Bill Carmichael: The case for overseas visitors being asked to pay to enter '˜free' museums

According to Judith Cummins, Labour MP for Bradford South, not a single person on the Science Museum’s board of trustees that made the decision has any links to Bradford or even Yorkshire, and there seems to be have been little, if any, local consultation.

The London-based “great and the good” who run these things simply decided that moving the collection to the capital would make it more “accessible”.

Accessible for whom exactly? Certainly not for anyone who lives outside the M25!

It is hard to disagree with Simon Cooke, leader of the Conservative group on Bradford Council, that the decision represents “an appalling act of cultural vandalism”.

London is fast becoming a cultural black hole that sucks in treasures from around the UK and concentrates them in a few square miles that is expensive and inconvenient for most Britons to visit.

So I have come up with a plan that is practical, fair and would help citizens from outside London see some of the finest art in the world.

I dreamt up this idea while waiting in a queue at the National Gallery with my family.

I’d especially wanted the children to see one of my favourite pieces of art – the Wilton Diptych, a private altarpiece painted for King Richard II in about 1395 and an object of breathtaking, spellbinding beauty

How wonderful that we can see it for “free”, as the National Gallery charges no entry fee! Yet if you are a UK taxpayer you are not actually getting anything for free – in fact you have paid your entry fee many times over in your taxes.

The gallery is only able to offer “free” entry as a result of massive subsidies from the public purse.

Even worse, if you live outside the South East you have to pay a huge amount to see the treasures of the gallery. Our train fares alone cost the thick end of £500 and then we had accommodation costs on top. Many families outside of London simply cannot afford such a trip. Sadly, for many Northern art lovers, the Wilton Diptych may as well be housed on the moon.

And while I was waiting in the queue, I listened the voices of people around 
me in tongues from all over the world. I never heard a single English voice – still less any accents from the north or Scotland.

For these lucky, well-heeled people, who can well afford a holiday in the UK, entry to the gallery really is free – they of course pay no income tax to the UK Treasury.

I’ve also been lucky enough over recent years to visit some of mainland Europe’s top galleries. The contrast couldn’t be starker – in every one you have to pay an entry fee.

A visit to the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, for example, will set you back 26.50
euro (£20.51), the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam is 17.50 euro (£13.55) and the Van Gogh Museum in the same city 17 euro (£13.16.).

In Paris the Louvre costs 15 euro (£11.61), the Pompidou Centre 14 euro (£10.84) and the Musee d’Orsay 12 euro (£9.29).

The price doesn’t appear to put many people off – in fact the Uffizi is so busy you have to book your slot well in advance.

Yet in London all the big galleries – the Victoria and Albert, the National Portrait Gallery, the Royal Academy, Tate Britain, Tate Modern and many others are all “free” – paid for by British taxpayers who can’t afford to visit them. The main beneficiaries of this perk are well-off foreigners.

So here is the plan; all the London galleries should immediately introduce a charge – say £20 a head – for entry. If you are a UK taxpayer, unemployed, a child or a student, you pay nothing.

The money raised is then used to subsidise museums, like Bradford’s NMM, in the North, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, and to keep important collections there intact.

And if there is any money left over, 
how about organising a grand UK
touring exhibition of some of the treasures from the London galleries? 
So instead of the photography
exhibition moving south, we’d see 
the glorious Wilton Diptych coming north!