Ivory Bill (Second sitting)

Henry Smith Excerpts

Committee Debate: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 12th June 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Sue Hayman (Workington) (Lab)]

Q 57 How do the two different roles that you have interact, and how do the two organisations work? How are your resources at the moment? Do you have sufficient resources should the Bill become law? Would you need any further training or resources, and what impact would that have on your current roles?

Grant Miller: Our roles are quite distinct, which allows us to work hand in glove. The Border Force role is to disrupt the illegal trade—import/export—and trans-shipment of ivory through the UK. Our focus is largely on the export of our historically held ivory, which is traded over online auction houses and is then shipped predominantly to China and Hong Kong, but there is an emerging market in Vietnam for those goods as well. Border Force no longer has an investigation function; we hand all our intelligence from investigations to the National Wildlife Crime Unit with a view to it investigating those offences. So they are very much clear roles that allow us to work in partnership.

With regard to resources in Border Force, we have a dedicated unit that has been established for 30 years now and a team that is regarded as probably one of the best in the world at enforcing controls against the illegal wildlife trade. It is a team of 10 staff with national responsibility. We are, however, supported by every other uniformed Border Force officer, who has a basic level of skill in being able to identify animal and plant products.

Like every law enforcement manager, we could always use more resources and could always deliver more. However, what a small, highly focused team with clear objectives gives us is an easily moveable unit to actually address the changing risk. It allows us to be a lot more dynamic in addressing the risk and very flexible in moving from postal to air to maritime environments. At the moment, against the Border Force control strategy, our resourcing is adequate to control the threat.

Chief Inspector Hubble: When Border Force makes seizures of items being exported from the UK, it passes that intelligence to us. We collate that intelligence, develop it and research it to look at the number of items that people might be buying, selling or trading. We look at their associates. We try to map a network of people that they are linked in with, and ultimately we produce an intelligence package that goes out to a police force in the area where the person is committing the offences.

We have four officers who provide an investigative function to support police forces on the ground, and they work with police officers throughout the investigation: taking statements from witnesses, linking in with experts, compiling prosecution files, assisting with search warrants, and attending court to provide evidence. Due to our limited resource, we have to be really selective in what we deal with, so the number of investigations that we get where people are trading at a lower level would generally be sent to local policing to deal with. As a national unit, our focus has to be on those who are trading more and more products. Ultimately, that is where we can make a difference, linking in with the bigger players and those trading internationally.

One seizure by Border Force can result in months and months of investigation for us, and we can compile hundreds of intelligence logs from that one investigation. At the moment, we struggle to disseminate all that intelligence back out to Border Force, to close that loop, because we just do not have the resource to develop that. We have to be selective in what we deal with, but we certainly support Border Force in the work we all do on a day-to-day basis, and we welcome the introduction of the Bill.

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

Q There are other jurisdictions around the world where there have been ivory bans. What sort of best practice do you feel can be gleaned from those other places—the United States perhaps most notably? What lessons do you think we can learn and apply when this legislation is passed for the UK?

Grant Miller: Chief Inspector Hubble and I were fortunate last year to do a training mission in South Africa for seven sub-Saharan Africans, in conjunction with the Chinese CITES management authority. During that workshop, the Chinese presented their comparative interpretation of the US ban and the Chinese ban and of the impact of these. It became evident that their view was that the Chinese ban was far more robust and had delivered closure of the trade. They felt that the US ban had left so many exemptions that the trade was allowed to continue despite there being a ban. If you accept their argument, we would like to see enforcement having to allow as few exemptions as possible so that the ban is, in reality, a ban on the ivory.

[Henry Smith]

Q May I ask a quick supplementary question, Mr Pritchard? Just to be clear, would it make both your jobs much easier, in terms of enforcement, if exceptions were kept to an absolute minimum?

Grant Miller: From a Border Force point of view, we have two issues: establishing that it is ivory and then whether it is permitted. If those are identified, an offence has been committed. The more exemptions you have, the harder it becomes for the police to enforce.

Chief Inspector Hubble: I echo Grant’s comments. From an enforcement perspective, any Bill has to be enforceable; if not, it is just guidance. It is not legislation if it cannot be enforced. Within the Bill, we would welcome the minimum number of exemptions.

