Cultural Property (Armed Conflicts) Bill [Lords]

Robert Jenrick Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons
Monday 31st October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick (Newark) (Con)]

As such a lowly Member, I was not expecting to be called at this point, so thank you for doing so, Mr Speaker.

I warmly welcome the Bill. Eighteen months ago, a select band of us—a happy few—engaged in a Backbench Business debate. My hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) made a particularly notable speech, which led to his being described as the Gertrude Bell of the House of Commons. I felt like a pupil sitting at the feet of the professor; the House may have the same experience later this evening.

During that debate, we called for three things. First, we asked that a great wrong be righted and that, after all these years, The Hague convention be brought into our law. Secondly, we asked for something to be done to enable us to make a practical contribution to staving off extremism in the middle east and to build capacity among those who were on the front line of protecting culture. We built on the idea of many others before us of creating a national cultural protection fund. Thirdly—this was equally important—we asked the Government to escalate the issue of cultural protection, tackling the illicit trade in antiquities and, more generally, to take seriously Britain’s role as a world leader in cultural diplomacy. That would of course include cultural protection, which is currently centre stage.

It is greatly to the Government’s credit that they listened, and just 18 months later, they have acted on each of those concerns in a way that no previous Government have done. I thank the former Prime Minister, David Cameron, and the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Mr Osborne), and my right hon. Friends the Members for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale) and for Wantage (Mr Vaizey), who pushed these measures through when they were in office. I thank cross-party colleagues such as the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant)—continuing our earlier bromance—and my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham, as well as, of course, the current Secretary of State and Ministers.

I am grateful to persistent and eloquent supporters outside Parliament. The most notable, in my view, was the former director of the British Museum, Neil MacGregor, who was a superb supporter on all three of the fronts that I mentioned earlier. Indeed, he was the instigator of many initiatives.

When we first raised these issues two years ago, the legitimate retort from many, especially in the media, was to ask why we should be interested in the destruction of mosques, libraries, souks and documents, when the real tragedy in places such as Syria, Iraq and Yemen was an unimaginable human tragedy: the murders, the rapes, the starvation, the displacement and the ethnic cleansing. One answer, of course, was that the scale of the destruction in recent years was so great. It was the greatest in any era since the end of the second world war, and some of the greatest sites of our shared civilisation were affected: Aleppo, Mosul, Nineveh and Palmyra. We were facing one enemy, Daesh, that was doing more to destroy the world’s cultural heritage than any other group since the end of the second world war, if not before.

The destruction that we saw 18 months or two years ago has continued, if not escalated. Only last week, we were discussing the conflict in Yemen, and a corollary of that has been the destruction of much of the great city of Sana’a, with its wonderful tower houses, any one of which would be considered one of the great monuments of other parts of the Gulf.

The second answer to that question—which is, perhaps, more important to me and which is relevant to what we have heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes)—is that there was a human dimension. That was brought home to me earlier this year when Nadia Murad, whom many Members will remember, came to Parliament on a couple of occasions to speak to us. When I talked to her afterwards, she surprised me, given all that she had been through—she had been raped and beaten, and her family members had been killed in front of her—by emphasising the destruction of the culture of the Yazidis as much as her own physical and mental torture. That, she said, was because she felt that there was a wider attempt to rob future generations of any connection with their past and that extremists were trying to impose their own contorted views on her and her people and eradicate their ancient culture.

We should bear in mind that some of the people who have been on the frontline of protecting our culture have faced a very great penalty for that in recent years. We have already heard about Professor al-Asaad, the wonderful creator and director at Palmyra, who lost his life while trying to defend treasures there. I have been told other stories over the last few years, and one in particular stuck with me. It concerned a guard who used to take money and open the gates at Nineveh and whom members of the British Museum had known for many years. He was a wonderful elderly gentleman who refused Daesh entry and was subsequently executed. To compound the tragedy, every male who attended his funeral service a few days later disappeared and was executed, including all the known staff of that wonderful site.

There are countless other stories. Only recently, when I had the pleasure of bringing to Parliament the first archaeologists and curators who had come here from Iraq, thanks to the cultural protection fund, and who were later given some press attention in The Times and The Daily Telegraph, they had to remain anonymous owing to the grave risk that, even when they returned to fairly safe parts of Iraq, extremists would target them because of the work that they were doing.

The last reason why I felt that this was important then—I think that it remains so today—was not just the destruction, but what was happening to the material that was being systematically looted and stolen. This is a revenue stream for Daesh, the Assad regime and others. As Neil MacGregor so eloquently put it, sculptures were being turned into tanks, which should worry us all. The channels used by that trade are at times very dark and very dangerous. As we have already heard this evening, they are interwoven with the drugs trade, the arms trade and human trafficking. The lines established in Iraq, from which much of the material is moved, were established by Saddam Hussein and his regime. Action here matters to us all, whether or not we care about the cultural aspects, because it is part of tackling extremism and part of tackling serious organised crime and the funding of terrorism.

