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Science and Heritage (Science and Technology Committee Report)

My Lords, first, I congratulate my noble friend Lady Sharp and her committee on what I think everyone in this debate has described as a superb report. The case that she, her fellow committee members and all Members of this Committee have made is unassailable. I shall make just a few brief remarks to counterpoint some of those made by other noble Lords. The notable thing about the report—and my noble friend was in some senses quite upbeat about it—is that the results have already come through. There are some congratulations to be given here, particularly to the British Library, the British Museum, the NMSI, the National Trust and other parties in the heritage and museum community. Interestingly, the British Library is putting on an exhibition at its centre for conservation. I think that, after this debate, all of us will be looking forward to seeing a display of some of these conservation skills. The exhibition is extremely well timed. The British Library also made a great contribution in its evidence to the Select Committee. Congratulations are also in order to English Heritage for pressing ahead despite the rather discouraging noises made and the obstacles put in its way by the DCMS, and for the fact that it picked up the idea of the establishment of a secretary. Congratulations are also in order to the Arts and Humanities Research Council. We heard today about the effective leadership that it has shown on points made in the report. It has established a dedicated research programme for heritage science, with a programme director already appointed. In particular, I congratulate the conservation community on the recent merger of Icon and the Institute of Conservation Science, which brings together, as we know, the scientific and practitioner communities and will help to tackle the sometimes weak communications between them, to which the report drew attention. Action has already been taken and Icon has used heritage lottery money to create a one-year internship in conservation science which will start in September 2007. The HLF money was given to Icon to support training in areas of serious skills shortages which were putting conservation in danger. The committee can already take considerable credit for some of the actions which have been taken as a result of its report. However, one set of people who do not emerge with credit from this debate are those at the DCMS. I will not be quite as trenchant as my noble friend on that—I could not possibly be—but I intend to take the committee through some criticisms that emerge clearly from the report and are not addressed in the response. It is clear from the committee’s report that Britain has been a world leader in conservation science. But because of a lack of leadership, strategy and resources, and as a result of a lack of priority given to this area by DCMS, Britain has lost that leadership and risks declining further in its position. No one reading the report can be in any doubt about the value of conservation—or what Members of the Committee prefer to call heritage science. Conservation is the science of how we preserve artefacts and cultural documents for future generations and restore them to public access. But it is also—as a number of Members of the Committee, including my noble friend, pointed out—the sheer economic value of these items in terms of their attraction for tourism and the public. I particularly like the phrase which the noble Lord, Lord Broers, used when he talked about ““treasures””. That is exactly what they are. My passion happens to be books, archival records and buildings, but it could be the red Jaguar described by the noble Lord—