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Heritage

It is a pleasure to follow my good friend, the hon. Member for Wantage (Mr. Vaizey). We were together last night at the Oxford Union, and he roundly beat me in debate by seven votes. I congratulate the hon. Member for Maldon and East Chelmsford (Mr. Whittingdale) on the work of his Committee. I am particularly grateful that the Committee decided to inquire into this subject. Its current inquiry into museums, libraries and archives is hugely important. Much has been said today about strengthening my elbow in relation to conversations with the Treasury, and I am grateful that so many Members from all parties have said that heritage is important. That point came up in discussion; the hon. Member for Salisbury (Robert Key) certainly raised it. We have been in a place as a country where it was deemed that there was no such thing as society. To refer to my party, we have also been in a place where the ““new”” of new Labour suggested that modernity was everything. I do not think that we are in that place any more. It is absolutely clear that our history, social cohesion, sense of community and sense of civic pride is absolutely underpinned by our heritage and culture. It is hugely important, and I am grateful for all that hon. Members have said in that regard. That is my position and that of the Government on these matters. Since becoming a Minister for culture, I have thought a great deal about how our shared past helps to define identity within the communities of 21st century England, and it seems to me that this sector is absolutely central to the very helpful debate that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor has started on Britishness. My Department has a huge contribution to make to that discussion, and I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor knows and understands that. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State wrote about the role of the Government in protecting and improving the built environment in her essay ““Better Places to Live””, which was published in 2005. In that essay, she said that decision making about the built environment could not be left to an elite who claimed to understand such things better than the rest of us; that we needed to increase public engagement and widen the sense of ownership of our historic environment. She also acknowledged that, if we are to preserve the things that embody our history and our identity, and leave a strong legacy for future generations, we need a system of protection that is prepared, when necessary, to make unpopular decisions that go against current fashion or commercial pressures. Since the publication of that essay, my Department, together with English Heritage, the Heritage Lottery Fund and the National Trust, has carried out a great deal of work on the value that the public attach to heritage, including a major conference a year ago today on the public value of heritage. We are working to improve the rigour of the evidence base and raise the profile of the built and historic environment in public debate. I am pleased about some of the figures that hon. Members have been able to cite. A great many of those figures came out of the work done to establish and verify that this matter is hugely popular with our constituents throughout the country. Part of that debate has been the consultations that we have completed on the review of the heritage protection system, which have paved the way for us to publish concrete proposals to increase the openness, efficiency and effectiveness of the heritage protection system. I shall say a little more about that a bit later. It is important for me to point out the amount allocated by the Department to all of its sponsored bodies with responsibilities for our cultural heritage in this country, lest the debate and the report give the impression that a lot of money is not going into the sector. In fact, half of the overall departmental expenditure in the last comprehensive spending review—more than £1.6 billion in grant in aid—was allocated to English Heritage, our sponsored museums and the British Library. That is a clear indication of the strength of the Government’s commitment to the protection and preservation of our heritage. The Committee also highlighted the importance of encouraging a culture of preventative maintenance.