Ivory Bill (Second sitting)

Liz Twist Excerpts

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

[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.

[Liz Twist]

Q I am thinking of internet sales. The suggestion was that if we just said, “You don’t trade ivory online,” that might be easier to enforce.

Grant Miller: It is misdescribed online. It is not sold as ivory; it is sold as ox bone. eBay has taken steps to say that ivory cannot be listed, but when individuals do not list it as ivory—“Chinese artefact” is another term that is used—how do you establish that it is ivory, and where do you stop controlling the trade and saying it is not allowed?

[Liz Twist]

Q On the wider issue of enforcement, do you think the Bill covers the internet trade sufficiently?

Grant Miller: From an enforcement point of view, our default position will be to go to the Customs and Excise Management Act 1979. The Bill establishes a prohibition on dealing ivory. That Act gives us far stronger enforcement powers and greater potential sentences—up to seven years and an unlimited fine. The Bill defines the offence, and I think it will give the police additional powers, but we would go for the “knowingly concerned” provision under the management Act. The Bill widens that slightly by referring to what a person should reasonably be expected to know. There may be some room for the Bill there, but from a Border Force perspective, the management Act provides us with all the powers we need to police any prohibition.

Chief Inspector Hubble: From a police perspective, as we have seen on eBay, if you ban the trade in ivory, people will not call it ivory. At the weekend, there were more than 1,400 items offered for sale on eBay as “bovine bone”. From the photographs of those items, I can see that a significant number of them are actually ivory, but it would not be practicable to issue a warrant for every single one of those 1,400 people selling ivory—we cannot achieve that. Some of them will be one-offs, where they have sold only one or two items; some of them sell it time and again as bovine bone. If they buy it as ivory and sell it as bovine bone, clearly they know it is ivory. If they buy it as bovine bone because somebody else has misdescribed it and they sell it as bovine bone, how do I prove that they knew it was ivory? I cannot.

[Liz Twist]

Q Do you think there are measures that could be added to the Bill that would help with enforcement?

Chief Inspector Hubble: I would love to have a dedicated cyber-team looking at this day in, day out, with real training and a focused effort. Lots of people in the NGOs we work with are doing work around cyber-related crime. We are in the process of setting up a cyber-working group to try to pull some of that effort and interaction together and to have that group as a priority delivery group alongside the priority delivery groups we have for the other six UK wildlife priorities. That is going to be a significant resource. I am not sure whether it is too big to manage, but we felt we had to do something to try to get people sitting around the table and working together.

[Trudy Harrison (Copeland) (Con)]

Q You have already explained that the UK Border Force is globally recognised, particularly around the illegal wildlife trade. Have the practices used by the UK Border Force been adopted by other countries around the world?

Grant Miller: Yes, they have. Most recently, we and the National Wildlife Crime Unit did three training missions to Malawi. We first brought Malawian enforcement to the UK and then delivered three workshops out there, and they have adopted the UK model of having a wildlife crime unit to handle all the intelligence, with clearly defined roles. Our environmental security taskforce meets every six months to plan operational activity. The Border Force has trained in more than 50 countries globally—most recently in South Africa, as I said. We are doing work in Hanoi, Mongolia and Cambodia, where we hope to deliver in the next year. So yes, exporting our knowledge and working practices does go on and is proving successful.

The Border Force has also deployed 28 officers into Africa, and it is expanding a similar sized team in Asia to build general customs capability. Illegal wildlife trade will be one strand that is focused on. On World Environment Day a couple of weeks ago, an operation into illegal wildlife trade was run in Nigeria by UK Border Force officers. It identified eight dirty suitcases full of ivory that the Nigerian authorities had forgotten about.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

Before I call Liz Twist, I want to say that members of the panel should contribute, even if you are not addressed by name, if you wish to. We can make this more interactive. If your contribution is relevant to the organisation you represent, feel free to make it.

[Liz Twist]

Q I want to address my questions to the musicians on the panel. I should declare that there is a regional interest with Northumbrian pipers in the north-east. I am asking for your observations on how Northumbrian pipers might be affected. As I understand it, they use ivory for the construction of the pipes. How might the Bill affect pipes that have been made legitimately under existing regulations but might be caught out by the sale problem? I would welcome your observations.

David Webster: That is a concern, obviously, if the ivory was legitimately sourced and worked. So far as I understand it, for bagpipes it is the rings that go into the bit that comes out of the bag—I am not sure what you call it, but that is the part that has ivory. They could be affected, but if the ivory is old ivory—ancient ivory—and it has been worked legitimately since 1975, they might be caught up within the Bill. We are very happy with the Bill as it stands, and we would not like it to be changed unless there was a move to extend it to cover the instruments that you are talking about.

--- Later in debate ---

[Anna Turley]

Q I want to draw your attention to the exemption under items of high artistic, cultural or historical value in clause 2. Do you think that definition is robust enough? As experts, are you confident that you have the criteria for that definition, given that you may be asked to give advice to the Secretary of State on passing an exemption?

Dr Boström: Yes, I am. I believe that, as Anthony has outlined, it would be rather like the way we act as expert advisers to the export licence committee through the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, based on the expertise we have among all the national museums. These export licences are shared across museums according to the expertise in place, so it would be absolutely directed to those experts in ivory—ivory carving or musical instruments—and the expert would pronounce on that. I have no doubt that the expertise would be in place.

Hartwig Fischer: Museums are responsible for collecting only what is really significant to deliver their mission, and we all have limited space. I think the criteria are robust and we can work with them because we have worked with them all along. It would be the ambition of any curator or museum person to get just what is really significant for the collection—that is to say for the public in the end, and for future generations to learn about the past.

[Liz Twist]

Q I want to ask about prescribed institutions. Is clause 2(5), on the use of prescribed institutions, tight enough as a definition? If not, would you suggest anything to tighten it?

Dr Boström: I would say that that ties in exactly with the way that the export licence procedures have prescribed institutions, experts and advisers. I imagine it would be largely along the same lines, so that seems perfectly reasonable.

Anthony Misquitta: As Antonia has mentioned, there needs to be a degree of flexibility in the definition, because depending on the nature of the object—musical instruments would be different from furniture—a different set of experts will be required. I would therefore welcome a degree of flexibility, and some guidance—I hesitate to say further secondary legislation—from DEFRA as to how the prescribed institutions shall be constituted on a case-by-case basis would definitely be helpful.

[Liz Twist]

To give a greater degree of clarity about what would be appropriate.

Anthony Misquitta: I do not think we need greater clarity in the legislation, but perhaps some guidance may be helpful.

[Alex Sobel]

Q To follow on from Trudy’s and Anna’s questions, we heard a lot from the previous panel about ivory content and the de minimis rules in terms of different items. How do you think that content level will be measured, and how will that take place?

Hartwig Fischer: It is a numerical question, basically, because we are talking about proportions and percentages, and I assume that can be measured. Conservation departments of all museums have specialists for all materials, and I am confident that they would have the means to establish the ratio when they look at an object.