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Heritage

As I was saying before the Divisions, I have one message, and it is for the Minister. Although those people who are concerned to ensure that the great cathedrals of England, their great parish churches or churches in retirement survive have had success in raising funds in the past, we cannot assume that they will be successful in the future. The market for finance is changing. St. Paul’s cathedral in the heart of London has the City of London to draw on. The cathedral has recently been massively successful in raising a huge budget for repair and conservation. However, the City has changed. There are fewer great institutions controlled by boards in London, and their numbers will continue to decline. The big decisions about which projects to back are made in Bonn, Berlin, New York and Paris, and the going will become tougher for cathedrals, even those that are strategically placed to raise money, such as St. Paul’s and Canterbury. The second area on which I sound a note of warning to the Minister and to the Committee concerns the Churches Conservation Trust. The right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed was right to draw Members’ attention to the difference between the Historic Chapels Trust, which brilliantly manages a small number of buildings, and the Churches Conservation Trust, which has about 350 grade I or grade II* buildings. This morning we had a trustee meeting. We had a report from just one deanery of one diocese in this country, which is reviewing the number of graded church buildings that it needs. If that one deanery in one diocese decided to go for redundancy on all those buildings that it does not now require for its parish system, it would flood the trust. We obviously hope that the deanery, the diocese and the Church Commissioners will resist a trend of that nature. However, I again emphasise that just because the trust has successfully taken on all the churches of outstanding merit that the commissioners wish to vest with it in the past, that does not necessarily mean success in the future. As the Minister well knows and as the Committee notes in its report, our budget over a six-year period has been cut in real terms. That brings me back to my first question. There will be lots of answers to the question of what people identify with being English, but it is difficult to give a sensible answer without thinking about our great ecclesiastical buildings, be they cathedrals or churches. I end on a note of slight disappointment with one of the comments that the Chairman of the Committee made. I agreed so much with his other comments, which were immensely valuable, but he said that he had one last point to make and one last great institution to turn to. I thought for a moment that he was going to refer to the Churches Conservation Trust, the Cathedrals Fabric Commission or the Historic Churches Preservation Trust, for it is within local communities and civil society that the great treasures of our ecclesiastical and built heritage are kept. I had not realised how far the review by the Leader of the Opposition had gone. Far from the Chairman referring to civil society, he referred to local government as the other big player. Local government is of course the other big player. However, because the voluntary sector and civil society have done the business in the past, it would be foolish for the House or the Government to think that they can continue to do so without increased support from taxpayers—the Government have no money; the money is taxpayers’ money—on all the criteria that the Committee lists. Not only do many taxpayers contribute directly from their own pockets but, to judge from their actions, would clearly wish the Government not to cut back but to increase their expenditure. I hope that the Minister will not only take that message away, but deploy it with his usual skill in the final round of negotiations with our friendly Chancellor.