Free entry to museums enriches us in many ways

Tristram Hunt is right to be concerned about the future of Britain's galleries. But charging is not the answer

Tristram Hunt is right to be concerned about the future of local authority funded museums, but is wrong in his assumptions about the economics of free entry to national museums. ("Free entry to museums and galleries should be abandoned", Comment)

Protecting free admission to national museums was a manifesto pledge of all the major political parties before the last general election and was included in the coalition agreement that defines our current government. In December 2001 free entry to the national collections was reintroduced by Tony Blair's administration following a spirited and imaginative initiative from the then culture secretary, Chris Smith. Attendance since has more than doubled on average, while at some institutions new capital developments have prompted yet further interest (for example, at the Natural History Museum attendance has grown from 1.6m to 4.6m over the period).

The free admission policy costs approximately £45m to implement. The 7 million additional overseas visitors now frequenting these museums spend on average £90 per day to the benefit of the wider UK economy. So, the £315m thus generated (assuming an overseas tourist spends half a day of their stay in the UK visiting a national museum) far outstrips the cost of the policy, even allowing for growth in government funding.

Wider economic analysis of national museums demonstrates that for every £1 of government subsidy, national museums provide £3.50 in wider economic benefit. Far from being a subsidised cost, free admission represents very good value for money.

Dr Michael Dixon

chair, the National Museum Directors' Conference and director, The Natural History Museum, London SW7

Tristram Hunt is right that entrance to the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery in Stoke-on-Trent should be free – but to claim that a truly equitable cultural policy should insist that London museums have to charge because an entrance fee is to be imposed in Stoke is twisted logic and shocking from a Labour MP. In Bristol, our local museum is still free. The last time I visited it was buzzing. Mr Hunt should stop trying to play off one museum against another and fight to protect them all so that they can continue to enrich everyone's lives.

Pat McLaren


We need to be arguing for the protection of arts funding, not handing the Tories an excuse to charge and so cut further. To see the masses of people passing through the doors of the British Museum or Tate Modern is one of the glories of our extraordinary capital city. Expanding numbers is a healthy start. To persuade people who have no habit of going to galleries to visit them requires a long-term cultural shift that might take generations. Charges will hardly persuade newly won art lovers to make return visits.

Nigel Pollitt

London E17

Back in the 1980s, national museums faced pressure from the then Conservative government to charge for admission to make them less dependent on government funding. Close to half of the major national museums introduced charges while the rest, including the British Museum, the Tate and the National Gallery, held out. The result was that visitor numbers at the free museums grew spectacularly, while many of the charging museums suffered marked declines. For example, the Victoria and Albert Museum introduced a £5 admission charge in 1997 and saw its visitor numbers halved.

Mike Ion

Telford, Shropshire

One understands the point that free access to museums merely encouraged more middle-class people to visit, and that those groups who had not previously done so did, if specific access and outreach work was done. However, the fact that this work is being cut by a philistine government does not mean that charging is the answer. Museums may need to charge to survive, but elevating that to a principle is wrong.

Dr Keith Flett

London Socialist Historians Group

London N17