Cultural Property (Armed Conflicts) Bill [HL]
Debate between Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn and Lord Redesdale
Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn
My Lords, I warmly support the amendment in the names of the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, and his colleagues. It makes a number of really important points. The first point, which he expressed very well, concerns transparency. It is extraordinary that at the moment there is no obligation on a seller at auction to indicate who is selling the object. That is needed at once. We talk of transparency but there are auctions of major antiquities, for instance, where the name of the vendor is not made clear.
The noble Earl is also absolutely right that if we are talking about, for example, an antiquity, it is useful to have its history over a period of time, although it may be overambitious to talk about an object passport. If it is a prehistoric object, we will not have the names and addresses of all previous owners. Perhaps we could specify all previous owners since 1970, using the date of the UNESCO convention. There are one or two places in the Bill where one could insert 1970. After all, as the Bill makes clear:
“Subsection (1) does not apply to property imported into the United Kingdom before this section comes into force”.
Therefore, we will not lose much if we insert 1970 at that point.
The principle of trying to establish the history of an object over a good number of years, preferably before 1970, is very important, and I very much like the suggestion of an object passport, although I realise that we must be careful not to introduce too much additional paperwork into the world. However, if one had an object passport, one would certainly want to have a photograph as one element of it. That would be very important, as one could certainly have the ownership history going back at least to 1970, and that would be very useful.
Although antiquity sales in this country have diminished in recent years, I have learned that Sotheby’s is proposing to reintroduce its sales of antiquities in London, which previously it exported to New York following the major scandal in Sotheby’s some years ago. I am not sure that that reimportation is a good thing but, if it is to be done, it should be done properly, as my noble friend Lord Inglewood said. Therefore, a clear provenance history is essential, and we ought to ask the auction houses and dealers to introduce it. Whether it can be done through a simple amendment to this Bill, I am not sure, but the principle in the amendment is crucial. The notion that there should be information on the identity of the seller of the item and as much history of the item’s ownership as possible is admirable. Although the idea of an object passport needs further thought, the suggestion that there would be a limit on the value and it would not apply to every small-value object would limit the bureaucracy involved.
I very much welcome the amendment. Although we heard about the virtues of the art market in London—I am sure that it has many virtues and is an important part of the economy; indeed, as my noble friend Lord Inglewood said, in recent years the antiquities dealers have tightened up and are applying stricter standards—the basic standard of knowing where the object comes from and who has owned it is essential and I would like to see it carried forward.
Lord Redesdale
My Lords, I rise to speak to this amendment and to say that I do not plan to move Amendment 29 because it raises this issue.
A number of us in this Chamber were responsible for pushing through the Dealing in Cultural Objects (Offences) Act. Although it is good to know that at least one prosecution has taken place under the Act, that did not stop it, at the beginning of the last Government, being put forward by the Conservative Back-Benchers as a piece of legislation that was redundant and could be got rid of because it had never been used. The problem is that such legislation gets moved in response to a specific event; in this case, it was the looting of the museum in Baghdad. The ratification of this Bill has been moved forward very much due to the cultural destruction that is taking place in Syria at the moment.
I do not believe that this Bill is the place for this amendment, even though I have put my name to it. However, it is probable that we could raise it again in any money laundering legislation that comes in front of the House in the future. As the noble Lord, Lord Renfrew, so adroitly pointed out, the real problem is that a lot of art provenance is not known, is written on dodgy pieces of paper, or is attested to collections that no longer exist in foreign countries. This is a problem.
I take on board the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, that because there is a law, many people will not break it. However, there are many laws that people know are there and do break. The art market does not have the best of reputations from instances in the past. Therefore, if we are to clear up the art market, we need to make sure that there is some implication of having a law. That is why I put down the amendment to say that there should be a review each year. For example, we know that, in 2003, the amount of Mesopotamian artefacts on the marketplace drove down the price. We also know the source of those Mesopotamian artefacts, and, bizarrely, that trading was done very much in the areas that are next to the British Museum.
Provenance is a double-edged sword. Many of the artefacts that are now safe in the British Museum were illicitly lifted and their provenance is now based on the paperwork that proves they were filtered from the country of origin without the authorities’ knowledge. One could say that many of the collections of the great museums have a slight provenance issue.
Although this amendment will probably not be agreed, it raises the issue that, although we have the law, it has not been taken as seriously as it should be because it has not had the funding that it might require. Resources are needed to deal with this. The noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, raised the issue of trying to bring forward prosecutions to the police. However, the arts and antiquities squads were so underfunded that they resorted to trying to get special constables who were recruited from staff at the British Museum. In my view, that is not a well-funded or well-thought-out prosecution system to deal with a market that runs into the millions of pounds.