Ivory Bill

Lord Berkeley of Knighton Excerpts

Monday 10th September 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Crathorne (Con)]

My Lords, I will briefly comment on Amendment 17, from the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, and Amendment 18. We have heard from the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, about items in his collection which exceed 320 square centimetres. That seems enormously restrictive. It would surely be better to remove that restriction so that anyone judging a miniature would have the ability to decide whether it was something worth saving and looking after. It is very restrictive to set the threshold at 320 square centimetres.

On Amendment 18, I think it is going to be so difficult to accurately assess the 10% threshold. I am at a slight loss to know why, if musical instruments may have up to 20% ivory content, it cannot be 20% across the board. As we have heard, in such countries as France, it is already 20%. I urge the Minister to perhaps give that a little more thought.

[Lord Berkeley of Knighton (CB)]

My Lords, I wonder if I might add another sentence or two to what we have just heard and to what I spoke about at Second Reading. I reiterate that there are several hundred thousand bows for string instruments in the United Kingdom alone. They have ivory or mammoth faces weighing less than one or two grams. Some of these will be 200 years old—

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton]

We will be discussing musical instruments in the next group.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Beith (LD)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Quin, and I thank her for bringing this amendment forward. Throughout most of my adult life I have had much pleasure from hearing the Northumbrian pipes. They are a sweet sounding, relatively quiet instrument—often played indoors—and were the musical instrument of many shepherds and farmworkers in the area that I used to represent. Subsequent generations of pipers have often come from other walks of life—teachers who have been in a variety of professions—but the core of people on whom the musical repertoire of the pipes has depended, and whose tunes are recorded, came from the farming life of Northumberland.

I want the Minister to understand how important this is to us and how strongly we are pleading for him to do something about what is now seen as a threat, particularly to the new pipers—young people and, sometimes, those in retirement—who have to acquire an instrument. We are talking about an instrument of which there are not large numbers. The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley of Knighton, mentioned how many thousands of violin and cello bows there are in this country. The sets of Northumbrian pipes are numbered in hundreds—not thousands—and it is quite hard to acquire a set now that there are so few remaining craftsmen who make these instruments. Most of the people who are involved in this activity are not wealthy and if the supply is artificially restricted by the exclusion of so many instruments which were made before 1975 and have ivory content, it would be a very serious threat.

I confess that I have difficulty understanding how the 20% exemption could be applied in the area of Northumbrian pipes, although the Minister gave me a moment of hope when he referred to integral voids, such as the area of an interior of a drawer in a chest of drawers. My mind immediately went to the bag in which the air is pumped in from the bellows, which the piper operates with his or her arm. The bellows could at least be inflated when the judgment is made as to what the integral void is and whether it passes the 20% exemption. Describing that illustrates how worrying it would be if we have to depend on such a concept in order to get a reasonable exemption, which I am sure most people, looking at it rationally, would realise was necessary and was not a coach and horses.

What worries me is that there has been a lot of engagement and discussion with various trades and activities about this Bill. Not all of it has led to the outcomes that some would have desired, as the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, has pointed out. I am not convinced that there has been enough engagement yet with Northumbrian pipers and those who are concerned for their welfare. I want the Minister to give us some assurance that he will try to ensure that that engagement takes place and that, by the time we reach Report, there is some way of dealing with this problem. I know that there is pressure not to amend this Bill so that it sails back to the House of Commons, but we are a revising Chamber and it is our job to discover if there are areas where the Bill does not meet the practical requirements of our society. If it is necessary to make a small amendment to the Bill better to meet the needs of Northumbrian pipers, the Minister must be ready to make that amendment, unless he finds a non-statutory way of achieving it. I have not yet seen that, so I think we will need an amendment at a later stage and I hope the Minister will apply himself to the task of finding a solution.

[Lord Berkeley of Knighton]

My Lords, I apologise for jumping the gun earlier—perhaps I should say for coming in on an upbeat rather than a downbow. I support Amendment 26A tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, which is very precise. I reiterate that there are several hundred thousand bows in the United Kingdom alone that have either ivory or mammoth faces weighing less than 1 or 2 grams, which is really minuscule. Some of these will be 200 years old and as musicians buy and sell bows regularly, this volume of permits will have to be redone every few years. The resources required for that would surely be much better directed towards the problem itself, towards protecting elephants and prosecuting the criminals who try to make money out of ivory. I say to the Minister that I completely understand and endorse the desire to make the Bill strong and as watertight as possible but surely there has to come a point, when we are talking about such a tiny thing that does not threaten living elephants in the slightest, where we have to apply common sense.

Lastly, I know there was a meeting of some of the ivory team at Defra, and they indicated to a bow maker that they would not be entirely against this. I can give the Minister more information on that if he would like it.