MUSEUMS, GALLERIES, COUNCILS AND GARDENS

That this House congratulates the management team at the Victoria and Albert Museum on the stunning new Medieval and Renaissance Galleries; notes this is a particularly golden period for the UK's major museums, galleries, councils and gardens with, amongst others, the British Museum actively involved in Expo 2010 in Shanghai and also in Abu Dhabi and the British Library in Baghdad which, coupled with the British Council's own 75th anniversary with Joseph Nye speaking in January in Parliament and the National Portrait Gallery's, Beatles to Bowie, receiving rave reviews, demonstrates yet again the power of soft diplomacy; and calls on the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Department for International Development and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to come forward with further funding to enable these world-beating institutions to continue to flourish at home, and, as importantly, overseas.