Covid-19: Museums, Galleries and Historic Buildings

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Thursday 21st May 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, I hope I am being heard. Many practical proposals have been made and many urgent needs expressed. I want to raise a more general point. We have been concentrating, quite properly, on health—physical, mental and social—over these last weeks. We are in the middle of a heated discussion about the place of schools in the way we recover from this lockdown and its attendant circumstances. I want the Minister to assure me that she will go into the Cabinet room with her colleagues and fly a flag to ensure that the cultural, social and sporting aspects of human life will be seen as integral, alongside economic and other factors, in the recovery that we all long for. We cannot allow this to be deprioritised, marginalised and minimised. This is part of the health of the nation, and we want a Minister to champion the cause.