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Heritage

Any hon. Member who speaks in this debate could say that their constituency has a rich and varied heritage, and mine is no different. Indeed, it is added to by the fact that we are a port and therefore have lots of industrial archaeology, which I shall touch on. First, however, I want to look at the national and international picture. We cannot have a National Gallery unless it has money to buy pictures. Without that it becomes a morgue. We cannot have the V and A, the National Portrait Gallery and the John Donne appeal or the British Museum if they have no capacity to buy. They will constantly depend on charity or rich people to buy them pieces. In the world market, the voracious Gulbenkian and Getty organisations, which have substantially more money than the Government can put to a fund, will always outbid us in Sotheby’s, Christie’s or in private deals. The problem is that in the 1990s, the Conservative Government mixed the two budgets. There used to be a separate fund for buying art, which was changed in the cuts of that decade and merged with the fund for the running costs of museums. That was a mistake. We must fight to have separate funds for running museums and for buying pieces. That is critical because we will not always be able to save our fantastic pictures. I am reminded of Joseph Nye’s great book on soft diplomacy. The British Museum is doing magnificent work in Beijing and Addis Ababa, and the V and A is also doing great work. They do countless things, but they have no budget for them. That should be part of our overseas soft diplomacy budget. If we do the British Council, the Open University and BBC World Service, we must find, in the Foreign Office, the money to do soft diplomacy with our arts and music. It is wrong that all that has to come out of one major budget for our major institutions. I hope that when the White Paper comes, the funds will be separated into three: one for purchasing, one for running costs and one for soft power overseas. Since 9/11, we have lost our ideas about what soft power can do. Part of that soft power is our music, art and, fortunately, through the English language, poetry and literature. It is difficult, when we are bidding against institutions such as the Guggenheim, which is building different Guggenheims all over the world, and the Getty Foundation. If we do not resolve that crisis, we are in danger. My second point is about the lottery. The original lottery Act in 1996 said that a certain amount of tax would go to the Treasury. I have looked into this and spoken to the Treasury—I am fed up of talking to it—and have been told that the reason for the 12p tax was that when people go into shops to buy their tickets, they displace that 12p. The thinking is that someone will go to a shop to buy some milk and bread but then think, ““Oh no, I’ll have a lottery ticket.”” That simply is not true. They will go in and buy the bread, the milk, stamps and a lottery ticket, so the premise behind the tax is wrong. I do not know how we got away with that—it was not Labour, but it was wrong then and it is wrong today. If that 12p in the pound was divvied up between heritage and the Olympics, everyone in the House would be thrilled, because we would not have to raid London taxpayers for the Olympics, and we would not be raiding the rest of the lottery budgets, which is what we want. I urge the Minister and his Department to go back to the Treasury and fight. When I was on the Select Committee, there was, amazingly, an investigation by the Treasury into that 12p tax—I remember interviewing the Treasury about it—but it went into a void and was never completed. That was six years ago. Clearly, the Treasury is working out how to help, but we are in danger here; we need that 12p. It should be the taxpayer who pays for the lottery, and all of the money from the 12ps should be used for what we need.