While this cultural barbarism at times appears utterly hopeless, and we have to temper our remarks about what we can possibly achieve, I always believed, as did many others, that it was possible to do something and that we could make a modest national contribution while also, as part of that process, enhancing our reputation as a country in the region and around the world. That is what this Bill really does, and we have to see it in tandem with the cultural protection fund, which is an important aspect of our cultural diplomacy. It gives us above all a firmer foundation on which to speak on these issues of cultural diplomacy and protection. It makes practical contributions to those on the frontline who are already appreciating it thanks to the £3 million we have already given to the British Museum, with more on the way. Lastly, it helps to tackle the illicit trade through the offences in the Bill and in other ways, on each of which I shall say a few words.

This is not a panacea, of course, and it does not apply to some of the crimes happening in Syria and Iraq today, but it is very symbolic, not least because it rights an historical wrong that was a drag on our international reputation. The leading experts in this field, such as Neil MacGregor, who are really diplomats and ambassadors for Britain in the cultural sphere, felt it was a shame and a stain on the UK’s reputation that we had never done this. So purely by doing it we enhance our reputation in the world. That enables us to play a stronger role in cultural diplomacy, which has all manner of benefits in trade and in establishing cultural links with other countries —as we have seen with the British Museum, working with the British Council, lending art and artefacts to Iran and Russia in the past and doing things Governments struggle to do. I hope the UK will do more on this in a way we simply have not done in the past, along with other countries, including France, with a proper network of cultural attachés and Government links. People including John Kerry and François Hollande have made major speeches on this. I hope that we will seize on that and see this as the beginning of the UK adding another weapon in our arsenal of diplomacy around the world.

The cultural protection fund is a huge step forward. It is the first major fund of its kind. François Hollande has copied us and has supposedly created a €100-million fund, which is about to be launched. I am pleased we were in the vanguard of doing this and would like us to do more.

I am very pleased that what we have done was able to be ODAed because that makes a difference; it recognises that this is not just about art and architecture, but about economic regeneration post-conflict and healing the wounds of conflicts and bringing cultures together. We must view this as just the beginning, however, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Wantage (Mr Vaizey) said; I would like us to see it as seed capital for us to be bolder and for this to turn into a major lasting national achievement.

Most of the Bill is about the illicit trade, and we must shrink the demand for these works in the world today. Contrary to some of the remarks made in passing this evening, the UK is very good in this regard. We are not the epicentre of the illicit trade in art and antiquities; that is to be found in the Gulf states, in China, in Russia and in other parts of the world. The UK is actually at the forefront of having responsible dealers and major auction houses who care about their reputations, but that is all the more reason for us to do this and lead the world in enforcement.

I want to say a few words about the offence of dealing unlawfully in exported property. We must tackle this issue, and I would like to think that the Minister would give this further thought on Report. This matters because, if we want to shrink the illicit market, we have to defend the legitimate market. The great auction houses such as Christie’s and Sotheby’s actually have very little interest in maintaining their antiquities departments; antiquities account for 1% or less of the turnover of such auction houses. It would be very easy for them and for experienced legitimate dealers to walk away from this trade, and that would matter because it would push more objects on to the black market and on to smaller auction houses that lack the compliance and legal and regulatory structures to do due diligence properly, and it would push out good dealers and give trade to those we are more concerned about.

Essentially, there is no right or wrong answer when doing due diligence. The way an auction house assesses property is by making a judgment. A whole range of material comes forward for any piece being sold in antiquities sales. Some will come from blogs that are emerging; others from states such as Egypt that automatically challenge the sale of every piece being sold in the UK. An experienced professional—whether a dealer, a specialist in an auction house or someone in an auction house legal department—has to weigh up the factors and make a judgment. I would not want this Bill to criminalise people who ultimately make honest mistakes. That would set us back in our task of shrinking the illicit market and empowering the people at the forefront of getting this right. The Minister kindly reassured me in a letter she sent to Lord Judge that answers some of these points, but I would like this to be further considered on Report. It is extremely important that the due diligence being carried out is proportionate and does not dissuade legitimate businesses from participating in the market.

We have heard from other Members that no law is worth legislating for if it is not properly enforced. Sadly, enforcement in this area is very poor. The Met police have a small art and antiques squad. At different times, it has had between one and three members, and at present has, I think, one and a half people. They are excellent individuals; I have met some of them and my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes) and others know some of them, and I do not want to criticise their professionalism, but they are very constrained. This has been viewed as a sort of Lovejoy area of the criminal market that does not really matter; it is considered to involve harmless rogues in a barn in Suffolk. However, this is serious crime that is linked to human trafficking, the drugs trade and the funding of terror, and the policing needs to match that. I hope the good intentions set out in this Bill will lead to a prod to the Met police and others to beef up their policing as soon as possible, or else our efforts in this Bill will ultimately be in vain.

I welcome the Bill and am grateful to the Government for doing this. It is to their huge credit that we have finally done this. In debates such as that last week on the conflict in Yemen, we hear of cities of enormous value such as Sana’a being destroyed and of cultures under threat, and we realise why this matters. It matters because it is about protecting our shared international heritage and ensuring extremists never win.