Top museum
facing axe 
as cuts loom

tourist destinations in the UK,” he said. “The Government must stop and think.”

Bradford South MP Gerry Sutcliffe, a former DCMS Minister, said losing the media museum “will kill Bradford stone dead.”

“We are trying to market ourselves as a city of culture and media,” he said. “This will kill us.”

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Mr Sutcliffe said he suspected the Science Museums Group was using the spending review as a “ploy” to shut the museum down.

“They never liked the idea of it being in Bradford in the first place – we have been fighting a running battle,” he said.

“There is a nasty metropolitan snobbery about such a prestigious museum being out in the ‘provinces’.

“If those elements in the London Science Museum who believe the North to be a cultural wasteland think we’ll let go of our jewels easily, they are in for a nasty shock.”

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Online campaigns and petitions were already up and running last night, calling for all three northern museums to be saved.

DCMS sources stressed Culture Secretary Maria Miller has not yet agreed departmental cuts with the Treasury and dismissed the 10 per cent figure as “speculation”.

A spokesman said: “It would be inappropriate to speculate on the outcome of the spending review.

“This is an operational matter for the Science Museum Group, which has to address a large projected operating deficit from 2014 onwards, and is assessing a range of options to address this situation.”

Comment: Page 12.

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