Ivory Bill

Baroness Vere of Norbiton Excerpts

Monday 10th September 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord De Mauley]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 13 and 28. The Bill appears to require an exemption certificate application to be accompanied by an expectation that “dealing” in an item is due to occur. This expectation is created by subsection (1)(f), which requires an applicant to provide information about,

“any dealing in the item that is expected to take place”.

From this wording it is not entirely clear whether it is a strict requirement of the Bill that dealing must happen. An owner of an object may wish to obtain a certificate as a precaution, so that if they decide to offer it for sale in the future they will already have all the necessary paperwork in place. Furthermore, for any number of reasons, the owner of an item may subsequently decide, having obtained a certificate, that he does not wish to proceed with the sale.

I realise that the word “any” in “any dealing” could suggest that information about dealing needs to be provided only when such information exists, but this amendment makes it absolutely clear that to obtain a certificate an item does not need to be offered for sale or sold, least of all to the museum or institution advising on the exemption certificate, with all the conflicts of interest that could lead to. In summary, therefore, it should be possible to gain an exemption certificate for an item that may end up remaining in a private collection.

I turn to Amendment 28. Clause 9(1) refers explicitly to the sale of an ivory item to a museum, but unlike the definitions of “dealing” in Clause 1 it makes no specific reference to “offering for sale”. Clearly, no sale to a museum can occur without an object having been offered to that museum. The problem with the current phrasing is that it makes it appear as though an exemption applies only if a sale is “concluded”. Until an agreement is reached, there can be no certainty that an object will be acquired by a museum: the trustees may be asked for approval and decline to give it. Often the whole process can be very protracted and negotiations can break down at any stage. The purpose of the amendment, therefore, is to clarify that if an ivory item is offered to a museum the seller is under no obligation to complete a sale. If the meaning of subsection (1) is that the seller must complete the sale regardless of the sum that the museum is prepared to pay, no museum would offer more than the barest minimum. I beg to move.

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

My Lords, Amendments 13 and 28 appear in the name of my noble friend Lord De Mauley. Their intention is to clarify that where an item has an exemption certificate or has been registered, perhaps—but not necessarily—with the intention of selling the item, there is no obligation to proceed with a sale. I assure him that there will be no such obligations on applicants. Indeed, we recognise that there may be many reasons for an application. For example, we anticipate that owners of certain items may wish to apply for an exemption certificate before valuation for insurance purposes, not for any sale.

The primary intention of the registration and exemption certificate processes is to ensure that items meet the criteria for the applicable exemption before they can be subject to commercial dealing, but there is no obligation to undertake any commercial transaction following certification or registration. It is also worth bearing in mind that neither certification nor registration is time limited and can exist over a long period. In the light of this clarification, I hope that my noble friend will feel able to withdraw his amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Berkeley of Knighton (CB)]

My Lords, I wonder if I might add another sentence or two to what we have just heard and to what I spoke about at Second Reading. I reiterate that there are several hundred thousand bows for string instruments in the United Kingdom alone. They have ivory or mammoth faces weighing less than one or two grams. Some of these will be 200 years old—

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton]

We will be discussing musical instruments in the next group.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, I have listened with interest to the debate. On the subject of inlays and escutcheons, what consideration has the Minister given to having a de minimis test of thickness? If the inlay or the escutcheon is less than a certain thickness, surely it has no use for recarving at a later stage. Perhaps the Minister could write to me on that point in due course.