A serious financial measure?
Andrew Faulds
It has been announced in the House of Commons that the report stage of the Museums and Galleries Admission Charges Bill will be taken on October 18: thus a measure (enabling the Exchequer to economise to the extent of an estimated £1 million a year in expenditure on the running of museums and galleries owned by the nation) which cannot plausibly be greeted with a chorus of enthusiasm for the enlightened thinking behind it will reach its final phase. And it will do so some twenty-four months after the policy which it reflects was announced as part of an emergency package of financial measures. Some emergency! Some finance! Now that after so many months of discussion the critical issue turns out to be that the saving by the Treasury of one penny less than the putative £1 million is an outcome too grave for the Government to contemplate, some analysis may prove timely of the circumstances which have brought the latter to so serious a financial pass.
The first public indication of a policy of charging for admission popped out at an address delivered at Blackpool on October 8, 1970, in connection with the Conservative Party Conference, by the Paymaster General (Lord Eccles) as Minister responsible for the arts, who said: "If the building plans already in the pipe-line could be carried out we should have the finest group of major museums in Europe . . . and, if Parliament agreed, I would be ready to charge entrance fees to help finance the new building. I think the public would accept a charge that brought such benefits." And before three further weeks had elapsed, the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced in his mini-budget speech on October 27, 1970, that museum admission charges were to be imposed.
As emerged from the last report of the National Gallery, there was no prior consultation with the institutions concerning the merits or feasibility of the policy nor even the calculation of possible proceeds. Indeed, the first official notification which they all received from the Paymaster General's Department was a circular dated October 29, 1970, which (1) expressed the Paymaster General's regret that consultation or information was " not possible" before the Chancellor's statement, and (2) mentioned "the Treasury's estimate that the charges might bring in £1 million in a full year" (my italics). The first point is easily disposed of, since Lord Eccles's oft-repeated claim that consultation would have been contrary to constitutional practice has been authoritatively shot down on several occasions, and is now a dead duck. It is the second point — what we may call the raising of tribute money — which is pertinent to our argument.
This was the first predatory swoop of that bird of prey, which 'has hovered so menacingly ever since over the eighteen unfortunate institutions, in search of its £1 million: that is to say, the total net takings for the Treasury from which no concessionary backsliding, however slight, could be tolerated at whatever loss in other respects (including goodwill). Its probable ancestry turns out however to be somewhat dubious, since this irreducible £1 million is all too likely to have been procreated in conference corridors in the most casual fashion. Some arbitrary round sum had to be put forward from the start and any such project was unlikely to get off the ground if the figure chosen happened, to be less than £1 million. Moreover, the rough and ready calculators of October 1970 were optimistic enough to imagine that this sum would allow scope for liberal exceptions; thus, t'he institutions were asked in the original circular of October 29, 1970, whether in their opinion admission should be "cheaper or free in certain months or on certain days of the week" But when the statistics came to be investigated with greater care the probability emerged that the by then sacrosanct annual proceeds of £1 million could only be attained — and even that possibility became open to doubt — by insisting upon (in words of the Tate Gallery Trustees) "a most illiberal scheme." Yet the symbolic figure of £1 million itself had rapidly been put into due perspective by the sale just a month later of the Velazquez Pareja (perhaps a more perfect work than Titian's Actaeon) for well over two years' putative takings at all eighteen national museums.
As time passed, and the necessity arose to insert some figures in the Supply Estimates for 1972-73, it became clearer that the calculation of the takings was a matter of the merest guesswork. In January, 1972, I put down a qustion to the Secretary of State for Education and Science asking whether the gross annual receipts from admission charges "had the endorsement of all the institutions concerned; and, in the event of her Department alone being responsible for certain estimates, if she will specify the particular institutions to which this applied." On January 17, 1972, I received the following answer from the Under-Secretary (Hansard, col. 82): "The estimates are those submitted by the various institutions for the draft Supply Estimates for 1972-73." Endorsement?
Though the Paymaster General twice referred in the House of Lords on November 22, 1971 to the estimated gross takings at the National Gallery as £150,000 (Hansard, cols. 828 and 882), this figure was increased by as much as £20,000, in a written answer in the Commons to myself not long after (January 18, 1972, col. 139). But when I asked the Secretary of State in June, 1972, which of the two figures (£150,000 or £170,000) "the Gallery itself has supplied to her Department," the Under-Secretary replied as follows on June 16, 1972 (Hansard, col. 417): "The National Gallery, after consultation with the Department, included receipts of £170,000 from admission charges in its draft estimates for 1972-73. This is the figure included in the Supply Estimates presented to Parliament."
However, the truth has subsequently turned out to be that both these estimates, discrepant one with the other, were not only no more than guesswork, but the Department's guesswork and not that of the Gallery itself. How's that for slapdash mathematics! The fact is that most of the figures which appeared in the Supply Estimates, despite the disgracefully misleading replies to me from the Under-Secretary, did not originate from, and did not receive the endorsement of, t'he various institutions but were merely highly speculative figures concocted by a Department committed to an overall " target " of 1 million.
