Lord Stewartby
Main Page: Lord Stewartby (Conservative - Life peer)
Lord Stewartby
My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Risby for the clarity with which he introduced the Bill. I have a long-standing interest in commemorative coins. In 1986, my noble friend Lord Lawson, as Chancellor of the Exchequer and, therefore, Master of the Mint, and I had the honour of presenting a coin for Her Majesty’s approval. That coin was a £2 piece, which was connected to the holding of the 13th Commonwealth Games in Scotland at that time. Could we have launched a £2 coin for currency at that stage? I do not believe that we could. We had just been through rather a traumatic period, trying to get public acceptance of the £1 coin because people were so attached to their £1 notes. Time moves on and larger coins are now acceptable.
I shall make just a few comments, first about the size and format of the coinage, and secondly about design. Since the Middle Ages the English currency has been based on a weight relationship. A sixpence contained half as much silver as a shilling, and so on throughout the range of values. I remember 40 or more years ago, when I was a trainee cashier in the City, that coins were sometimes counted using a shovel. Since their weights were all in relation to each other, you could quickly assess how much money you had.
If you have a handful of change, there will be a mixture of round and seven-sided shapes, but it is difficult to feel or see at a glance how much is in your hand. That has come about—I am sure it was not in any sense a policy—through the gradual replacement of denominations, one after the other. This has meant that there is a changing size slot for the introduction of new coins. However, the result is that it has not been very easy for those who use them.
As to design, the Olympic coinage will identify itself prominently. However, since the 1990s, special commemorative coins have been issued for other reasons, celebrating greater or lesser occasions. The £2 coin that one is most likely to find in one’s pocket was introduced in 1997 to celebrate technological progress from the Industrial Revolution to the computer age. It shows one circle of buttons and another of what look like casts of a bunch of inebriated worms. More inspiration has subsequently been applied to this process. The design of the 2003 commemorative £2 coin, which looks a bit like a skipping rope to me, is meant to show the double helical structure of DNA. I would put big money on no other noble Lord having any idea about that; I did not myself until I looked it up for this debate.
There needs to be a degree of abstinence about striking commemorative coins. They are good and interesting but, if you overdo it, it rather spoils the market for specialist collectors. The other problem is that there is a temptation to use designs which are not widely familiar, such as the DNA one. The £2 coin is not really suitable for abstract or complex designs, even though it has often been used in that way. I make a plea that commemorative coins should not have designs that are too crowded. We should resist temptation to cram in as much as possible. We should leave it simple. There is no point in commemorating things if nobody recognises them. I entirely support what my noble friend and the noble Baroness have said. I hope that the new coin arrangements will be satisfactory and profitable.
Lord Davies of Oldham
My Lords, there are few joys of being in opposition but one of them is not having to answer a question like that at short notice. I sympathise with the Minister in that regard.
The Opposition warmly welcome the Bill. On the innumerable occasions on which I spoke in this House as the former Minister responsible for DCMS, I never recall the issue of coinage crossing my desk when I spoke about the progress of the Olympic Games bid and its development. Here is yet another dimension of the Olympics which I heartily applaud. I think that, at times, we all must have some reservations about the extent to which the Olympic Games, which were born of the great amateur tradition in Greece and were sustained for a considerable period in the world in their modern form in amateur terms, have become commercialised. Here we are, a century or so after the modern Games were established, in an era in which everything is fairly professional and everything is likely to be commercial. It grates at times when you see some English teams proudly bearing the logos of major international companies. I hope that no British team bears the insignia of News International. If there is, it would be well advised to drop it fairly quickly. However, corporate logos play an important part in the Games; I guess that that is inevitable in this modern age.
However, we should have no reservations about the Royal Mint commemorating the Games and producing coins which are likely to produce a fairly healthy profit. I know that the Minister will seize with both hands the opportunity to praise this example of public enterprise. The Royal Mint has had an exceptionally good record, both while it was at the Tower of London and now that it is in Llantrisant in south Wales. It is a hugely successful enterprise. There is no doubt that the minting of these coins will result in significant gain to the Mint as the commemorative coins will be greatly valued.
I emphasise that there are aspects of the transfer of the Royal Mint to Llantrisant which have not been exemplified greatly in its products. I have never seen the Welsh dragon on any British coin. Given the location of the Royal Mint, it seems strange to me that it does not ensure that its ordinary coins bear some reference to Wales. That would not apply to all coins, of course, but we recognise that aspects of the United Kingdom are represented on £1 coins. However, the Welsh dragon, which is by far the most emphatic symbol of Wales, is not.
Lord Stewartby
I wonder whether the noble Lord is familiar with the gold sovereign of Henry VII, which has a Welsh dragon on it. It is very small but it is quite easy to identify it.