The First Minister of Wales, Vaughan Gething, has defended his Government’s cuts which could see the National Museum in Cardiff close its doors for good.
The comments come as Jane Richardson, the Chief Executive of Museum Wales, warned over the weekend that the National Museum Cardiff could close following the building’s condition.
Museum Wales is facing a £4.5million reduction in its budget with Richardson warning that 90 jobs could be lost because of reduced funding.
Defending the cuts at a press conference at Ebbw Vale’s Coleg Gwent’s campus, the FM said there were “difficult choices to make” across any area that had public funding.
Vaughan Gething said there were “difficult choices to make” across any area that had public funding
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Gething said the issue “neatly highlights when we’re talking about priorities and the reality of our budgets after more than a decade of austerity.”
“If the NHS really is our priority, and we’re going to invest in it, you can’t have that as a consequence free for every other area of public life”.
“We’ve set out that there would be reductions in some areas, and that’s painful and difficult.
“The museum is just one of those, there are many, many others. I don’t celebrate having to make those choices, but I can’t be honest with the people of Wales about having priorities if we aren’t prepared to make choices around those.”
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321,904 people visited the National Museum Cardiff in 2022/23
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Mr Gething said the cuts “highlight the need to have a different settlement at a UK level.”
This was the first press conference of the new First Minister since he was sworn in as Wales’ leader last month.
Gething outlined how his priorities were the NHS, steelworkers and farming. He said his cabinet would have a “relentless focus on a core set of priorities” that mattered to Welsh people, with the NHS at the top of the list.
Tom Giffard MS, Shadow Minister for Culture, Tourism and Sport has called on the First Minister to prioritise the funding for the museum.
“It’s frankly very rich for a Labour First Minister to talk about priorities. Funding does have to be prioritised, and tough choices have to be made, which is why it’s all the more frustrating to see the Labour Welsh Government spend so much on their vanity projects, while one of our flagship museums falls into ruin.
“The First Minister must reconsider this decision and step in to protect our Welsh heritage.”
Museum Wales oversees seven popular sites across Wales, including Big Pit National Coal Museum in Blaenavon, St Fagans National Musuem of History in Cardiff and the National Slate Museum in Caernafon.
The latest figures show 1.3million people visited Museum Wales sites in 2022/23. 321,904 of which attended the National Museum Cardiff – the second most visited site in Wales behind St Fagans who welcomed more than half a million visitors.
