Is the role of Government to govern?

I’ve signed up to the RSS feeds for They Work For You. It seems quite a few people have been taking an interest in the Portable Antiquities Scheme.

It’s useful because it means you can keep track of exchanges like this:

James Gray (North Wiltshire, Conservative):
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport what plans he has for the long-term future of the Portable Antiquities Scheme; and if he will make a statement.

Margaret Hodge (Minister of State (Culture, Creative Industries and Tourism), Department for Culture, Media & Sport)
The Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) is funded by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) and so any decisions on its future funding will be taken by the MLA. In recognition of the importance of the scheme, I am very pleased to be able to confirm that the MLA has announced that it intends to maintain current levels of support for the PAS in 2008-09. The MLA will consider options for future funding of the PAS in the context of its priorities for museum collections and public participation.

The PAS is of national importance and the MLA is committed to seeing it thrive and evolve. The MLA will continue to work with the British Museum and other stakeholders to build on the scheme’s success in advancing archaeological knowledge—for finders, museums and, most importantly, the wider public.

The feeds also inform you on longer exchanges like this one about the Loftus Saxon Treasures.

This is peculiar because Margaret Hodge appears to backflip part-way through the debate. She starts off well for instance she recognises the number of finds by the public is growing:

In 2006-07, the last financial year for which we have figures, the number of reported treasure items was 744, which was the highest figure for a single year ever. Indeed, it was up from 673 in the previous year, which again was a record figure at the time. Therefore, the data shows that, year on year since 1997, the number of reported finds has grown steadily. That does not give a picture of a resource that would appear in any way to be in terminal decline.

Treasure is a technical term here, and it’s stuff which comes under the Treasure Trove laws. It requires precious metal content in the find. The PAS is wider because it’s not a matter of monetary value whether or not an item is recorded. She recognises that work that the PAS does alongside the Treasure laws.

I cannot conclude a speech on the treasure system without also paying tribute to the excellent role that is played by the PAS. This scheme runs parallel to the treasure system and provides a network, as hon. Members have suggested, through which non-treasure material discovered by amateur archaeologists and other enthusiasts can be identified and recorded. The finder gets to find out more about her or his discovery; a bank of information is built up for the benefit of everyone through the publicly accessible database, and the finds can be displayed and interpreted for the benefit of the public.

The database that we now have covers more than 300,000 objects. It is available for everybody to use, free of charge, and anyone who wants to research the archaeology of their local area—or anyone else’s local area—can do just that. It does not matter whether someone is doing a postgraduate research degree at one of our top universities or a new entrant to secondary school in year 7 struggling with their homework; everyone has access to the same information. That is a really wonderful thing and represents a marvellous step forward in the democratisation of the study of our past.

So far it’s going well and then Richard Younger-Ross, a Liberal Democrat,* chips in:

The Minister paints a very rosy picture of the PAS. However, the reality is that funding for the scheme is likely to be frozen, which, in effect, is a cut. Considering the success of the scheme, will she make a very strong case to the Treasury for funding to be continued to the scheme at the rate of inflation, so that it can continue its good work?

Now everything changes. The PAS which was excellent and a wonderful thing in the space of a couple of minutes ago. Now that enthusiasm vanishes though she concedes it “does a good job”.

Margaret Hodge, Minister of State (Culture, Creative Industries) takes a photo-op at something which seems to be nothing to do with her.
Source: PAS.

What has gone wrong? Something she was happy to be associated with, that’s her smiling at a PAS photo-shoot on the right is suddenly not her problem. It’s a problem for Museums, Libraries and Archives, Renaissance in the Regions or possibly the Milk Marketing Board. Whatever it is, the PAS is nothing to do Culture or Heritage.

There’s something very odd when a Secretary of State is powerless to do anything about a scheme which should fall under her remit. Her statements that this is purely an MLA matter, and that’s the end of it. It’s possible she is right. That would imply her department is broken, badly broken.

It’s feasible, because she’s reliant on an allocated budget from the Treasury. However if it’s really got to the stage where the Treasury dictates where the money goes and what it is used for then isn’t it time to abolish the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and allocate its powers to a minor secretary in the Treasury? As it stands she’s left singing the praises, and rightly so, of a scheme which shows her department’s policies of public engagement are hugely successful. Then she’s forced into a humiliating climbdown when she tries to take credit for it. It could be practice.

As 2012 and the aftermath of the Olympics emerges DCMS is going to be the scapegoat for a huge amount of incompetence. Is the DCMS to the current government what Northern Ireland was to the goverment of the ’80s – a place to put an unpopular minister?

Margaret Hodge is the MP who nominated Tony Blair for leadership of the Labour Party in 1994.

*In the USA it’s a term of abuse. In the UK it’s a political party.