Earl of Kinnoull
Main Page: Earl of Kinnoull (Crossbench - Excepted Hereditary)Cultural Property (Armed Conflicts) Bill [HL]
Earl of Kinnoull Excerpts
The Earl of Kinnoull
“(7) The Secretary of State may by regulations made by statutory instrument specify what reasonable procedures must be followed in order to establish whether any object is unlawfully exported cultural property.(8) A statutory instrument containing regulations under subsection (7) is subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution of either House of Parliament.”
The Earl of Kinnoull (CB)
My Lords, in moving Amendment 16 I will also speak very briefly to Amendment 30A. I thank the Minister and her Bill team for their courtesy, time and efforts in these past weeks. I have been approaching this from the point of view of museums, art shippers and art insurers, thinking in particular about international art exhibitions. I declare my interests as set out in the register, in particular that for a good period of time I ran the art and private client division of Hiscox, Europe’s largest insurer of art, and I am currently chairman of the trust that runs the museums in Perth and Kinross, which last week announced its intention to ask the Commissioners for the Safekeeping of the Regalia to return the Stone of Scone to Perth, to a new, purpose-built, specific space, as part of a planned more than £20 million investment in our museums.
International art exhibitions that the public of so many countries enjoy so much take place only when museums will lend, shippers will ship and insurers will insure. Where any one of those three elements is missing, exhibitions either do not happen or happen with fewer objects. I have been in touch with museums, senior art shippers, insurers and insurance industry bodies to debate the Bill. In each case they very much wish this important Bill well, and these two probing amendments are designed simply to test whether some improvements could be made which would allow for clarity and proportionality of additional work for affected institutions. I hasten to add that no complaint is made about having to do some more work in helping to address the issues this admirable international convention deals with.
The amendments probe two issues. The first is: how does an ordinary front-line museum curator, art shipping manager or insurance underwriter establish that an object is not “unlawfully exported cultural property”? Secondly, how does a museum, art shipper or insurer carry out due diligence in a proportionate way and avoid having knowledge of wrongdoing imputed to their institution, which of course would be a criminal offence?
Turning to Amendment 16, Clause 16 is necessarily complex and I foresee that any compliance officer would struggle to write an easy-to-understand briefing note for his front-line colleagues. Most museums and other affected institutions do not have the luxury of a professional compliance officer and it would be left to the front-line person to establish whether they were potentially dealing with unlawfully exported cultural property. I note that in my experience, hooky material will always come with reassuring bogus evidence on these types of questions and yet, strangely, non-hooky material often comes with little or no evidence. The front-line person will ask themselves whether they should deny the loan of a piece of art or the shipment or insurance of that object when it cannot be proven when or from where an object came into a particular collection.
In fact, there is at least one major collection of the affected subject matter that I know well—a private collection in England which lends regularly to international museums—for which there is very little record of when and where the objects came into the collection. It would be most unfortunate if that wonderful collection was now marooned in the UK.
Accordingly, I felt that a “safe harbour” approach would assist. Amendment 16 simply allows the Minister to make regulations from time to time about what a proportionate safe harbour might be to help those in the international exhibition business. It may be that to start with there would be no regulations and one would simply watch the progress, but the existence of this ability would make a safe harbour available at any time if there was an unintended series of problems. The Minister would then be able to address problems rapidly and effectively within the Bill.
Turning briefly to Amendment 30A, the offence in Clause 17(1) has the mental element of knowledge or “reason to suspect”. Museums, art shippers and insurers are all bodies corporate. The question, therefore, is in what circumstances such knowledge can be imputed to the body corporate. I am very grateful to the Minister and her Bill team for their excellent work on this point, and indeed their very helpful letter of yesterday afternoon, and I am now wholly happy with the Bill as it stands. Accordingly, I will not move that amendment. I beg to move Amendment 16.
Lord Redesdale
My Lords, while I quite understand the good intention in questioning this provision, I have some difficulty with the idea behind the amendment because the convention was ratified in 1954 and you cannot have retrospective legislation. This refers to artefacts brought into the country after 1954 that would be affected only if their provenance cannot be proved. That is where I have real difficulty, because one issue with illicit antiquities is that we do not know their provenance, so if they have been taken from a site—or, in the case of Syria and Iraq, looted, even—the actual context of those objects has been destroyed. While the objects themselves might be considerable works of art and were probably created as such, that does not mean they have value in their own right. They might have financial value, but there is a duty of care on museum staff or those dealing in this subject to make sure that such objects are not covered by this statute. There can be very few articles which could not have a 1954 provenance. Many museums would not accept articles which did not have a provenance going back before 1954, and while I understand the concern that has been expressed, the really big problem is making sure where these objects come from in the first place. One of the reasons Daesh is selling these objects now is that nobody is questioning where they came from.
