Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill

Debate between Baroness Berridge and Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn

Wednesday 28th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Berridge]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 118B. First, I thank the charity Walk of Truth and its founder, Tasoula Hadjitofi, who drew this matter to my attention.

As I mentioned at Second Reading, it is clear that one of the streams of funding for IS in Iraq and Syria is the sale of looted religious and cultural heritage—anything from ancient coins to frescos literally hacked out of church walls. Due to the obvious difficulty of accessing IS-controlled territory, much of what we know is from reports by news outlets. Given the time, I will mention only one. In November 2014 an article in Newsweek quoted the executive director at Iraq Heritage, Aymen Jawad, as saying:

“By some estimates, these sales (of ancient artefacts) now represent ISIS’s second largest source of funding. One of its biggest paydays recently came from looting the ninth century B.C. grand palace of the Assyrian king Ashurnasirpal II at Kalhu, which is now called Nimrud … Tablets, manuscripts and cuneiforms are the most common artefacts being traded, and, unfortunately, this is being seen in Europe and America”.

Most of the reports indicate that these stolen treasures are finding their way into or through London. The news reports are confirmed by UNESCO, which has now alerted museums, Interpol, and the World Customs Organization to be vigilant,

“over objects that could come from the current looting of Iraqi heritage”.

The amendment requires the Home Secretary within three months of the Act to appoint a panel that would look carefully at this issue and specifically at the mens rea required for the offence under the Customs and Excise Management Act 1979. At the moment, the offence is committed, by auction houses and others, only where there are reasonable grounds to suspect that the goods were removed—in the case of Syria, for example—after 9 May 2011. I question whether that is sufficient, bearing in mind the current context.

The panel could investigate whether the UK should copy Germany’s law that will oblige dealers and collectors to present an export licence for where the object is coming from, in order to receive an import licence for any ancient artefact. The panel could also report on whether or how many stolen cultural and religious artefacts are coming through London. It could collate data on this matter, including how many cases the proceeds of crime unit of the Metropolitan Police is currently dealing with, which I presume has operational responsibility for this matter. Whether any artefacts have already been seized by the police and what happens to those artefacts would also be considered by the panel. If they have seized items, are the museums and galleries in London involved in helping to ensure that the artefacts are kept in conditions to preserve them, not only as criminal evidence but also to preserve their condition so they can one day be returned to Iraq or Syria? These items may require much more specialist handling than the colloquial “bagging up of evidence” to avoid contamination.

This panel would not be costly and would provide Parliament and the Government with much-needed data and recommendations to deal with the atrocious fact of stolen cultural heritage, which needs to be preserved for the time when Iraqis and Syrians can return to their homes and to the cultural heritage that should exist for them at that time. I beg to move.

[Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn]

My Lords, I certainly support the intention behind the amendment. My noble friend the Minister may well say in his reply that some of these issues are already covered by the Dealing in Cultural Objects (Offences) Act 2003. It is certainly the case that it is illegal to sell in this country cultural objects that were illegally exported from their country of origin after 2003. However, there are many new dimensions and my noble friend is right to draw attention to them. The scale on which terrorism is being funded through the sale of such artefacts gives cause for concern. I am not sure that many artefacts of this kind are being sold in this country now, but many will be in transit. As they may well be sold in the future they could still command a good price in the market.

I draw attention to one point. Proposed new subsection (2)(c) would require the examination of,

“the possibility of placing a strict liability on United Kingdom auction houses in respect of the provenance of any cultural artefacts they sell”.

This is not the occasion for a long debate on these matters. Some of them were raised in amendments during the passage of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009, although they were not carried. They placed an onus on auction houses in particular to be more transparent about vendors because auction houses are not obliged to declare for whom they sell such objects and somebody selling privately on the open market is not obliged to declare from where the objects came. There is a real problem. Indeed, there have been cases recently where auction houses have offered for sale objects which, it turned out, did not have a respectable provenance and had emerged on the market by shady means. It is therefore time to place an onus on the auction houses to check the provenance of the artefacts and to be assured that they left their country of origin legally after 2003, which would comply with the Dealing in Cultural Objects (Offences) Act. However, there is at present no onus on auction houses to be clear about the source of their objects. That is a glaring loophole, and that is why I support the amendment.