Ivory Bill

Lord Crathorne Excerpts

Monday 10th September 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Inglewood (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, in speaking to the amendment I will speak to Amendments 20, 29 and 32, which are in my name. My suggestion is that the requirement to register Section 7 exemptions—that is, objects with the de minimis amount of ivory in them, which are not made of ivory per se but are ornamented with it—should be removed. I should declare that I am also the owner of a few ivory objects but, as a mere Baron, the extent and quantity of my ivory objects is probably less than that of most Dukes.

I hope that your Lordships will forgive me, but I want to go back to the Bill and look at the Explanatory Notes in particular, because sometimes we lose sight of what we are trying to do and why. Paragraph 5 states:

“The aim of the Ivory Bill is to help conserve elephant populations, specifically by reducing poaching, through significantly limiting the legal market for ivory in the UK. This is intended to reduce demand for ivory both within the UK, and overseas through the application of the sales ban to re-exports of ivory from the UK. This aim is in line with the 2017 Conservative Manifesto commitment to ‘protect[ing] rare species’”.


I am sure that the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, can subscribe to that, as well as the noble Baronesses on the Liberal Front Bench and equally, I would hope, the Minister. I am confident that he can. The end of the next paragraph states:

“Finally, the ivory ban will demonstrate the UK does not consider commercial activities in any ivory that could fuel poaching to be acceptable and it sends a message that similar actions should be taken globally”.


I do not think that anybody would take exception to that either. It seems that there is a direct correlation between the sale of ivory and poaching.

Finally, the end of paragraph 16, which talks about exemptions, states:

“Strictly-defined exemptions will therefore apply where a ban on the commercial use of items is unwarranted. This is considered to be the case when it is understood that both the continuation of sales of certain categories of items would not contribute either directly or indirectly to ivory poaching, and the intrinsic value of that item is not due to its ivory content”.


Here we have an acceptance from the Government that, in certain circumstances, some items that contain ivory do not contribute in any way to the poaching of elephants. I am as enthusiastic as anyone about preserving elephants. Equally, I am interested in old things. It seems clear that this policy begins with the proposition that we should protect elephants, then says as an instrument of policy that the way in which we wish to do that is by introducing a ban on ivory that encourages the poaching of elephants. At the same time, it also spells out expressly that certain categories of items containing ivory do not do that. I am saying that the de minimis exception does not affect the market for ivory which threatens elephants.

That being the case, what is the purpose of the registration? On the Government’s own admission, this category of items does not contribute directly or indirectly to ivory poaching. Against that background, we have an embryonic system whose scope is very unclear. We have heard talk about 2 million to 3 million items, possibly more, that might fall within this category. Of course, not all of them will be sold—certainly not all at once—but we are not talking about a few rich and rare items, such as Byzantine ivories. We are talking about a very substantial quantity of, for want of a better way of putting it, household goods across the country. Given that the value of many of these items is small, as pointed out by the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, the cost of registration will inevitably be big, relatively speaking.

I know from the Minister that the system and how it would work has not yet been finalised, but it will be expensive, time-consuming, bureaucratic and potentially iconoclastic. We have heard how items will be damaged or have the ivory removed if they are valuable. I cry no crocodile tears for the very rich man, whoever he was, who tried to sell the Chippendale cabinet in New York and found himself frustrated because it did not make as much as he wanted. If you buy works of art as an investment, they may go up or down in value, like all investments. The vandalism of that particular piece of furniture is a tragedy because, once you remove the original aspects, you degrade the inherent quality and characteristics. It is no good saying that a piece of furniture adapted in this way is the same as it was before. That is like saying that an original work of art is just the same as a photograph of it. It is not. This proposition intrudes into people’s ordinary lives. The other problem, as has been touched on, is that a lot of items in this category—such as chests of drawers with escutcheons or boxes with ivory inlay—are effectively, if not actually, the same. So, the argument for registration so that you can trace items will be more or less impossible in practice, even if it were worth doing.

Finally, you could say that at least we will know whether ivory is capable of being sold lawfully, but that is a pretty thin argument. If you can measure it once, you can measure it twice. Given the context and the fact that these items, by the Government’s own admission, do not contribute to the poaching of elephants, I also wonder whether it may be in breach of Article 1 of Protocol 1 to the European Convention on Human Rights:

“Every natural or legal person is entitled to the peaceful enjoyment of his possessions”.


