from so that we can understand where we are going and how we get there. A knowledge and understanding of history, particularly as displayed in the buildings that communities put up, is therefore immensely valuable. Indeed, it starts to lead to a shared understanding and to shared ownership. That is particularly true of the redundant buildings with which I deal in the trust and the buildings with which the Churches Conservation Trust deals. It is important to involve wider communities, including people of different religions or no religion, in caring for buildings that show the part that religions have played in our history. Let me make a general point about the Committee’s findings as regards the real-terms decline in English Heritage’s grant. This is a serious matter, but the Government’s attitude to it, as set out in their formal response to the Committee, is complacent. They say:"““English Heritage is funded at a level which is sufficient for it to discharge its responsibilities and to deliver to a high standard.””" Of course English Heritage discharges its responsibilities and delivers to a high standard, but it does so only to the limited extent that its funding allows, and a real-terms decline will further limit the extent to which it can discharge those responsibilities. That is universally recognised in the heritage field. There is real doubt as to whether the comprehensive spending review will address the issue, particularly when, as the Committee identified, the Government’s letter to the Department did not prioritise its heritage responsibilities. At the same time, we have the anxiety about the Heritage Lottery Fund, which is a crucial player in this regard, because its grant-giving ability is impaired in various ways. It could be impaired by the impact of the Olympics, particularly if that impact becomes greater. It is also impaired by the great pressure to apply criteria that are sometimes difficult to maintain. My trust looks after some extremely remote buildings, and it is completely unrealistic to expect it to identify the number of people from ethnic minorities who pass through their doors in an average week. Some of those buildings are high up on mountain sides in the middle of a forest in areas where there are no ethnic minorities. That is not to say that we cannot or do not try to show ethnic minorities the importance of their buildings and of buildings with a similar history. One building that the trust looks after was built by German immigrants who were sugar boilers in the east end of London. It was built in the 18th century and stands there to this day, highlighting how communities came into this country and became partners with us in our heritage. None the less, the HLF is under too much pressure to tick boxes that are not always appropriate. As I said, I am worried about the potential of the Olympics. The games are, of course, an opportunity because many of the people who come to Britain to watch Olympic sports will also want to see our heritage and historic buildings, and many of them will visit such buildings. The two things should not get out of kilter. Before I deal specifically with places of worship, let me refer to VAT as it affects the wider range of heritage buildings. As the Committee identified, the Chancellor has sought to help places of worship in respect of VAT. However, it remains a foolish distortion that, for most other buildings, it is better to rebuild than to repair from a VAT standpoint, and that needs to be addressed. On places of worship, let me welcome in passing English Heritage’s inspired campaign to direct people to the value for our heritage of the inspirational buildings that the Churches have put up over the years. Let me also pay tribute in passing to the Churches Conservation Trust, which does a fantastic job with a very large portfolio of buildings. There are certain differences between that trust and the Historic Chapels Trust, but it does an enormous job. The Historic Chapels Trust was set up to deal with buildings—other than Church of England parish churches—that had become redundant. In particular, it deals with buildings that have precious but inflexible interiors and which might lose some of their valuable features if converted for some other use. There is an error in the Government’s response to the report because it describes the trust as dealing with non-conformist buildings whereas in fact the trust was set up to deal with all the categories I have mentioned. The buildings it looks after include three Catholic churches, the Shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes in Blackpool—a 1950s building of great interest—and an 18th century Catholic chapel. In future we would expect to have synagogues and some day maybe a mosque among the portfolio of redundant buildings that we look after. The Committee has been kind to the trust and in the report commends it"““for its vigour in raising funds and its success in sustaining itself””" I fear that we may have oversold ourselves in our evidence by demonstrating the extent of what we have been able to do. That has led the Committee to say, ““Well the Churches Conservation Trust has a real hard struggle ahead, but the Historic Chapels Trust is doing a wonderful job””. We will be careful of that in any future evidence that we give. The Churches Conservation Trust is trying to do some of the things that we were forced to do from the beginning, such as extending community involvement and building up groups of friends and local committees to help support buildings. We had to do that from day one.