Parthenon Marbles Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateLord Campbell-Savours
Main Page: Lord Campbell-Savours (Labour - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Campbell-Savours's debates with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport
(2 years, 9 months ago)
Lords ChamberMy Lords, it is the turn of the Labour Benches, and the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, wishes to speak virtually. This is a convenient point for me to call him.
My Lords, how does the Minister respond to Boris Johnson’s earlier elegant words of wisdom, when he wrote, in more romantic times:
“The Elgin marbles should leave this northern whisky-drinking guilt-culture, and be displayed where they belong: in a country of bright sunshine and the landscape of Achilles, ‘the shadowy mountains and the echoing sea’”?
Would it not be a generous act in his final days, before —if I can possibly say this—being sacked, to arrange for their return? We could retain replicas.
My Lords, fortunately for all Ministers, government policy is not made by the things that Ministers wrote when we were undergraduates. The Prime Minister has made the long-standing position of Her Majesty’s Government clear to the Greek Prime Minister, most recently when they met in November.