I would have thought that being told that you had to do this to sell some of your household possessions is pretty close to a breach, if not already so. Echoing comments made on both of the main Front Benches, I am worried that a bit of collateral damage here is thought to be all right somehow. As I have said, I am as enthusiastic as anybody about preserving the elephants. I think, however, that it also matters that these items should not be indiscriminately and pointlessly put at risk and possibly destroyed or damaged. It is like a warlord saying, “We have got to take out that particular strongpoint in order to win the battle. If we happen to zap a lot of innocent civilians at the same time, it does not really matter. The end justifies the means”. I do not think that is right, and I think we need to be a bit more subtle in our thinking and sophisticated in our approach to this. This kind of “New lamps for old” attitude does not seem to fit the case of the world we are in. I would like to think that we should remove the registration requirement, not least because it seems to be a classic case of “de minimis non curat lex”.

[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—

Ivory Bill

Lord Crathorne Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 17th July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Crathorne (Con)]

My Lords, the Government’s aim to reduce the poaching of elephants for their tusks is an entirely laudable one. I have been lucky enough to see these magnificent animals in the wild in Botswana and it is one of the great experiences of my life; a world without elephants is unthinkable.

The concern about this well-intentioned Bill is that it is unlikely to deter poachers, and this point has been made several times. A spokesman for TRAFFIC—the leading research organisation into the trade in endangered species—has stated that it is the booming Asian market that drives the poachers, and to a much lesser extent the western European market. The headline of the current issue of the Art Newspaper states:

“The UK’s ban on ivory sales will not protect the elephants”.


I think we are all totally in favour of protecting elephants, so we must look at some of the Bill’s provisions to see if we can suggest minor improvements. The Defra report, which the Minister quoted, says:

“The Ivory Bill will be the toughest in Europe and amongst the toughest in the world. It will prevent the poaching of elephants by introducing a total ban”.


It will be completely brilliant if that is so, but it simply will not be.

A question was raised by my noble friend Lord De Mauley about the owners of ivory items. First, there is no compensation if you own ivory and an awful lot of people will lose out financially—in some cases, quite substantially. Then there is the rather complicated question of whether you are breaking the law or not. It will not be that difficult to be criminalised, quite unknowingly. My noble friend Lord De Mauley mentioned the example of a bring-and-buy sale, where somebody is selling something that contravenes the law. The Bill is pretty draconian; you can go to prison for up to five years, so there is quite a substantial risk if you get things wrong. I thought France had done rather well with this, through a rather enlightened approach, by permitting the sale within the EU of all ivory carved before a date in 1947, which was accepted by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. There, you merely notify the Government of the sale.

We have heard about the exemptions in the Bill and I have a question for the Minister. It seems slightly odd to have 10% ivory for one exemption and 20% for another. I wonder whether it could be a similar figure for both—I hope for 20% rather than 10%. My noble friend Lord Carrington of Fulham explained the complications of this and the worry about the enormous number of people involved in trying to sort this out.

We then have items of,

“outstandingly high artistic, cultural or historical value”—

the rarest and most important item of their type. Again, that is pretty difficult to sort out. Having spent part of my life working with experts in various fields, I know that they do not really agree. To get someone to say, “This is of outstandingly high artistic value”, will be quite a complicated business. Just “high artistic value” might be better than “outstandingly high”, because there will be so many disagreements about what is outstandingly high and it is very difficult to judge.

Something in the Bill surprised me slightly. My noble friend Lord Cormack mentioned religious artefacts. I would have thought that “outstandingly high artistic, cultural, historical or religious artefacts” would be better in the Bill. For thousands of years religious artefacts were made from ivory and have been and are much venerated. That is something we should look at.

The date of 1918 has been set in the Bill. It is slightly arbitrary, but I imagine that it is simply because it is 100 years ago. Items produced after that cannot be sold except for limited exceptions. Again, my noble friend Lord Carrington of Fulham mentioned art deco pieces. Think of the quite amazingly beautiful art deco pieces with lots of ivory in them. At a stroke they will become valueless. Indeed, people collect those things. There will be people with collections that will become valueless. I suppose they will be able to send them abroad for sale. Paris will be the beneficiary of that. That date seems quite arbitrary. Could we not extend it to 1947? That would cover much more ground.

It was in around 1918 that Sir Victor Sassoon was forming his superb collection of more than 500 Chinese ivories. The collection was given to the British Museum by the Sir Victor Sassoon Chinese Ivories Trust. I was at the British Museum on 27 June when the director, Hartwig Fischer, launched the museum’s most recent review, which contained a lot of information about the gift of ivories. To my great surprise, in the question and answer period one journalist, I think from the Times, asked the director whether it was appropriate for the museum to accept a gift of items of ivory at this sensitive time. The implication in the way the question was asked was that destroying them might be a better option. I cannot imagine a better repository for those extraordinary items, created centuries ago. They will be cared for in the British Museum. They will be seen by the public and available for scholars. I thought it sad that somebody felt it was wrong for fine items of ivory to end up in public collections. The director of course defended the acceptance of the gift, rightly adding that not accepting it would not save a single elephant’s life today.