This is the unstable ground on which the Government is taking its intransigent stand against those eight institutions the trustees of Which desire (since in their j.udgement considerations of security wOuld permit it) at the very least to allow the public free access at certain restricted times. The Government's thesis is that if the speculative total of £1 million cooked up at Blackpool is to remain unimpaired, the institutions must make up, in some other way, the theoretical figures for each of them which have as a consequence been foisted upon them by the Department. And subsequently, and sadly, the Treasury fails to see its way to making the gesture of accepting any conceivable loss, however minirrial.
Of what order of magnitude might be the potential loss in the eight institutions which have expressed themselves as favourable in one form or another to the principle, respected in European countries, of free access at certain timesZ Turning to the Department's estimates (naturally not lacking in optimism!) of gross annual receipts we find the following figures. For the four English institutions £302,000 (figures taken from Hansard, January 18, 1972); and for the four Scottish institutions, £36,400 (figures taken from Hansard, March 15, 1972). Thus the total of all eight institutions (which are open to the public for six and a half days a week) would, be £338,400. To calculate the possible loss of revenue from a single free day in the week it would be reasonable to take one-sixth of £338,400, which would amount to £56,400. Accordingly, and in view of the fact that none of the eight institutions would contemplate free entry at weekends (because of conceivable security problems), it would be entirely fair to say that the loss to the Treasury of one free day at all eight in. stitutions would be unlikely to exceed £60,000 in a year. Must the Government really insist on penalising the institutions to extort this miserable sum from the public, on the score that the nation cannot face so damaging a loss? The Government's standpoint on this subject relies on two assumptions, indonv sistent with each other, which constitute an entirely new departure in this country. One is the unjustifiable relating in theorY of admission charges to the financing of capital works for the museums; but there is no connection whatsoever in accounti ancy between the two, and it is no conv pliment to the Chancellor of the Exchequer to suggest that he can only be induced by such a measure as this not further to delay capital works which have — alas! — for generations been a generation or two in arrear. The second assumption is more concrete, but no less objectionable. It is that the proceeds from admission charges ought henceforth to be regarded as an essential, as distinct from a token, factor in the financial, running of the national museums and galleries. But the fact is that, since the proportion of proceeds to running costs is never likely to be narrower than one to fifteen, the relative significance in that respect of admission Charges cannot reasonably be claimed to be more than purely peripheral. This issue — whether or not museums should be Systematically exploited as revenue raisers — is radically different from the argument as to whether or not their users should make a token contribution, at any rate partially optional, towards something which they value and enjoy. But under the Projected scheme the proceeds are simply to be treated as an economy in running expenses, not even as an extra bonus for the institutions themselves to dispose of Perhaps for acquisitions.
Let us look at the particular implications of the proposed system in connection with one of the institutions, the Wallace Collection. Here the situation is almost comically grotesque. The objects in this museum Constitute what may well be the most munificent artistic bequest to the public ever made in the history of the world: their value must be well above £100 mil
lion, possibly £200 million. The optimists at the Department reckon that the gross takings might amount to £16,000 a year (from Which no less than £5,270 has to be deducted as the cost of collection!). But it might be felt that centuries would have to elapse before Lady Wallace's account with the nation went into the red; and many might argue that there ought to be no charge on any day for the public to visit this collection. However, the Trustees (who are alone responsible) have decided to fall in with the Government's unworthy desire to cash in on Lady Wallace's generosity provided that the visitors whose interests they are there to protect are admitted free on one day in the middle of the week. The loss from this would be unlikely to exceed £3,000 a year, though in a recent reply to myself the Department implied that the free day might meet with such popularity that the loss occasioned by it would rise to one quarter of the estimated gross annual takings (£4,000). But this appears to be a prospect which the Paymaster General envisages with grave disquiet, judging by his remarks in the House of Lords on August 10, on the extraordinary grounds that "obviously to have a 'ree day without compensating increase in the charges would mean that the Wallace Collection was not collecting its fair proportion (!) of the £1 million."
Now the Board of the Wallace Collection acts under a Declaration of Trust of July 27, 1899, whereby its members are "at liberty at all times to make . . . rules, regulations and bye-laws . . . with respect to the times and conditions at and upon which the Wallace Collection shall be open to the public." Subject to the provisions of this Declaration of Trust they are an autonomous body, and it is no part whatever of their obligations to concern themselves with exploiting the public's desire to visit the Wallace Collection in order to make any particular contribution to what is so oddly described as that institution's "fair proportion" of the hypothetical £1 million which the Department hopes to squeeze out of the national museums as a whole. Lord Eccles has announced that he has asked the Chairman to see him, and all who take the responsibilities of trusteeship seriously will hope that when the meeting takes place the Chairman will make this clear, and will stand his ground on behalf of an independent Board of Trustees.
In conclusion, it should be borne in mind that after April 1 of next year the amounts from admission charges appropriated in aid of the votes of all the national museums are due to be reduced by 10 per cent creamed off by the Customs and Excise for value-added tax, amd that the overall cost of collection is estimated by the Departments as exceeding 16 per cent. There can indeed be little surprise that so many are asking themselves not only whether the policy launched so . hastily and so thoughtlessly in October, 1970, and maintained so obstinately since then, is really worthwhile, but whether there remains any sense in it at all.
Andrew Faulds is MP for Smethwick and Labour spokesman on the arts.
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