MPs warn against damaging cuts

The Culture Media and Sport Select Committee has just published its ‘Caring for our collections’ report focusing on the role that museums and archives play in preserving our heritage and the support they need to continue this successfully. The report is the result of an inquiry, which started in 2005, and aimed to raise the profile of heritage.  It was triggered by growing consternation in the heritage sector over the government’s attitude to heritage and the threat of funding cuts to support the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

The resulting report, published on 25 June 2007, urges Gordon Brown to at least maintain existing levels of funding for the Renaissance programme, to provide US-style tax incentives to attract private benefactors and to provide more support for museums to acquire new works.

The Select Committee was pleased to find that Renaissance had transformed many regional museums from a state of near collapse, but recognised that the revival has not reached all museums and the permanence of that revival is not guaranteed. It warned that without sustained and well-directed investment there is a serious risk that much of what has been achieved will disappear, throwing away the benefit from the investment already made. It recommends that Renaissance funding should, at the least, be sustained in the next Spending Review.

The report calls on the Department for Culture Media and Sport (DCMS) to monitor the impact of Renaissance on the wider museums community, not just museums that directly receive Renaissance funding. It urges the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) to address the needs of all museums, to ensure that no museum feels excluded from Renaissance benefits.

The Select Committee shared the sector’s concerns about the loss of funds from the heritage sector to the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.  It urges the government not to take further money from the Heritage Lottery Fund to make up any future shortfalls and finds it perverse that while museums and archives will be a significant part of the wider Olympic spectacle, their ability to take part is jeopardised by increasingly limited funds.

Regarding archives, the Select Committee was surprised that while the government agreed with the recommendations of the Archives Task Force, it had not provided any funding for their implementation. The report urges MLA to press DCMS to provide financial support to enable the archive sector to take forward the recommendations and generate its own 'renaissance'. The report also calls on MLA to work with archives across England to develop an equivalent for the most significant archive holdings and to find ways of helping archives make more effective approaches to potential funders.

In conclusion the Select Committee commends MLA for the achievements of Renaissance and hopes to see it champion archives in a similar way.

A full copy of the report is available below.

Caring for Collections report June 2007 (1448 kb)