Parthenon Marbles

Debate between Lord Campbell-Savours and Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay

Tuesday 8th February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, how does the Minister respond to Boris Johnson’s earlier elegant words of wisdom, when he wrote, in more romantic times:

“The Elgin marbles should leave this northern whisky-drinking guilt-culture, and be displayed where they belong: in a country of bright sunshine and the landscape of Achilles, ‘the shadowy mountains and the echoing sea’”?


Would it not be a generous act in his final days, before —if I can possibly say this—being sacked, to arrange for their return? We could retain replicas.

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, fortunately for all Ministers, government policy is not made by the things that Ministers wrote when we were undergraduates. The Prime Minister has made the long-standing position of Her Majesty’s Government clear to the Greek Prime Minister, most recently when they met in November.