Dundee Heritage Trust

Part of the debate – in the Scottish Parliament at 5:35 pm on 18 September 2002.

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Photo of Michael Russell Michael Russell Scottish National Party 5:35, 18 September 2002

Well, no doubt some people will believe that.

Verdant Works is extremely important and I was pleased to go there with Irene McGugan and Shona Robison last year. Verdant Works is not unique in Scotland by any means. Yesterday I was at the Scottish Maritime Museum in Irvine, which has laid off a substantial number of staff and faces a bleak future—yet it is one of the industrial museums that has apparently been saved.

I heard Ian Jenkins's eloquent plea for more time and more debate. The problem with that is that with every day and month that passes we lose parts of Scotland's heritage, because the process has taken so long. We are now in yet another consultation process leading to a conference in November.

In the accidentally sent e-mail, the minister says:

"It is highly unlikely that a positive response can be made to the central demand for reasons which will become clearer tomorrow."

The e-mail was sent the day before the comprehensive spending review announcement. We knew then and we know now that there is no more money for this task. The problem is that the situation cannot be resolved without more resources.

I have slight sympathy for the minister, because an accidental set of circumstances has come together. Individual enterprise put together the successful package in Dundee, just as individual enterprise put together something very important in the mining museum at Wanlockhead. Now we require a national approach to the issue of what is valuable within our heritage and how we sustain it nationally. We have to find the line that we can draw between local provision, which local authorities and others support, and national provision. That line has not been drawn and consequently museums such as Verdant Works and attractions such as Discovery are suffering, because they are getting neither one thing nor the other. They are not getting enough local authority funding, because local authorities are tight for funding, and they are not getting enough national funding, because we have not got a national structure in place.

The minister can take the position that her predecessors have taken—they are thinking about the problem and they will eventually come back with a solution. With every day that they think about it, we have more problems. They could accept that it is not a perfect solution to say, "Let's take what we have and build on it." We should take the things of national importance that exist, such as Verdant Works and Discovery and a variety of other attractions, stabilise them and make them part of a national structure. I suggest to the minister that that should be tied in closely with the Royal Museum of Scotland and National Museums of Scotland structure, which seems to be the right basis on which to build. Having done that, we should proceed.

Of course there will be losers in that. Some of the smaller museums in local authority control will be problematic. There will be issues to discuss, such as the great collections in Glasgow. The minister must commit herself to a national structure now. In the minister's response I do not want to hear the words, "feasibility studies", "consultants' reports", "more time", "more debate" and "marketing assistance". The reality is that there is a real need now. We have had three years of debate on museums. Why do we not have action?