Politics: The people's art that stays locked away

The public should have greater access to the Government's collection of 11,000 works of art, a minister said yesterday. But the promise, made as a "Domesday Book" of government assets was published, will be hard to fulfil, as Fran Abrams discovered.

There are paintings by LS Lowry, Augustus John, Eduardo Paolozzi, Walter Sickert, Stanley Spencer and even Winston Churchill. There are bronzes by Jacob Epstein, Elizabeth Frink, Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore, so valuable that the Government will not even put a price on them. But art lovers hoping for a look may have to wait a long time.

And there is more. In addition to the main collection, The Ministry of Defence holds 709 works of art including two drawings by the architect Robert Adam, and a portrait by Joshua Reynolds.

Yesterday, Alastair Darling, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, said the collection, whose total numbers are spelled out in the new National Asset Register, should be opened up.

"For the first time, the Government has been open about what it owns. If that means people ask why they can't see things or if we need them, then that's all to the good," he said.

The whereabouts of most of the works remains hazy, though.

A catalogue was promised in 1981, but the first of four or five volumes - the 20th Century works - was published only this year. It is not widely available, though the Department of Culture, Media and Sport allowed The Independent to look at it, and does not say where each item is held.

In her introduction to the tome, Wendy Baron, head of the collection, admitted that the job of cataloguing had been arduous. The works were scattered across hundreds of buildings in 300 cities worldwide.

"The naive optimism of 1981 in relation to the total holdings soon evaporated," she wrote.

Some of the works can be tracked down, though, to the offices of ministers. Chris Smith, the Secretary of State for Culture, has a total of 11 items from the collection in his office. They include an Epstein sculpture of the conductor Otto Klemperer, an Elisabeth Frink sculpture and a limited edition print by RB Kitaj.

Gordon Brown, the Chancellor, has replaced portraits in his office with modern Scottish prints and a painting by Lucien Pissarro.

Frank Dobson, the Secretary of State for Health, has chosen an anonymous 17th Century portrait of Richard III along with an 18th Century painting of the Duke of Marlborough. Geoff Hoon, parliamentary secretary in the Lord Chancellor's office, has a Paolozzi in his office. The Northern Ireland Office has four paintings by John Piper.

Although the public is still denied access to most of these works of art, they may see some benefit from the sale of other government assets. Mr Darling said departments would be allowed to keep any money they raised between 1998 and 2001 provided it was less than pounds 100m per item. Among those which might be sold were 26 fork lift trucks belonging to the Treasury - used, apparently, for moving loads of computer paper along its endless corridors.