In my government role as Minister for Arts, Heritage and Tourism I of course have many duties and responsibilities and I hold many meetings with stakeholders from a variety of groups, organisations, backgrounds and industries.
In the last fortnight I had no fewer than 30 separate meetings over a period of ten working days, this was on top of my work in Northampton, which included a high level ministerial visit during the same period, and my reading and signing of papers and documents each evening, and my attendance for debates and votes in the House of Commons where I have a voting record that is described by a monitoring agency as “well above average”.
I thought it might be informative if I list some of the meetings I have had in the past ten working days. Some of the meetings were with civil servants at the Department of Culture, and I also met the following in this ten day period (the list is not exhaustive):
· Tate Britain Conservation Studios, meeting specialist conservators
· The Chief Executive of Visit Britain, tourism body.
· The Director-General of the BBC, Lord Hall
· The Secretary General of the General Synod of the Church of England, William Nye LVO
· The Chairman of Historic England, Sir Laurie Magnus
· The Secretary-General of the World Tourism Organisation, Zurab Pololikashvili
· The Director of the Theatre’s Trust, Jon Morgan
· The Royal Institution of British Architects
· The Chief Executive of UK Power Networks
· The All Party Parliamentary Group on Listed Buildings
· The John Moore Painting Prize
· The Director of the National Theatre
· The City Of London Corporation
· UK Theatres Trust