Listening to the Past, Speaking to the Future

60 four countries. Through MLA, a Home Countries Forumhas been set up under the auspices of the fourdepartments responsible for culture in the home nations.Given that these groups are already meeting, it should notbe necessary to look further to find ways of ensuring thatinformal co-operation extends to formal agreements on theallocation of funding that will be required to enable anumber of the recommendations in this report. The TaskForce therefore proposes as a final recommendation:Recommendation EightAgreement should be sought from the four home nationsof the UK on the forum that will co-ordinate thedevelopment of the recommendations on this report.Our strategy for funding calls for investment over threeyears to deliver the Gateway. The proposed ArchiveDevelopment Programme will look at other areas ofdevelopment and other sources of investment. The strategywill highlight ways in which archives are assisting broadergovernment agendas and will focus on the need forsustainable funding commitments. There are some areasof development, modernisation and capacity buildingwhere external funding beyond the Archives DevelopmentProgramme may be achievable, for example, Lotterysupport for volunteering programmes, and these should bepursued through the UK-wide forum.guide future local, regional and national investment inarchives to unlock our shared archival heritage to allcitizens in a way that engages them and empowers themto use archives for personal, community, social andeconomic benefit.8. The Inter-Departmental Archives Commitee is chaired by the ChiefExecutive of The National Archives, and brings together representativesof national archive services, the home nations, central governmentdepartments and key archive stakeholders.Our strategy mustbe seen as the firststep of a long-termprogramme to guidefuture investmentin archives.There have been a number of key developments inarchives while the Task Force has been sitting.Government proposals for regional assemblies andre-organisation of regional government will present freshchallenges and opportunities. In England, The NationalArchives has been charged with developing proposals fornew archival legislation that could make a great differencelocally, regionally and nationally in tackling a number ofthe issues we have identified.We summarise briefly in the following tables therecommendations and actions that have been detailed inthe report. We give indications of levels of expenditureacross three years, but these will obviously depend onpriorities for action yet to be agreed between theadministrations of the four home nations. Our strategymust be seen as the first step of a long-term programme to