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Meeting of the Parliament 10 September 2013

10 Sep 2013 · S4 · Meeting of the Parliament

Item of business

Historic Environment Strategy

Ferguson, Patricia Lab Glasgow Maryhill and Springburn Watch on SPTV

In opening the debate for Labour, I endorse the cabinet secretary’s sentiments concerning John Bellany. He will be sadly missed, but he has left a significant legacy of work that we can all share and be proud of for many years to come.

We on the Labour side of the chamber welcome the opportunity to discuss the important but sometimes overlooked subject of our historic environment. The importance of our environment to our sense of place cannot be denied. It shapes how we live, work and play, and it helps to give us our cultural identity. Our historic environment provides us with evidence of the creativity of our ancestors and gives us important clues as to how they lived.

Reusing historic buildings is, if it is done sensibly and appropriately, an excellent way of recycling, as historic buildings are invested with a great deal of energy and materials. I welcome my colleague Sarah Boyack’s intervention in that regard.

The historic environment is an important asset that makes Scotland a place that people want to visit and which we can share with our visitors, and it provides skilled employment for many. The recently published Scottish household survey indicated that people in the most deprived areas of our country are the least likely to visit a cultural venue, and our historic environment is particularly useful in that respect.

I am sure that many of my constituents do not think about culture or even heritage when they visit Maryhill Burgh Halls, the winter gardens in Springburn park—which are now sadly in decay but, it is hoped, not for much longer—or Lambhill Stables. Those places are particularly important in giving people a cultural grounding as well as a sense of place and identity.

Scottish Labour broadly welcomes the intent of the strategy that we are discussing today, and we will make some comments—both critical and supportive—in today’s debate. On one issue—the merger of Historic Scotland and the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland—we profoundly disagree with the Scottish Government’s proposals, but I will come to that later.

I welcome the idea of mainstreaming the historic environment into the public decision-making process, but before we begin such an exercise we must have robust benchmarking data and an agreed way of measuring progress. Without that, it will be impossible to tell whether the new way of working is successful.

The Scottish Government proposes that a new definition of the historic environment should be established, and it has invited organisations working in the sector to contribute to developing it. However, the broad nature of the new definition seems to include collections that are held by galleries and museums, and I hope that the cabinet secretary will, in her closing remarks, expand on the way in which that will work. There seems to be some, perhaps understandable, unease in the museums and galleries sector about how the strategy will affect it. It would be helpful to have some reassurance on that on the record.

I now come to the area that gives me most concern: the proposed merger of Historic Scotland and RCAHMS. I put on record my appreciation of the work that each of those organisations does and has done for many years. In particular, RCAHMS has an international reputation that might be in danger of being lost or, at the very least, diluted by the proposed merger. In the past few years, Historic Scotland has had a slightly troubled time and has lost some very experienced staff. The time is therefore not right to merge the two organisations. The National Trust for Scotland has pointed out that, although an options appraisal exercise has been undertaken in respect of RCAHMS, no such similar exercise has been done for the functions of Historic Scotland, leaving the sector trying to work out the implications of that.

In their responses to the consultation, many organisations have highlighted the potential problems of establishing the new organisation as what seems to be a state charity, perhaps with less access to public funding but with an increased emphasis on the need to commercialise its activity and to access charitable giving. That might seriously undermine the fundraising efforts and work of the many charitable organisations that are already working in the area.

There is also something fundamentally wrong with the idea of a state charity being the regulatory body and competing with voluntary organisations for funds.

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Meeting of the Parliament 10 September 2013

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