Ivory Bill

Baroness Rawlings Excerpts

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

[Baroness Rawlings (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a former president of the British Antique Dealers’ Association. I am sure that your Lordships agree that we should all be extremely proud that the UK represents the largest art and antiques market in Europe and the second largest in the world. Through its specialist dealers and major auction houses, it offers a concentrated source of expertise and knowledge, unmatched anywhere in the world.

I warmly welcome the aims of the Bill and its desire to conserve elephant populations. The appalling slaughter of the African elephant in such large numbers in recent years is a matter of grave concern to us all. The Government should be proud of the action that they have already taken to tackle the illegal wildlife trade and protect elephants from being poached. This action includes expanded British military training in anti-poaching skills for African park rangers, a project with China to deliver training to African border forces, and additional funding for Interpol to increase its work with key nations in tracking shipments of ivory. As we have heard from many noble Lords this afternoon, we hosted the Illegal Wildlife Trade Conference four years ago, and another is due here in the autumn. I therefore think that we are selling ourselves a little short when we say that we are lagging behind other countries in our fight against elephant poaching.

It is recognised that China is the world’s largest market for ivory, where it has been continuously imported as a raw material up until the end of last year. As recently as 2008, 62 tonnes of ivory tusks were released from Africa and sold to China. Hong Kong’s official stockpile of ivory in 2015 amounted to 78 tonnes. I mention these figures to provide context for the situation in the UK, where our market is not one of ivory as a commodity but of antiques, some of which happen to incorporate ivory.

It is on our cultural heritage that I really wish to reflect. I am fascinated by the evolution of mankind’s cultural and artistic development, as seen through the monuments, works of art and domestic items that earlier generations have left behind. We have access today to many objects from earlier times that were created under conditions of which we would not now approve. It is inevitable that items created in earlier centuries will reflect the social, economic and political norms of their era. The most obvious example is books. The views espoused in some printed matter from the past might now be abhorrent to many, but we do not ban its sale. The people who read those books today are well able to interpret the opinions they contain in the context of the period in which they were written. I believe that we should take the same approach with old artefacts that incorporate ivory.

We recognise that the ivory found today in antique objects came historically from thousands of dead elephants, some of which died from natural causes and others, sadly, were killed for their tusks. But I believe the British public are all intelligent enough to understand that buying an antique that incorporates old ivory does not mean they approve of objects made from modern, poached ivory.

This contrasts enormously with the attitude of some Asian buyers. As we have heard, they have a culture of acquiring ivory for its own sake, regardless of age, and they generally do so in the form of solid ivory carvings, many sold by weight. It should also be noted that Asian buyers buy fewer western antiques; attempts to interest them in doing so have largely proved unsuccessful. The British Antique Dealers’ Association has been trying for several years to garner more interest from Chinese buyers in items such as English antique furniture or silver, and it has proved an uphill struggle. In 2013, the European Fine Art Foundation, which runs the world’s most significant art fair, in Maastricht, gave up its plans for a fair in Beijing.

The vast majority of western antiques containing ivory are not therefore exported to the Far East. Consequently, despite claims to the contrary, they do not contribute to the vast market for ivory carvings that exists in China, Hong Kong and other countries in Asia, such as Vietnam. There is not even the danger of such items being mixed in with the carvings on sale in the ivory shops of Hong Kong. When did anyone last spot a 19th-century English silver teapot with carved ivory handle sharing shelf space with rows of modern, cellophane-wrapped carved Buddhas?

The structure of the Bill provides a framework for measures to prevent modern ivory trinkets being offered for sale. Such trinkets include solid ivory tourist carvings that may have been acquired legally in the 1940s or 1950s but hold no real cultural significance, either for the people who made them or for mankind in general. However, I urge your Lordships to be aware that, as presently worded, the Bill will have a significant impact on the future of many culturally or historically important objects that do not meet the extremely limited exemption criteria, particularly items containing 10% or more ivory that fall foul of the Clause 2 criteria.

I will explain my concerns more precisely. The Bill allows people to continue to own any ivory items that do not qualify for those exemptions. It also lets owners give them away or pass them on to their beneficiaries on death. I realise that some of your Lordships may imagine that this would be sufficient to protect these items for future generations. I cannot, however, agree that these items will be protected. When the owners of prohibited cultural property die, their objects will not necessarily be wanted or appreciated by their remaining family members. Museums will not automatically accept every gift offered to them; they have neither the storage space nor the funds to look after them. Furthermore, museums may well be unwilling to accept artefacts already represented in their collections.

If the objects have no financial value, there will be no incentive for an indifferent or busy executor or beneficiary to bother to find a new owner. As my noble friend Lord De Mauley said, many items will be abandoned or thrown away. Even if not discarded, because they lack a resale value, there will be no financial incentive to spend money on having them restored or conserved for posterity. I am concerned not only for the artefacts themselves but for the preservation of examples of our social history. We should all remember that antiques have a big following in Britain, as the viewing figures for “Antiques Roadshow” show.

