Rejoice, citizens! A better Britain has arrived! Well, sort of. The whole thing may not be better, but at least four per cent of the great New Labour project has been achieved. This year's Labour manifesto included free entry to national museums and galleries as one of its "25 steps to a better Britain". Today the last few charging institutions will open their doors to all, regardless of disposable income.

The path to free entry has been a messy one, littered with half-truths, downright lies and bad intentions. Admission charges were introduced by Margaret Thatcher's government in the mid-1980s. The 13 museums and galleries - ranging from the glitzy South Kensington brigade (the V&A, Science Museum and Natural History Museum) to the more dowdy out-of-towners (the National Maritime Museum and National Museum of Performing Arts) - embraced the charges with unlikely enthusiasm. As well they might. If they were charging for admission, went the argument, then they were proper businesses and could claim back VAT. This little piece of financial sophistry was worth millions to the museums. So far, so Thatcherite.

Skip a decade, and in comes a Labour government obsessed with social inclusion. Charging was bad, it declared. Museums, the cultural jewels of the nation, must be free. So far, so New - and Old - Labour.

The museums concerned were not wholly enthusiastic. Faced with the prospect of losing millions in VAT revenues, they argued that less is indeed more. Fewer visitors, we were told, meant better value. The number of people visiting the charging museums may have plummeted - while the numbers visiting the free museums soared - but when people pay for something, said the defenders of the Thatcherite order, they appreciate it that much more.

But the bottom line was money. The Treasury, we were told, would not accept any change in the VAT rules. Even if the Treasury did agree, the European commission would deem a relaxation of VAT regulations to allow non-charging museums to recoup VAT illegal. So that was that. Except it wasn't. The commission, when questioned, professed that it had no problem with such a change. The Treasury, and the prime minister, capitulated, helped along by some energetic lobbying. In the March Budget, the VAT rules were duly changed: non-chargers could indeed recoup VAT. Soon after, led by the V&A and the Natural History Museum, the chargers announced the introduction of free entry.

Yet questions remain. The government has agreed to a three-year grant to cover the loss of admissions revenue. A fixed endowment would have been more reassuring and would not have left the museums at the mercy of political will.

And while we should rejoice today and worry tomorrow, there are still parts of the national collections that depend on the number of pounds in your pocket. Special exhibitions - definition unclear - still carry an admission charge, as do museums run by English Heritage, while university museums such as the Ashmolean in Oxford have not benefited from the change in VAT regulations.

And one part of the nation's patrimony, possibly the most spectacular part, remains cloistered. This week saw a glimpse of the refurbished Queen's Gallery at Buckingham Palace, an expanded £20m home for the Royal Collection. Inside the five rooms some, but by no means all, of the monarch's breathtaking collection of art, including Van Dyck, Rembrandt, Vermeer and the world's largest collection of Leonardo drawings, will go on show. It is a considerable improvement on previous arrangements: the new gallery promises to open every day of the year and the collection will receive a fitting display.

But there is a price: £6.50, to be precise. The Royal Galleries, we are told, have to charge because they are funded from royal revenues. If that is indeed the case, then the regulations should be changed to allow the royals to stop charging. In the meantime, the Queen should make a gesture to her subjects and reduce the charge to a nominal sum.

But these are stopgaps. The Royal Collection - all 6,500 paintings, 20,000 Old Master drawings and 1,000 clocks of it - is held in trust by the Queen for the nation. This is wrong. It should be held where we can see it, without paying an entry fee and without having to look at it through the prism of monarchy. The Royal Collection has three times as many paintings as the National Gallery. If the National Gallery had the Royal Collection too, it could rival the Louvre in Paris and the Prado in Madrid, which have at their heart the collections of the French and Spanish monarchies. The next campaign, citizens (and subjects), starts today.