Oral Answers to Questions

Pam Cox Excerpts

Thursday 3rd July 2025 Commons Chamber

The Secretary of State was asked—

[Pam Cox (Colchester) (Lab)]

1. What assessment her Department has made of the potential impact of the Spending Review 2025 on the heritage sector.

[The Minister for Creative Industries, Arts and Tourism (Chris Bryant)]

I want to pay tribute to the Chancellor of the Exchequer for the way she conducted the spending review. In the words of Diana Ross, she reached out and touched our Department with £8.2 billion, meaning we can make this world a better place. For the heritage sector, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport is already investing an additional £20 million this year through the heritage at risk and heritage revival funds.

[Pam Cox]

Last month, I was pleased to host a true heritage champion, Dame Mary Beard, in Colchester. She came to visit an incredible sporting heritage site: Britain’s only known Roman chariot racing track, the Colchester Roman Circus. She, like me, thinks that we should make much more of the site and that we are missing a national trick if we do not. Does the Minister agree that any new housing development adjacent to the site must make the most of this national heritage value, and will he visit the site, which surely combines both elements of his brief—actually, all the elements: sport, culture and media—in the most spectacular fashion?

[Mr Speaker]

Ben Hur.