Lord Collins of Highbury
Main Page: Lord Collins of Highbury (Labour - Life peer)Cultural Property (Armed Conflicts) Bill [HL]
Lord Collins of Highbury Excerpts“( ) Cultural property for sale originating from war zones or areas of conflict shall require those responsible for the sale to assume that an item has been unlawfully exported and take all necessary steps accordingly.”
Lord Collins of Highbury
My Lords, this follows on aptly from previous debate. The purpose of the amendment is to provoke an even stronger debate. The context of the convention is 1954, the context of post-war Europe, where we had a totalitarian state looting property, forcing works of art to be sold, forcing people to give up their property in a quasi-judicial legal way, leading to difficulties over provenance, et cetera. It was a weapon of war.
In fact, in some of the conflicts we have seen in Europe, that sort of looting has become a common feature of war. Actually, as we heard in previous debates, cultural property is not just becoming a weapon of war whereby you culturally attack and undermine people’s wealth or possessions, but is now used to fund war and conflict. It has become an income stream for quasi-states. One of the reasons why we have tabled this amendment is to provoke the sort of debate that we have just had and to ask how effective these measures are. The purpose is not to criminalise art dealers or to attack people. In a sense, by the time a work of art has reached a dealer, it is too late. We are seeking to get the Government to think hard about how to stop the trade being used by the groups that we have been talking about. We have examples. In the antiques trade, it is quite common. We have been talking about endangered species and the use of ivory. We have set a very clear date when ivory cannot be traded. My problem is that if we do not address the fundamental issue of cultural property being used not only as a weapon of war but as an income stream, the issues we heard about in the previous debate about how you prove provenance become very difficult, hence the proposal for the reversal of proof.
We heard a bit about this in the previous statement. We have existing legislation and the codes of practice that have been adopted from existed legislation. There is a useful description on page 7 of the impact assessment of all the different codes of practice for the control of international trading in works of art. The Antiquities Dealers’ Association’s code of practice includes members agreeing to make purchases in good faith and to establish identity. All this is extremely appropriate and good, but has it been enough? Is it sufficient to stop the sort of things that we know are going on? That is the purpose of this amendment: to generate that debate and to ask the Government properly to review whether the existing arrangements and the codes that follow from the convention are sufficient. I hope the Minister will be able to take these points into consideration. I beg to move.
The Earl of Clancarty
My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 18 in this group, and I thank the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bonham-Carter, for their support for this amendment.
I am attacking the problem from the other end to the noble Lord, Lord Collins. The purpose of the amendment is to remove the long-standing culture of secrecy in the art and antiques trade in the UK, which is a hindrance to the protection of cultural property. London is the second-biggest antiquities market in the world and is perhaps the biggest for Islamic objects. Last year, UNESCO stated that looting in the Middle East is operating on an industrial scale. We know that there is significant illegal trade in London in antiquities from the Middle East from considerable anecdotal evidence and from undercover research, such as that carried out for the excellent Channel 4 “Dispatches” programme, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Bonham-Carter, referred at Second Reading, in which Dick Ellis, the founder and former head of the Metropolitan Police art and antiques Unit, which the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, and the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, referred to earlier, said that the current three-person team of that unit is simply not large enough to deal with the problem.
I say at the outset that the antiques trade and auction houses do an important job. I am not against the trade, which according to the British Art Market Federation’s website, was worth £9 billion in 2014. Indeed, I am one of a large number of people up and down the country who have bought items at auction, of whatever value. However, the convention of maintaining the secrecy of both sellers and buyers is wrong, and runs counter to everything that art historians and archaeologists try to do, which is to build a historical record and discover the provenance of an object. It is worth saying that the major part of the meaning of cultural property lies in its provenance, often as part of that property’s original environment. Where art historians, experts in ancient manuscripts and other experts try to lift the lid on history, the art and antiques trade obfuscates. Auction houses sometimes provide provenance—sometimes whole auctions will be dedicated to the sale of items owned by a particular celebrity collector, for example. However, the auction houses do this selectively when it suits them, when it is clear that it gives a sale a particular cachet; it is not the general rule.
To peg this amendment to the Bill, it is rightly framed in terms of looted property, but there are other reasons to have the amendment. There is the protection of our own cultural property to consider, whether or not it is looted, and we should not be complacent about that protection. I stand corrected by the Minister when she said at Second Reading that there had been one prosecution under the Dealing in Cultural Objects (Offences) Act 2003—just one, it has to be added, in the last 13 years. My substantive point, which was that there had been no prosecutions for looting in the Middle East—the purpose for which the Act was set up in the first place—still holds. The one prosecution, which happened in the last few weeks, is of someone who stole religious artefacts from churches in the UK. Nevertheless, this is instructive in itself, since to make this looting worth while there have to be buyers for such stolen property.
The art and antiques trade of course says that it is doing what it can to tighten up checks on provenance internally and adheres to its voluntary code of due diligence, but that is not good enough—we need transparency. We expect transparency in so many other walks of life, and we should expect it in the dealing of cultural objects. This brings me to the third good reason for this amendment, which is simply that it is an issue of consumers’ rights. Thinking in particular about the possibility of introducing object passports, I do not see why, if in the instance of buying a car we have the right to know its history and previous owners, and have a logbook as proof of that, we do not grant the same rights for the purchase of an artefact above a certain market value. What is it about being a seller or a buyer that is so shameful that one cannot be revealed to the other, let alone to the rest of the public? When I have bought something at an auction, or even wanted to, what I want to hear from the auction house if I ask them for information on the item is not, “Oh, we can’t tell you who the seller is, sir, we have to protect their confidentiality”, but “We will absolutely provide you with as much information as possible about the object’s history”. Until we have a culture of openness, one that will allow the object to be tracked back from the current buyer, however that purchase is made—of course many purchases are now made online—we have an unhelpfully secretive art and antiques market that breaks the links of the historical record for the object at every transaction in its history.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe
I think the noble Lord is right; it is a bit of a puzzle. Of course, Lord Elgin and co were from a long time ago, before any of this legislation existed. Anyway, that is the advice that I have had—you do get these curiosities with human rights, which in general we support but sometimes create difficulties for us. Perhaps he would like to look at Hansard and see what I said, and I am sure we can discuss this further, if the noble Lord would find that helpful.
