Heritage Sector: Impact of Spending Review

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.

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?

Ben Hur.

Did you say Ben Hur, Mr Speaker? I do not think we are going to enact Ben Hur.

We could ride two chariots at once.

It is not rugby league, Mr Speaker. As my hon. Friend knows, I fully support the project, which I know she has been engaged in since before she was an MP right through until now. I am delighted that she has Mary Beard involved and I am sure that by the end of this, she will be able to pronounce “Veni, vidi, vici.”

The Secretary of State and I are lucky enough to represent Greater Manchester constituencies, in a part of the country that played a pivotal role in our industrial heritage. Now, although Wigan is lovely, it is not Hazel Grove, so she will not have the junction of the Macclesfield and Peak Forest canal, she will not have our wonderful Marple aqueduct and she will not have one of the longest lock flights in the country. What support will the Minister give to communities like mine that are keen to see our area have world heritage site status so that these heritage assets get the support, funding and protection that they deserve?

Well, I have just been told that I am on the side of Wigan. [Laughter.] But there is a more serious point here, which is that the UK has 35 UNESCO world heritage sites. We are one of the two biggest contributors in the world to UNESCO and passionate supporters of it. There is a slight danger that if we have too many and we add too many to the list, people will start trying to take others off us, so we have to manage it carefully. None the less, the hon. Lady makes a good point about the historic sites in many of our constituencies that we need to preserve, not least as part of our tourism offer for international visitors.