We also have some concerns that, as the Bill stands, we have to prove that it is ivory and that the person dealing in it knew, or ought to have known, that it was ivory. If you look on eBay at any given moment, you will find a number of items being offered for sale that are not labelled as ivory. From an enforcement perspective, if someone is buying something that is not labelled as ivory, and they are selling it as something not labelled as ivory, how do I prove they knew it was ivory? With the Bill as it stands, that, for me, is a real concern from an enforcement perspective. The onus should be on them to prove that they did not know, not on me to prove that they did.

[Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)]

Q I would like to ask about the internet trade in ivory. I was interested in your points about the exemptions, because we heard from some witnesses this morning that having a blanket ban on internet trading in ivory would be helpful. Would that be helpful, from your perspective?

Grant Miller: I do not think that a ban on trade is ever a good thing. The internet for me is cyber-enabled crime. It is merely a means to communicate better. The goods still have to cross borders. Canalisation is a customs tactic. Routing goods through set points is still a robust means to control the trade.

The online auction houses could do more to self-police. I think they avoid the issue. For instance, on the ivory listings we often see photographs of the ivory clearly showing Schreger lines, and questions have to be asked as to why someone is posting a photograph of Schreger lines. The other thing that has come up on listings on online auction houses is the weight of the goods. Again, when the trade first started to emerge, the weight was never shown. That now features on almost every single item. In effect, the ivory is sold per kilo. There should be better controls, but I do not think banning it completely is ever a good thing to do.

--- Later in debate ---

[Henry Smith]

Q This question is directed to the antiques sector and the music sector represented here. How many of the items that are sold go directly to the far east?

Mark Dodgson: We have looked at some of the figures from CITES; they have a database of exports of ivory. For example, in 2015 there were 1,200 CITES licences issued for items containing antique ivory going to China and Hong Kong.

Now, you need to bear in mind that the United Kingdom has—well, it was the second, and it is now possibly the third largest art and antiques market in the world. So, in the context of such a large entrepôt market and also in the context of so many cultural objects being repatriated to the Chinese—their ceramics obviously being the key one there—that number is actually not particularly surprising. I do not know specific figures for other countries.

Anthony Browne: What has happened generally in the art market in recent years is the rise of China as a major buyer for all sorts of works of art, so it is not particularly surprising that Chinese buying has had more of an impact in recent years than it had in the past. To some extent, it reflects that. It also reflects the fact that our history has meant that an awful lot of these objects that originated from China and Japan, and that came here, are finding their way back again.

Paul McManus: For our sector, it is practically negligible. I mean, we have nothing organised in collecting this to then sell it on anywhere. This is just individual musicians, as we said earlier, or the odd music shop here or there, but it is all sold within the UK—nearly all of it—because it is just a consumer-driven thing over here.

Emma Rutherford: For portrait miniatures, there is no market at all in the far east; there are no collectors there.

Mark Dodgson: Actually, that is quite an interesting point, because we find that there are a lot of western cultural items that contain ivory, or that are made entirely of ivory, that are of no interest to the Asian market. They are predominantly interested in their own cultural items.

[Anna Turley]

Q The Bill refers exclusively and specifically to elephant ivory. What would be the impact, if any, on any of your organisations or your processes if that definition were broadened to be elephant, killer whale, narwhal, sperm whale or walrus ivory? I will start with the antiques industry first, if I may.

Mark Dodgson: I think it is slightly difficult to give a quick answer to that one; we would probably want to speak internally about it. However, I have worked at the British Antique Dealers’ Association for more than 20 years, and my own experience is that I have not seen those materials—those items from those animals—incorporated in many objects. There is the concept of scrimshaw, but generally speaking—when I was watching the online broadcast of the earlier sessions, I heard someone suggest that ivory inlay from, I think, hippos was used in antiques. I have to say that in my experience, I have not come across that. I have asked a few people about that, and they are not aware of it.

Anthony Browne: I have nothing to add to that. No, I think I would concur with that. Ivory is the ubiquitous substance in the arts of the past, definitely, rather than these other substances.

Emma Rutherford: In portrait miniatures, it is elephant ivory and no other type.

Paul McManus: From our point of view, since synthetic materials came in, pianos have been coated with synthetic materials. The most another type of bone might be used for is repairing an old ivory key that had broken, but if that became banned—well, we would use something else.