Lord Collins of Highbury
My Lords, this has been an incredibly positive debate. At the beginning, I said the purpose of my amendment was to be a probing amendment to generate a debate, and that is what we have done. It may have been a bit provocative and, as my noble friend pointed out, may have gone a little too far, but the point I was trying to emphasise is that we need to look at this issue as a whole and, understanding that we have a suite of measures already in existence, our focus needs to be strongly on enforcement and that this includes making sure that these things do not even leave the country of their origin.
Transparency is an incredibly important issue. What is this trade afraid of? The motor industry is described as a bit dodgy and is said to have wide boys in it. If I am buying a car, I need to understand who owned it—and not just the previous owner, but where it started from, because it is a matter of safety. The art industry needs to reflect on the debate that we have had today, if it is to retain what has been quite effective self-regulation.
The noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, referred to how the trade operates and said that if measures were disproportionate and we imposed X, Y and Z, we would simply displace it or it would move underground. I suspect that that goes on anyway, but we have a moral obligation and duty to ensure that we do not collude with those illegal activities. However, in the light of the Minister’s comments, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
“Cultural Protection Fund
At the end of the period of one year following the passing of this Act, and every two years thereafter, the Secretary of State must lay a report before both Houses of Parliament on the work of the Cultural Protection Fund in supporting the implementation of the Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict of 1954 and the Protocols to that Convention of 1954 and 1999.”
Lord Collins of Highbury
My Lords, we are taking an opportunity here. The Minister will doubtless say that it is not necessarily appropriate to put this in the Bill, but it is really important that the suite of mechanisms we have to address the protection of cultural heritage should be debated at this stage. The news about the cultural heritage fund and the recent announcement of the timetable for bids is very welcome, on top of the £3 million the British Museum has and the amount now given. Of course, the bids will be in small grants and then large grants, but our purpose here is to ask about the future of this fund.
I want to raise another important element, which is the cross-departmental process. Obviously, it involves the British Council working in conjunction with DCMS, but I wear another hat as spokesperson in the Lords for international development. Critically, the fund’s objective is to create opportunities for economic and social development through building capacity to foster, safeguard and promote cultural heritage. That, of course, is not necessarily specifically about items of cultural heritage and museums; it is also about education and building schools, for example. We can amplify the £300 million by ensuring that the work of the British Council is conducted in conjunction with the activities of the Department for International Development.
This is a classic case of joined-up government, hence our amendment to ask: what are the mechanisms for reporting on the fund and its future, and can we guarantee it? Of course, a lot of projects will go beyond 2020. We would like to see some commitment to the future of the fund beyond the existing amount allocated. Did I say £300 million earlier? Sorry, I have caused inflation. We want to hear about the Government’s commitment in the longer term. Also, I would like the noble Baroness to focus on how this money would work in concert with the Department for International Development. I beg to move.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe
Noble Lords have rightly emphasised today that we need to be transparent and open about the cultural protection fund. It is absolutely right that this House has the opportunity to understand how the fund is supporting the work of cultural heritage protection at risk of, or already damaged by, conflict.
We established the £30 million fund in response to acts of cultural destruction and damage. I am pleased to say that the fund is now live and open for applications. It is always difficult, even in normal times, to make budgetary promises but I can say that we are very committed to this area, and the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, made some important points. We also monitor and report on the fund throughout its operation to ensure that it is successfully meeting the object of protecting cultural heritage affected by damage and destruction. In line with these general objectives, the Government will publish an annual report. Alongside this, the spend will be scrutinised and published by the OECD—all the more important an institution now given the way that things are going—on a biennial basis.
If the fund has any direct relevance to today’s legislation, we will make sure that that is included in the report. For example, there is an obligation in the second protocol to take measures in peacetime to safeguard cultural property. This may include activity such as the preparation of inventories which could potentially be awarded funding.
The noble Baroness, Lady Northover, asked about the central team in London and made wider points. I will pass her points on to the British Council. She was kind enough to refer to the letter that I wrote to the noble Baroness, Lady Bonham-Carter. This covered some important points on Yemen, the cultural protection fund and its future, work with the British Council and the division of work on emergency response and long-term support. Given the lateness of the hour, I think the easiest thing I can do is to circulate copies to noble Lords so that they can see it, and make sure that a copy is in the Library of the House. I am grateful to the noble Baroness for cross-referencing that and delighted that it was found to be useful.
The noble Lord, Lord Howarth, asked about the British Council and its specialist assessors. I am sure he will be glad to know that it is currently collating a wide pool of specialist assessors who will be drawn upon to advise on specific projects. As well as this, sector experts will be drawn upon at intervals to sense check and advise on the general direction of the fund.
I see this cultural protection fund as a great opportunity. I think that it complements the Bill that we are putting forward. I hope that in the circumstances the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw this amendment.
Lord Collins of Highbury
I thank the noble Baroness for that response. I did not realise that the hour was so late, but never mind. I was particularly trying to stress the amplification of the £30 million by ensuring that there is cross-departmental co-ordination and work, not just with the British Council. There is a lot of activity in conflict-affected zones which would certainly complement the work of this fund. I appreciate what the Government have done in terms of its establishment and note the noble Baroness’s comments. In the light of that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.