The TWFY feed alerted us to a section of Lord Howarth’s speech in the House of Lords debate on “Government: Draft Legislative Programme” yesterday. Lord Howarth said:
My last wish is that the Government will pledge themselves to sustain the portable antiquities scheme. This is a voluntary scheme for recording archaeological finds that are made by non-archaeologists. The aim is to enable the information contained in these finds to be recorded and to illuminate our national history and local understanding. Noble Lords will have read recently of the extraordinary find by metal detectorists of a hoard of Viking treasure in north Yorkshire. Before we had the portable antiquities scheme, finds were largely not reported or recorded, and many simply disappeared. The scheme has been hugely successful. Sixty thousand reports of archaeological finds are made by members of the public every year, and a great many children and others attend educational events and workshops under the scheme. It is terrific value for money. The money needed in the next year is only £1.65 million. That is affordable, but it would be vulnerable if we were to have a less than generous spending outcome for the DCMS.
I’m quite pleased with the mining of the Parliamentary data, it shows how useful it is! And just to update this, David Dawson from MLA alerted me to the top searches on TWFY, see the image below!
