NATIONAL Museums of Scotland should have its Government subsidy halved given that visitor numbers had dropped by around 45% since the introduction of admission charges earlier this year, a Cosla conference was told yesterday.

The radical suggestion came from Glasgow's director of Museums and Art Galleries, Mr Julian Spalding, at the conference on museum charging organised by the local authority body.

In his attack, delivered in the presence of National Museums director, Mr Mark Jones, Mr Spalding said: ''I'm angry at the National Museums who abandoned its great tradition of free entry without any consultation with other museums in Scotland, let alone with the public. Whose museums are they? Theirs? Or all of ours?''

The Government was right, he said, not to give the National Museums more money just because it had taken the ''backward step'' of charging. The National Museums should see itself as a museum service for the whole of Scotland, he said.

It should ask itself what it was doing for the less privileged of Easterhouse or Stornoway, as well as what it was doing for tourists and academics and those better off residents who lived near enough to benefit from its concessionary season tickets.

Mr Spalding added: ''Until the National Museums begins to put these people of Easterhouse and Stornoway on its agenda, and not just through the Internet, then it doesn't deserve any more money.

''In fact, because it is reaching fewer people now that it charges, it deserves less - 50% fewer people, 50% less funding.''

Arguing that the past belonged to everyone, Mr Spalding declared that charging diminished a museum, and diminished our culture as a whole.

He asked: ''How come the National Museums has been allowed to get away with this fundamental shift in policy just as it is about to open a new Museum of Scotland which has cost as all #40m. Who is this new museum for? For Scots, for everyone in Scotland, or for the better off who live in and around Edinburgh and for tourists?''

However, Mr Jones retorted: ''The charge of lack of consultation is completely unfounded. There was extensive consultation with the Scottish Museums Council which is the body representing museums throughout Scotland, and individually I alerted Julian Spalding well before any decision was taken.'' He conceded the drop in visitor numbers was catastrophic.

Mr Jones said: ''When charging is first introduced, a 40% drop in visitor numbers is to be expected. Our aim would be to do what we've already done at the Museum of Flight in East Lothian, which is to return our numbers to what they were before we charged and, if possible, to better that. The Museum of Flight now has 30% more visitors than before charging was introduced.''

The Royal Museum in Edinburgh charges adults #3. Children are admitted free.