Although the Government have published an estimated cost to businesses, they have not attempted to quantify the cost to individuals of rendering their treasured antique possessions worthless. Dealers and auction houses are merely the conduit between one permanent owner and the next. For every item currently in a dealer’s stock or being handled by an auction house, there will be many more similar items held privately. The potential losses must be considerably larger to citizens than to businesses. Can the Minister therefore inform me whether the Government have attempted to compute the loss to the Exchequer arising from this measure, as it will undoubtedly make a dent in the tax take from both inheritance tax and capital gains tax?

We should also consider the works of art that emanate from cultures in other parts of the world, many of which have ended up in this country. Ivory has been regularly used in religious artefacts, as the noble Baroness, Lady Flather, mentioned, whether crucifixes or carvings of Hindu deities. If these religious objects end up discarded, would that not amount to a form of iconoclasm?

The use of ivory is prevalent, as we have heard, in Indian, Asian and African culture. Although we do not wish to encourage the purchase of modern-day ivory trinkets by people of the Far East, we cannot write off the figural carvings of high aesthetic appeal from the Ming dynasty, or the high-quality Guangzhou tribute pieces that were made for the Chinese imperial court. While introducing their ban on modern carving workshops, the Chinese themselves will continue to recognise their own cultural inheritance by permitting auction sales of cultural relics. Is it our place to dismiss the culture of such a great civilisation in such a way?

The same may be said of Japanese culture. As my noble friend Lord Cormack said in his eloquent speech, you have only to read Edmund de Waal’s book The Hare with Amber Eyes to appreciate the lure of those masterpieces of the carver’s art in boxwood, porcelain, lacquer or ivory: the netsuke. How many netsuke made from ivory will be rendered valueless, as my noble friend said, while their wooden counterparts of similar artistic merit will continue to be sold?

It is normal for this House to ponder matters in a less hurried way than is sometimes the case in the other place. After this fascinating debate this afternoon, with so many interesting and different views, I hope that your Lordships will give careful thought to these concerns. Essentially, this is a good Bill which has cross-party support, but it could be improved by making certain that it creates the correct balance between recognising our cultural heritage and providing the framework for prohibiting the sale of modern-day ivory in Britain—and of course protecting the elephant.

I started by stressing the importance of and need for change. It would be perfectly possible to introduce effective amendments without delaying the Bill’s passage or in any way watering down the important message it sends out to other countries about the serious attitude we take to elephant poaching. We might all agree that we surely do not want to live in an ivory tower.

Ivory Bill

Baroness Rawlings Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 10th September 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack]

My Lords, I have two amendments in this group, Amendments 7 and 11. I agree with everything that my noble friend Lord De Mauley has said and I will not speak at length because I made many similar points when I introduced my earlier amendment. However, it is terribly important that we do not unwittingly pass into law an Act of Parliament that would, as its inevitable consequence, lead to the destruction of part of the fabric of our rich artistic heritage and civilisation. That is something which we should all take very seriously.

We should also take seriously the point made by my noble friend Lord De Mauley about religious significance, not just in the Christian context but in that of many religions. Of course, in the European and Christian context we should remember the school of ivory carvers that existed in Dieppe for centuries and produced, among other things, some wonderful devotional objects. They are part of the warp and weft of domestic civilisation in Europe. Just as in our churches we would throw up our hands in horror at the thought of the despoiling of monuments and other wonderful objects which happened in the 16th and 17th centuries at the time of the Reformation and the English Civil War, surely we in the 21st century do not want to connive in the despoiling of domestic objects of devotion such as those made in Dieppe.

My two amendments have a similar aim to that of my noble friend Lord De Mauley in that I would delete the words “outstandingly high” so that that paragraph in Clause 2(2) would refer to the item being of,

“artistic, cultural or historical value”.

I would of course accept “religious value” as well. That is much more objective, much less subjective, and easier to determine. In Amendment 11 I would take out the word “important” and replace it with “significant” because again that is a little less subjective and thus easier to determine.

When I spoke earlier in moving Amendment 1, I referred to the fact that there is a different application for what is an item of museum quality in my native city of Lincoln than there would be in London. There is nothing right or wrong about that, it is just a fact, and we do not wish this Bill to penalise smaller museums in places like Lincoln at the expense of London. Of course I want wonderfully important objects that naturally would go to the London museums to continue to do so—they house our great national collections. Equally, however, items from historic families in Lincolnshire, although they might be less important, nevertheless in the context of Lincolnshire history are of incalculable wealth. I hope that when the Minister replies, he will recognise the force of the many points made by my noble friend Lord De Mauley and that within this group of amendments there are things that could improve the Bill without in any way diluting its central purpose.

