Isn't 4.5 million pounds just the tea and biscuit budget for parliament?
They want to destroy historical documents to save a rounding error in the government budget?
Let one of big wealthy universities look after the historically significant ones. That should save a bunch of money right there.
I don't think that we currently know enough about physics to say for sure that faster than light travel is impossible.
I think it's likely that there are still scientific breakthroughs to be discovered that will make currently impossible things possible.