The Earl of Kinnoull
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister, as ever. When turning up to meetings with her, it is always highly impressive that she has read every word of her brief; I wish it were always so for every Minister. I am very grateful, in reverse order, for her help with the definition of “manager”, which removes one of my concerns about producing grit in the machinery of international exhibitions. Secondly, I am grateful for her undertaking to publicise how one should conduct due diligence—as it were, a soft safe harbour. I feel that that should be enough and, if it is not, we will have the opportunity to come back to do something about it. On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Howarth of Newport
My Lords, my noble friend Lord Rosser has made some very important points about the Border Force and the transport industry. The Border Force is under immense pressure and public expectations of what the Border Force, with its funding at a very precarious level, should be able to do to prevent illegal immigration into our country are very high. It is not reasonable to expect that the Border Force should form part of that coherent multi-agency and multi-departmental drive to deal with the problems of the importation of illicitly derived works of art that I mentioned earlier. We need the Border Force to be in the team along with the National Crime Agency, HMRC, the police and others. Among the industries and operators who need to be properly invigilated and need to be very well aware that there is a serious chance that they would be caught out if they were doing illegal things, and that serious consequences would ensue, must be those who knowingly carry arts and antiquities that ought not to be imported, derived from conflict zones or other illegal sources.
My noble friend has made an excellent point. Perhaps the Border Force needs a dedicated unit, as the Metropolitan Police has its own such unit. The difficulty is that, if the dedicated unit consists of only three members of staff, it will not be tremendously effective. Moreover, if there is a dedicated unit, there is a risk that other members of the Border Force might say, “Well, it’s the job of the dedicated unit”, so this has to be a matter for the whole culture and training of the Border Force and it must be correspondingly resourced.
My noble friend’s Amendment 24 deals with the rank of the police officer who might enter premises. It would appear that we do not have many such police officers available for the purpose. I wonder what my noble friend’s response would be to a real-life story touched on by the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, in debate on an earlier amendment. What about the case of an archaeologist employed by the British Museum who is deeply knowledgeable about the issues of looting and damage to the archaeological heritage, cares very much about them and volunteers to become a special constable? He knows more than most people in the world about these issues. However, he has the most junior rank in the police as a special constable. It is important that we do not amend the legislation to preclude this individual from carrying out the work that he has volunteered to do as an archaeological expert and as a very good citizen.
The Earl of Kinnoull
My Lords, I, too, support the thinking behind Amendments 20, 26 and 27, particularly in respect of helping the police and Border Force discharge their duties. Having long experience as an insurer, I know that stolen items often spend time with the police or—certainly in one case that I can think of—Border Force, and for understandable reasons. With no intention on the part of the police but simply because they have no expertise in the handling of materials, problems arise. One example comes to mind immediately, where it was a case not so much of a policeman putting his foot in it as of his putting a foot through it—through a major canvas. Therefore, as the noble Lords, Lord Rosser and Lord Howarth, said, some guidelines would be very helpful to the policemen on the front line. The fine art and antiques squad at Scotland Yard is greatly reduced these days; it used to have inspector-level command but is now down to a sergeant. The number of people there is very few, so they cannot ring internally for help, where written help would be enormously useful in these matters.
Cultural objects of the type that we are discussing are usually exceptionally fragile and therefore much more susceptible to mishandling, either through the action of damp and water or simply through being roughly handled. I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say.
The Earl of Clancarty (CB)
My Lords, I support Amendment 20 in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Rosser and Lord Stevenson, on the basis that it is essential that the UK Border Force is properly trained and seen to be so. There are many different aspects to such training. One obvious thing to say about our borders is that looted property is not stopped. It is worth quoting on this Dick Ellis, the former director of the now much-mentioned Metropolitan Police’s art and antiques unit. He said earlier this year:
“These pieces are moving through customs, they’re moving through our ports all the time. And yet not a single item is seized in this country. At a time when … these sorts of objects when they’re looted in Syria, when they’re looted in Iraq, are helping to fund terrorism, why on earth aren’t we doing more to stop them coming on to the market?”.
This is a very good question. The public have a right to know whether and when looted property is stopped and held and what it is. Those data should be published.
Part of the practice of the UK Border Force must be to work closely with other agencies—communication between agencies was referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, and the noble Lord, Lord Howarth—as well as experts from universities and museums. That should be part of the code of practice. There should be training in the sensitive handling of objects, as referred to by the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, and a good understanding of what is at stake in terms of cultural property.
It is important that objects should not suffer because they have been illegally imported. We talked earlier about the possibility of destruction when objects are held. I have at the back of my mind what happened earlier this year in Miami as a result of the blanket ban that came into force last year in America on importing anything with ivory in it. British importers bringing objects to the art and antiques fair in Miami were forced to destroy antiques that were more than 200 years old because they contained small inlays of ivory. I do not know whether our Border Force destroys anything, but it needs a sophisticated understanding of the significance of cultural property if this or any other kind of conflict arises.