Holocaust (Return of Cultural Objects) (Amendment) Bill

Lord Palmer of Childs Hill Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 9th May 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Palmer of Childs Hill (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Sherbourne, for introducing this Second Reading. Of course I support the Bill and its aim, which is, as he said, to remove the sunset clause. We should consider why that clause was inserted in the first place. The suggestion that it be time limited was because by November 2019 there would be no need for the legislation on the basis that, so it was said, it would become harder for claimants to amass sufficient evidence to decide on the validity of a claim. Clearly, this optimism was incorrect, as shown by the ongoing evidence that claims will continue, albeit at a snail’s pace. The original owners of paintings and sculptures may well have died but the claims can be continued by their descendants. The noble Lord, Lord Sherbourne, was doubtful about the volume within UK institutions, but who knows?

I find it hard to get my head around how these cultural objects landed up in museums around the world. A speech in the other place said that,

“there is still uncertainty about the full provenance of some of the cultural treasures”.—[Official Report, Commons, 8/2/19; col. 557.]

Surely before purchasing or accepting items as gifts, the worthy museums and galleries would have obtained detailed provenance for each item. This happens in the art world. If museums and galleries have such items, one gets the picture of a hole-in-the-corner deal, with conversations such as, “Are you in the market for a Botticelli?”. The answer is something like, “No, I can’t provide its history or provenance without including ‘looted by the Nazis in 1944’”. The legislation before us suggests that on display or in store, in museums and galleries, are items of stolen art gifted to the gallery, purchased from the thief or purchased by the vendor from the thief or his or her preowner.

This is a worldwide problem. Removing the sunset clause by the UK will serve as an example to other countries. France is considering the need for legal action to make possible deaccessioning—a dreadful word—of artworks looted by the Nazis that are in state museums. Deaccessioning is the process in which a work of art or other object is permanently removed from a museum’s collection. My question to the Minister is: should this further action be implemented or at least considered in the UK?

It is worth restating that the legislation before us is limited in scope and continues to seek, in some small way, to put right the wrongs done during an industrialised slaughter by the Nazi regime. We are considering this Bill in a disturbing climate of anti-Semitism worldwide, and the UK is also experiencing such an upsurge. This Bill is not going to curb anti-Semitism, but it may just help to right some wrongs.