The Conservatives must back down immediately on the closure of the Royal Cornwall Museum

Royal Cornwall Museum” by Ross Burton is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Andrew George is calling on the Conservatives on Cornwall Council to reverse their decision to cut crucial funding for the Royal Cornwall Museum. Andrew is a Cornwall Councillor and has raised questions with the Council’s audit committee which meets later this week.


Andrew said,

“When your Party runs the country with an 80 seat majority, holds all MP seats in Cornwall and runs the Council, you are fully responsible for decisions like this. You can’t shift the blame onto anyone else – especially if you haven’t consulted the Councillors of the authority which made this decision.

“I note local MPs are desperately attempting to distance themselves from the decision made by their Party. They claim “money can always be found for things that matter”. Well, by that measure we can judge what “matters” to the Conservatives. After all, they were happy enough to hand out over £100 million of Cornwall’s Covid aid to second homers who don’t deserve or need that support. They obviously don’t think that nurses or midwives matter, as they’ve failed to pay them properly. The Conservatives obviously don’t think the Stadium for Cornwall “matters”, as they finally ran out of excuses and have ditched that project (when at the last three general elections they promised they’d “find the money” to make sure it happens).

“And they obviously don’t think our pre-eminent museum “matters” either. The Conservatives have pulled the rug from under one of the most important protectors of Cornish culture and history and a massive research and educational resource for the Duchy. And all for the want of a tiny fraction (ie about one twentieth) of the amount they regularly dole out to second homers through a tax loophole I warned them about a decade ago.

“I’m a Cornwall Councillor and I’ve never been informed or consulted about this. “We must fight to make sure they never get away with this.”