This morning, a group of 70 members of the All-Party Parliamentary Arts and Heritage Group visited the British Museum to see the Rodin exhibition. If any of your Lordships have not seen it, they ought to try to go. I mention that because I had a chance to talk to the director. He said he thought that one of the problems with the whole discussion about ivory is the non-separation of the old ivory created and carved many years ago, when there was a great abundance of elephants, from the poaching of ivory now and the sale and use of raw ivory supplying the Asian market.

I think the Bill is sadly unlikely to deter the poachers and the illicit raw ivory trade, but certainly anyone now contravening the Bill, when it becomes an Act, will be very severely dealt with: spending five years in prison is quite a threat. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s reply and, in spite of some of our misgivings today, I hope the Bill will help ensure the survival of these absolutely magnificent animals.

Rural Communities: Prince’s Countryside Fund

Lord Crathorne Excerpts

Thursday 7th October 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Crathorne]

I am delighted that we have been given this opportunity to draw attention to the Prince’s Countryside Fund, which is the latest of His Royal Highness’s countryside initiatives and probably his most ambitious. I have a personal reason for speaking today as for the past 11 years I have been Lord Lieutenant of North Yorkshire, and in that time I have accompanied the Prince of Wales on 18 visits to the county. Many of these visits have had a rural theme and during several of them he has launched rural initiatives. I should like to tell the House about some of the visits, which show how over a long period the Prince of Wales has been of enormous support to the countryside.

The prince is always tremendously welcomed everywhere he goes because people living in rural communities see him as their most determined champion. His visits always have a practical outcome for those whom he visits. He has the ability to bring people and organisations together for their mutual benefit, and frequently these are people who would not normally have a reason to sit down together at the same table. The Prince’s Countryside Fund is an excellent case in point. Who else could have persuaded some of the biggest food retailers and companies to contribute to the fund to help the farming community?

I am delighted that His Royal Highness has chosen to launch a number of his royal initiatives in North Yorkshire. In November 1999 at the Dales Countryside Museum in Hawes, he launched Dales Action for Rural Enterprise—DARE. This was part of the Rural Revival Initiative. In December 2001, I was with him when he launched the Pub is the Hub, which has featured in today’s debate, at a charming pub in Stainforth called the Craven Heifer. Here in this village pub, we have the post office, the village shop and the public house, and this concept has spread successfully across the country. I am pleased that one of the first grants from the fund, for £126,000, is to develop the Pub is the Hub scheme in Wales.

It is worth mentioning that on the same day that the Prince of Wales launched the Pub is the Hub in 2001, he also went to the Craven auction mart and met farmers and those affected by foot and mouth, which had such a devastating effect. He is wonderful at meeting people who have been in difficulties such as that. We also went to Knayton village hall that day and, as though that was not enough, we then went on to Settle for a meeting with small businesses set up under the Dales project, and he launched the Rural Opportunities for Self-Employment project—ROSE. All these visits were accomplished between 10 am and 4 pm with the help of a helicopter. I should also mention that he was one of the first people to give to the foot and mouth cause, donating £500,000.

The Prince of Wales visits agricultural shows all over the country and has been to the Great Yorkshire Show twice in my time. However, perhaps the most dramatic North Yorkshire visit was to the Nidderdale show at Pateley Bridge in September 2003. The weather was quite appalling, and at the end of the day I had never seen a pair of trousers with so much mud attached. As he said to one farmer who had commented on it, “It’s going to be a bit of a challenge for the dry cleaners”. Some of the comments in the press made it clear that the farmers who spoke to him were very impressed and absolutely delighted that he had been there. “He really knows his stuff”, one of them said.

On another visit in February 2004, His Royal Highness arranged a round-table discussion about the importance of the quality of school meals with teachers, caterers, producers and others. This theme, as we all know, was then taken up by Jamie Oliver. On the same day, he visited an affordable rural housing project in Kettlewell, and again there was a round-table discussion with relevant bodies about the importance of affordable rural housing. The Prince of Wales initiative on affordable housing was made use of in the important review of affordable housing chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, whose maiden speech we have just heard.

All of us today welcome the Prince’s Countryside Fund, which operates under Business in the Community, of which the Prince of Wales has been president for 25 years. The Prince’s Countryside Fund was launched in July and has made a splendid start. What is crucial, of course, is that more companies that share a concern for the future of the British countryside join this groundbreaking cause-related marketing campaign, be they retailers, banks, accountants, agricultural feed companies or the hospitality sector. They all benefit from a vibrant rural community, so I suggest that they should all be part of this new and very welcome initiative.

As has been said, we all owe His Royal Highness a great debt of gratitude for always having been so forward looking with his initiatives, for his passion for the countryside and its people and for his determination to make life better for those who work there. The Prince of Wales is one of the most caring and knowledgeable people I have ever met, and spending the time that I have with him has been both a privilege and a pleasure.