Ivory Bill

Baroness Neville-Rolfe Excerpts

Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 24th October 2018 Lords Chamber

[The Duke of Wellington (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 22 but, before doing so, I should like to support the noble Baroness, Lady Quin. I knew little about Northumbrian pipes until she spoke in Committee but her amendment seems entirely reasonable and I really hope that the Government will support it.

As I did in Committee, I declare an interest in that my family’s collection of works of art includes many items containing ivory but, as I also said in Committee, this is really a non-interest as I have no interest whatever in selling any of those items. However, the main point of the Bill, which I think we all support, is to try to protect elephants. I therefore completely support it and am very persuaded by what the noble Lord, Lord Hague, said in respect of Amendment 1. I agree with him that to exclude exports from the Bill would undermine some of its objectives and am very pleased that the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, withdrew that amendment.

However, I say to the Government that some of the restrictions on the exemptions are too restrictive. Amendment 22, which I am speaking to, has great substance and we should support it. After all, the Government have accepted the principle that portrait miniatures should be exempt. As we all know, they are painted on a tiny sliver of ivory. In no way does the value of a portrait miniature consist of its ivory content; it is in the quality of the painting or the identity of the sitter. Therefore, one really cannot pretend that it is a significant factor that so many portrait miniatures are painted on ivory.

The Government, therefore, have rightly accepted this principle. However, it is so surprising that they then restrict this to miniatures with an area of 320 square centimetres. I think I remember the noble Lord, Lord Gardiner, in replying in Committee, saying that this restriction would capture 90% to 95% of miniatures. I have to say to the Government that if you accept the principle of exempting miniatures but wish to capture only 90% to 95%, why not exempt all portrait miniatures? That seems logical and I cannot imagine that it creates a loophole that would give any concern to all of us who support this Bill.

That is really the main thrust of what I wanted to say. I really hope the Government will think again on the matter. I am minded to support a number of other amendments about percentage of content and other matters, which seem to make the Bill a little more flexible. It will be easier to establish that an object is exempt if we do not define the percentage of ivory content too narrowly. Therefore, I hope some of these other amendments will be put to the vote.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, like others I am in favour of conservation, especially of endangered species. I noted with satisfaction the introduction of this Bill, intended to help with the conservation of elephants. Like most Members of this House I find elephants fascinating. They are magnificent creatures that have impacted on human history in many varied ways—by accompanying Hannibal, by logging in the Asian jungle and by delighting us in literature such as Kipling’s Jungle Book and in Disney’s blockbuster.

Many other noble Lords are much more expert in this area than I am so initially, I did not seek to contribute, for instance at Second Reading. However, I was approached by an acquaintance who is an antiques auctioneer in my native West Country. He complained that the detailed arrangements proposed in the Bill—the subject of this group of amendments—would have a significantly adverse effect not only on business but on many who enjoy artefacts, often made with small amounts of ivory. Comparable conservation benefits could be achieved by less onerous arrangements.

I examined the detail of the Bill about which complaints were being made. I am afraid that I was disappointed to find that his claim was in essence true. As the Bill stands, many objects which have given pleasure to many people sometimes over many decades or, indeed, centuries will be rendered valueless and unsaleable. There is every chance that as a consequence, many will simply be dumped—the logic of my noble friend Lord Inglewood’s example. This is appalling, especially since the conservation benefits for elephants from such actions when the Bill comes into effect in 2019 will be vanishingly small. Claims to the contrary are, if I am polite, unconvincing.

In the impact assessment of 23 May there appears to be no estimate of the disposal cost of dumped items as over time, millions of low-value products are sent to landfill or to be burned. It is indeed one of the least impressive impact assessments I have seen. For example, there is an assumption that the many small antique businesses and market stallholders will spend only half an hour each on familiarising themselves with the new rules, and at an hourly rate of £11.34, that would not pay for the time of a lawyer or a responsible business owner or manager seeking to address the minutiae of the new rules and registration process. My experience of business suggests that the cost of compliance will be 10 or 20 times that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Carrington of Fulham]

My Lords, I do not want to intervene for long, but there is a slight problem with the definition of “outstandingly”. What is outstanding to one expert may well not be to another. I raised this at Second Reading. It comes down to what sort of museum collections you are trying to create. Museums such as the V&A or the British Museum are interested only in outstanding items, and they can define what they mean by an outstanding item by reference to what they already have in their collections: to be outstanding the item should add to that collection.

Many museums, however, are not trying to do what the British Museum or the V&A do. The example that I have used before is the Geffrye Museum, a series of old almshouses on the continuation of Bishopsgate, just outside the City of London. The Geffrye Museum recreates middle-class rooms down the ages. Those middle-class rooms will have ivory items—ivory cutlery and tea caddies for example—none of which is outstanding in itself. However, items are outstanding in the sense that the Geffrye Museum considers them exemplars of what was used at that time by middle-class people—and increasingly, in some museums, by working-class people in this country. The definition of outstanding is, therefore, somewhat open to interpretation and it would be much better to remove “outstandingly” and replace it with a word such as “significant”, which would allow much more leeway in deciding whether an item is worthy of a national collection or is something that no one is interested in preserving.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

My Lords, my concern is with the effects of this Bill, which may come to be criticised in the fullness of time, as elephant stocks recover and beautiful objects are lost as a result of it, and collectors of Art Deco work containing ivory are stopped in their tracks. I accept that, as we have heard from the Minister, Defra Ministers consulted during the Commons stage of this Bill, but the debate here has shown that some further changes are needed in the interests of common sense. So I support the amendments in this group from my noble friend Lord De Mauley.

I hope that the Minister will be a bit more receptive than he was towards the previous group, and ask whether he can think of any ways to reduce the concerns of people such as us about the perverse effects of these arrangements, for example in the guidance he described earlier.

[Lord Hague of Richmond]

My Lords, as on Amendment 1, I briefly draw attention to the importance of international co-operation in implementing the policy of which the Bill is a part and which these amendments would affect. We will not be able, by anything we do in our Parliament of our own volition, to save the African elephant, but we are able to be part of a concerted and perhaps, one day, successful international effort, represented by, among other things, strong bans on domestic markets.

I mentioned in my earlier intervention that China is now implementing a near-total ban, and the effect of China announcing that last year was to reduce the price of ivory in China by about two-thirds in one year. Pursuing that policy is the way to destroy the profits and attractions of the criminal networks engaged in this trade. That is why strong domestic bans in many parts of the world—in range countries, demand countries, transit countries—are so important.

If I have understood these amendments correctly, they could represent a more serious dilution of the exemptions in the Bill than the previous group. That would be serious, because in some respects it would leave us with much less of a total ban than exists in the United States or China. The Minister was right to say, on the last group, that the Government have consulted widely, and I believe that they have reached the right balance, so unlike my noble friends I would not encourage him to be more receptive to this group than to the last.