[Baroness Rawlings (Con)]

My Lords, I wish to speak to Amendment 9 and I declare my interest as a former president of the British Antique Dealers’ Association, which is still superbly run by the secretary-general, Mr Mark Dodgson.

We are all, and when I say “all” I mean in this Chamber and outside, appalled by the disgraceful poaching of elephants in Africa and elsewhere. The reports last week of the slaughter of so many elephants in Botswana are beyond belief. Although the Government announced extra funding last July, in the joint statement from the Foreign Office, Defra and DfID, I wonder whether even more direct help can be provided to range states in Africa. I hope all your Lordships agree that we want Britain to play its part in protecting elephants.

When I spoke during the Second Reading, I expressed the view that the Bill provides a framework for preventing the sale of modern ivory trinkets in this country, which is desirable, but we surely must bring a sense of proportion to how we protect elephants. As Clause 2 is presently worded, the requirement that cultural property may be sold only if it is of “outstandingly high” cultural value is so restrictive that it will have a damaging effect on the cultural life of this country and will prevent the sale of many items of historical significance.

The allegation that the UK is supporting a large commercial ivory trade conjures images in the public’s mind of a trade in ivory as a modern commodity, which is how it is thought of in Africa and Asia. I am not aware, however, of any evidence to suggest to any significant extent that modern poached ivory is imported into this country, offered for sale here or exported. I will explain this further since this is important to grasp in the context of this clause.

We have already heard from my noble friend Lord De Mauley that the number of worked ivory antiques exported from the UK is not as large as some of us imagine. Additionally, the TRAFFIC report made clear that large-scale seizures of African ivory tusks and bangles at UK airports are relatively rare. Furthermore, when they occurred, they represented items in transit to other countries, not destined for buyers or workshops here. Of course, some modern ivory carvings may have made their way to the United Kingdom, which TRAFFIC says are brought here by private individuals from trips abroad, not as part of smuggling rings. In the context of the hundreds of thousands of antique items incorporating ivory owned by people in Britain, there is no evidence that modern poached ivory is prevalent. Furthermore, as the antiques trade is aware, any seizures of exported ivory objects that occur do so because someone is attempting to export them without the required CITES permits, not because they represent examples of poached ivory.

Lucy Vigne, a conservationist and ivory trade researcher working in east Africa, is the author of a number of respected reports, including one recently for Save the Elephants looking at China and the trade in ivory there. She is on record in the press as saying that:

“This recent issue in the West has been taking away valuable time and resources from dealing with the big issues we are facing urgently”,


by which she meant,

“the trade in new ivory in Asia and poaching in Africa”.

In case the Committee feels that I have diverted from the points in hand, I say that I am not aware of anyone having demonstrated that the UK is awash with poached ivory. Precisely the same result would be achieved without sacrificing so many cultural items. For this reason, I support this amendment proposed by my noble friends Lord Carrington of Fulham and Lord De Mauley. I add that the debate is not “elephants or history”; both need preserving and should be dealt with together to be successful.

I was recently written to by Mary Kitson, who is honorary secretary of the Fan Circle International, an antique fan study group whose membership includes collectors, dealers, museum curators, conservators and art historians. She is extremely concerned about the impact that the Bill will have on this delightful part of our social history, and indeed the history of fashion. She explained that a collector of antique fans is likely to include in their collection fans whose sticks are made from a variety of materials such as mother of pearl, ivory, wood or metal. A fan’s sticks give strength to what is termed the leaf—the part of the fan that is exposed when the fan is fully opened. Fans with ivory sticks certainly comprise more than 10% ivory.

Other items of our social history include games that incorporate ivory components. The immediately obvious example is Victorian chess pieces, as mentioned earlier by my noble friend Lord Cormack. Then there are children’s games such as bagatelle, where the small balls can be fashioned from ivory, or the cup-and-ball game bilboquet, where the cup can likewise be made of ivory. Some of your Lordships may argue that these items could be given to museums, but they would not welcome thousands of duplicates. What is more, observing objects located behind a rope cordon or in a glass cabinet is not always the best way to appreciate them properly. There is no substitute for owning and handling antique objects in one’s own home, which is one of the best ways to interact with and appreciate our history. If we cannot recognise properly the way in which different materials were used historically, we can lose touch with our past.

It is very sad that people should even contemplate exchanging original materials in genuine antique objects with modern substitutes. The recent replacement of ivory with ivorine, a form of celluloid, in a Chippendale cabinet is a case in point. I worry about where all this is heading. Next, someone will suggest that bone or leather should be outlawed. Therefore, I support the proposal that exemption certificates should be issued for not only objects of outstandingly high historical value but also for those that are of the same calibre as objects found in our officially recognised museums. This would include not just the British Museum or the National Museum of Scotland but other wonderful collections, such as those of the Fan Museum in Greenwich or the Museum of Childhood in Bethnal Green.