National Heritage Act 1983

Lord Bassam of Brighton Excerpts

Thursday 13th October 2022 Grand Committee

[Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, on securing the debate and a dollop of publicity around it as well. It is a rare thing that debates in the Lords generate so much interest, but it is a good thing too. It is very nice to see the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, here after his excellent stint as our Arts Minister.

I ought to declare an interest or two: I am a trustee of the Royal Pavilion and Museums Trust in Brighton and a trustee of the People’s History Museum in Manchester. My eldest daughter is a curator at the V&A Dundee and has to wrestle fairly continuously with issues such as this in her role there.

I visited the Hamburger Kunsthalle in the summer, and in one of the galleries there is a whole explanation of its policy and approach to restitution. After the Second World War it had in its possession thousands of objects looted by the Nazis, and since then it has spent a lot of time trying to return them to the people they were stolen from. Of course, in many cases those people were deceased because they had been put to death in the Holocaust, but the museum had made a very honest attempt to return them. In part, I see this debate in that context.

I raised this issue last month in the context of the Horniman Museum returning the Benin statues to Nigeria, which was an immensely significant decision. Now the Horniman is working with Nigeria’s National Commission for Museums and Monuments on how together they can secure long-term care for the artefacts and arrange for a formal transfer of ownership, collaborating and working on the possibility of retaining some objects on loan for display, research and education, which I think we would all applaud. But, as has been said, the Horniman trustees were able to take that decision because of their independence and because they are not covered by the 1983 Act.

The noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, makes a very compelling case for a review of the Act. I like his suggestion that there ought to be an independent review body looking at the issue, because that would take some of the heat that has been generated around this topic out of it and perhaps put to bed the whole “woke” arguments, which I think have rather confused the whole discussion and debate unnecessarily. Given that momentum is building for a review of the legislation, I wonder whether the Minister agrees with that point.

Perhaps we could get some discussion going about how that review might take place. I do not particularly favour royal commissions, for the very reason that the noble Lord, Lord McNally, set out. But the reality is that the conversation is being had. Colleagues have given fair voice to that today in their observations on museums across the country and around the world. The question is: do Ministers want to be at the forefront of that discussion or do they simply want to follow it? I think there is a role for them to take a lead, and if we review the 1983 Act, although it covers only three national institutions, it sets a benchmark for the rest of the sector. I think the 40th anniversary is a good point to do that. We can reflect on the emerging new technologies that offer opportunities to the museum world to display and share cultural artefacts in many different ways and across many different locations.

I also ask the Minister to reflect on this point. What more consideration can the DCMS give to the independence of our institutions so that they feel freer to carry out their role as trustees? The sector itself is looking very carefully at these issues—the museums that I am part of certainly are. What conversations are the Minister and his colleagues having, together with the Secretary of State, to engage with leaders of museums and national institutions on this issue? They need to take a leadership role, because we are now in a place where there is an appetite for change.