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Science and Heritage (Science and Technology Committee Report)

I declare an interest as the chairman of the National Museum of Science and Industry, which presented two memoranda to your Lordships’ inquiry and gave oral evidence through Hazel Newey. I will speak, if I may, with the perspective of a chairman of one of the great national museums and galleries, but of course I do not represent my colleagues. NMSI is a family of museums, each with its own well known brand: the Science Museum in South Kensington; the National Railway Museum in York with its outstation at Locomotion in Shildon, County Durham; and the National Media Museum in Bradford. Each of those has a crucial role in its own field. The Science Museum, which is nearly 100 years old in its present form, had from its foundation a central role in the advancement of the popular understanding of science and technology. Unlike the Natural History Museum, which has for many years been a research organisation in receipt of research council funds with which it does basic science, the Science Museum has not been funded as a research organisation as such but as the national centre for science outreach and engagement. That is absolutely vital work—increasingly vital—but it is not, or not normally, the kind of basic research that the Research Councils fund. It is a separate mission: seeking to keep the public from turning against science and to keep able young people coming into science and engineering. Our curators have produced a steady series of excellent books of value both to the general reader and to the scholar, such as the recent Frank Whittle by Andrew Nahum, and Penicillin: Triumph and Tragedy by Robert Bud, both of which I strongly recommend to your Lordships, but which are not the result of research council funding. There may be some confusion about that. For us to have academic analogue status, for which we have applied, would be an interesting development and an addition to our historic mission; I would welcome it. But it would not necessarily mean of itself that we would do more of what your Lordships have succinctly called ““heritage science””, any more than the NHM’s work on gene sequencing, the taxonomy of ants, or whatever, is heritage science as your Lordships have defined it. We might be applying for work in the history of medicine, or the technology of outreach to children on science. It is as well to keep the two subjects—academic analogue status, and the need for better focused heritage science as your Lordships have defined it—separate and clear. It is the second which your Lordships’ report did such valuable work in raising: the need for more and better organised heritage science in the United Kingdom. What I want to say today is simple. Your Lordships’ report was absolutely right to say that it is vital that the DCMS should be clear that we in the national museums and galleries cannot allow the objective of extending access to our collections for this generation to put those collections at threat for future generations. Our statutes do not allow us to do so; all of us are statutorily charged with the care of our collections. Section 2(1)(a) of the National Heritage Act 1983 says of the Science Museum—and an exactly similar rubric covers every other national museum and gallery—that our first duty is to, "““care for, preserve, and add to the objects in their collections””." Of course we all want more through the door and on the website—our grand total last year, of which we are very proud, was 15 million—but if there is not enough money to preserve and show, we must preserve first. I must tell the Committee that we are on a knife edge. This Government have done quite well in our current funding up to now, and they deserve credit for that; but in capital there is a huge backlog, and in conservation there is also a huge backlog. On the latter point, your Lordships’ report sadly but entirely correctly observed, at paragraph 3.37: "““There seems little prospect that the United Kingdom will follow the example of the Dutch Delta Plan, however admirable, not least because the process of conducting a national audit of conservation needs would certainly demonstrate the need for major public investment””." So it would. We are like a householder who does not want to go into the attic because he knows he might find dry rot there. We do not, as a nation, want to know the truth. But the truth is that there is a huge, unquantified backlog of needed conservation work in the national museums, as there is of capital work. Some of this does not necessarily need new science; it needs the application of well known techniques. We at NMSI in South Kensington have massive and unique holdings of engineering drawings, for example, which need paper conservation work, which is well understood. We have recently acquired the Royal Photographic Society archive—a collection of photographs of worldwide artistic and historic significance—for Bradford. All the work that goes with that is well understood, but there is a big backlog. We have thousands of items in store at Wroughton near Swindon in Second World War hangars, which themselves are in danger of leaking and deteriorating. We have a magnificent project there, rightly called Inspire, which will go before the public jury on TV this autumn to argue for Big Lottery funding, aimed explicitly at conserving this huge reserve collection and putting it on show. The raising of the status and the effectiveness of the national effort in conservation, and the science and technology which underpins that, is urgent and vital. The DCMS must recognise that the laudable pressure for ever-increased access cannot be at the expense of the conservation of the collections, and that we need a much greater effort to harness modern science and technology to show us how to do that effectively. Why do I think that the organisational recommendations of your Lordships’ report are so important? What difference would a chief scientist at DCMS make? On this I am with the noble Lord, Lord Howarth. Having a champion and an organisational focus does matter. Perhaps I may blow my own trumpet for a moment—as no one else does it, I sometimes find it necessary to undertake the task. I was the founder of the current structure for science and technology in government, since I established the OST—now the OSI—restructured the research councils, and appointed the first director-general of Research Councils. I have already paid tribute to the Government’s funding of basic science itself. I think, however, that by establishing focused advocacy for science and technology in government, our structure helped good Ministers such as the noble Lord, Lord Sainsbury, subsequently to use it—and improve it—to get more money and to win battles in Whitehall. The same will be true now on this lesser and subsidiary subject. If we have a strong chief scientist appointed at DCMS to be an intelligent customer for, among other things, heritage science, and to help steer the admirable initiatives taken by English Heritage and the AHRC in response to your Lordships’ report, then, over time, there will be hope of getting both more money and better targeting of money. Without that champion, any strategy will be likely to fall by the wayside. I should make one other point. Your Lordships’ report was on science and heritage and coined the phrase ““heritage science””. I emphasise the very wide range not only of scientific disciplines but also of technology and craft skills that need to be involved. That is why we also need the overview from somewhere, and best from the chief scientist. We certainly need to apply very high scientific techniques, but we also need the engineering skills to rebuild the Flying Scotsman, which we are doing in York, andthe craft skills to manage stone work, metal work and the rest. It goes wider than the remit of any research council. We need a synoptic view that will encourage, among other things, co-operation among different institutions with scarce skills. We need to go from the capacity to investigate the authenticity of a Raphael to the capacity to find substitutes for asbestos in the gasket of that most beautiful of all racing sports cars, the D-type Jaguar. I therefore welcome the opportunity that this debate offers to reinforce the need for a fuller and more vigorous response to the report. Incidentally, I congratulate Icon on the effective way in which it has helped to keep the issues before us. But I warn your Lordships that, if there are serious cuts in national museum and gallery funding in the next spending review, then Mr Neil MacGregor, that greatest of museum directors, was absolutely right when he said in evidence to the committee that research budgets—and one might add capital spending and all the rest of the less visible spending—will once again be the first budgets to suffer, to the great loss of future generations. In that case, we will be allowing to deteriorate what we are all charged, and statutorily charged, to preserve—our national heritage.