Holocaust (Return of Cultural Objects) (Amendment) Bill

Peter Heaton-Jones Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 8th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Peter Heaton-Jones (North Devon) (Con)]

I echo Members from across the House in congratulating my right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers) on her stewardship of this extraordinarily important Bill. Other Members have reflected on the power of physical objects, and that was brought home to me about 18 months ago when my mother passed away in the summer of 2017 and I became the custodian of a small box of family heirlooms. To my shame and regret, I had never really looked at them in the 54 years in which I could have done so, and I was perhaps not aware of their significance. Inside the box were some war medals, which had been awarded to my paternal and maternal grandfathers. I only met one of them; my mum’s dad was known to me, but my dad’s father died when my dad was only a very young boy, in 1930.

I had never seen those medals before, and, clearly, I never had the opportunity to meet my grandfather, but the physical act of holding the medals in my hands demonstrated the strong emotional power of physical objects and the connection that they can provide to the past. I can only imagine that that is multiplied 10 times, 100 times or 1,000 times in the case of Jewish communities in which families suffered so awfully in the holocaust. That is why it is so important that the physical objects in question are returned to the families, as my right hon. Friend’s Bill seeks to do.

The holocaust is an horrific stain on human history. The murder of more than 6 million individuals cruelly cut short their lives and potential. It is worth remembering the full horror of it, with whole villages being taken into the forests and killed, and millions being deported from their homes. As my fellow Devon MP the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) reminded us so well, it extended beyond the Jewish community to encompass Gypsies, the Romany and the gay community. It was an utterly shameful part of history.

Those horrific crimes can never be remedied. As well as taking those people’s lives, the Nazis stripped them of their possessions and property. Indeed, it is estimated that 20% of what we regard as Europe’s cultural treasures are in fact the rightful property of the Jewish families who suffered in the holocaust. We must therefore do everything in our power to ensure that Nazi-looted works of art are returned to their rightful owners.

Knowing that my right hon. Friend’s Bill was being debated today, I did a bit of research on why the sunset clause was introduced in the 2009 Act. It is intriguing that one would ever have believed it was right to say that there is an arbitrary cut-off point of 10 years beyond which it would no longer be appropriate or possible to return such objects. When one looks into the history, one can see, to some extent, the thought process that was in force at the time. In 2006, prior even to the introduction of the original legislation, there was a consultation in which the majority of respondents agreed that as time passed it would become more and more difficult to determine the rightful ownership of some of these objects and some of this property.

That might have seemed sensible and measured at the time, but, as my right hon. Friend has so powerfully demonstrated in her speech today and in others that she has made on this subject, we have learned as we have gone on that actually what was right then—what was rightly achieved by the 2009 Act—is just as right now. There is still plenty of opportunity and plenty of work to be done to identify the rightful owners of some of these objects and to return them in the same way. That is why I am very pleased to be supporting this Bill today. It is absolutely right that we amend the 2009 Act to remove the sunset clause due to take effect on 11 November this year and thereby extend these provisions indefinitely so that we can try to right some of the wrongs of the past.

During my research, I was very struck by some of the comments that my right hon. Friend made when introducing this Bill, when she said better than I certainly could why this is important:

“Surely, it would be heartless and wrong to deprive the last survivors of their right to recover treasured works of art.”—[Official Report, 13 March 2018; Vol. 637, c. 754.]

That is exactly the essence of this Bill. It removes the sunset clause. It allows items stolen during the holocaust to be returned to their rightful owners indefinitely. It is an important piece of legislation and I am pleased to support it wholeheartedly.