Holocaust (Return of Cultural Objects) (Amendment) Bill

Theresa Villiers Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Friday 15th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Theresa Villiers (Chipping Barnet) (Con)]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.

As I will set out, the Bill seeks to address one of the consequences of the holocaust, still felt some 70 years or so after the events in question. As we prepare to reflect in this debate on the horrors to which hatred, prejudice and extremism can lead, I join others in expressing my shock and revulsion at what happened in New Zealand overnight. There is something deeply evil about attacking people in their place of worship. That the individuals responsible apparently planned, organised and even filmed this atrocity shows a truly appalling and stomach-churning degree of barbarity and callousness. I extend my support, sympathy and solidarity to everyone who has been injured, bereaved or harmed as a result of this terrible crime. I send my sympathies to all who are anxious and afraid as a result of what has happened, perhaps even including some of my own constituents.

[Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)]

I say to the right hon. Lady, as the co-chair of both the all-party group on British Jews and the all-party group on British Muslims, that Islamophobia and antisemitism are fellow travellers. She spoke powerfully about the events in Christchurch, and everyone in the House will share those sentiments. I do not plan to speak in this debate because I am conscious that there are other private Members’ Bills to be considered, and I know how frustrating it is when we cannot get on to business on which there is consensus, but I wish warmly to congratulate the right hon. Lady, because the progress of this Bill, from where it started to where we are now, has been no mean feat. It would not have happened without her hard work, perseverance and determination, and without cross-party support, so on behalf of my constituents, I thank her most warmly and sincerely.

[Theresa Villiers]

I warmly thank the hon. Gentleman for what he said. He is so right: today of all days is an opportunity for everyone in this House to stand up and condemn antisemitism, Islamophobia, and racism and prejudice in all their forms. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”]

As the hon. Gentleman just outlined, the Bill has enjoyed strong cross-party support at all stages in Parliament, including from the Government and the Opposition Front-Bench team. I thank them for that support, and I thank right hon. and hon. Members who took part in the debates on Second Reading and in Committee, and who supported the ten-minute rule Bill with which I started this process.

The objective of this two-clause Bill is to ensure that the 17 national museums listed in section 1 of the Holocaust (Return of Cultural Objects) Act 2009 are able to return to its rightful owners property that was lost, seized, stolen or looted during the Nazi era. Clause 1 will achieve that by removing section 4(7) of the 2009 Act. That provision is a sunset clause that will otherwise remove the 2009 legislation from the statute book on 11 November this year.

The 2009 Act is still needed. It started life as a ten-minute rule Bill introduced by Andrew Dismore, who was then the MP for Hendon. As colleagues will be aware, it is rare for the ten-minute rule Bill procedure to deliver a change in the law, but in that instance Andrew Dismore’s persistence prevailed. I very much hope that this Bill, which also started through the ten-minute rule process, will succeed in rescuing the legislation that Andrew managed to get through Parliament 10 years ago. Hopefully, this ten-minute rule Bill will come to the rescue of a previous one.

The 2009 Act addressed a problem that had arisen in relation to a number of our national museums such as the V&A, the National Maritime Museum and the National Portrait Gallery. As set out in its second and final clause, the Bill covers England, Wales and Scotland, but not Northern Ireland. Some of the institutions specified in section 1 of the 2009 Act are located in Scotland so, as the House has been told, a legislative consent motion has been secured from the Scottish Parliament.

The governing statutes of the 17 institutions listed in the 2009 Act mean that they could not restore property seized by the Nazis to its owners or their heirs, because the legislation underpinning their rules forbade them from giving away items in their collection, except in limited and specific circumstances. This restriction operated even when the institution in question believed that the claim had merit and wished to return the item to the heirs of the original owner.

The problem is illustrated by a case considered in 2008 by the Spoliation Advisory Panel established by the Government to consider claims of this nature. It considered a dispute over two pieces of porcelain from a Viennese collection, one in Fitzwilliam Museum and one in the British Museum. The panel recommended the return of the one in the Fitzwilliam, but felt it could not do so in relation to the other because of legal restrictions in the British Museum Act 1963. A similar problem had arisen in 2006, when the British Museum was unable to return four old-master drawings to the heirs of Dr Arthur Feldman, from whose collection they had been looted by the Nazis in March 1939.

The 2009 Act resolved the problem and enabled property from national museums to be returned, if that was recommended by the Spoliation Advisory Panel and approved by the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. The 2009 legislation is supported by the museum community, which has warmly welcomed the intention to remove the sunset clause through this Bill.

A significant proportion of Europe’s cultural treasures went missing during the Nazi era. As time passes and memories fade, there are likely to be fewer claims, but there continues to be a strong moral case for keeping the 2009 Act on the statute book. At a major conference on spoliation in September 2017, the UK Government reaffirmed their determination to live up the commitments made 18 years previously at the Washington conference on looted art. At that historic conference, 44 countries pledged to work for the restoration of property seized during the Holocaust era.

As several Members said during debates on the Bill, the evil of what happened in the Holocaust is unique in human history. Millions of people had their lives cruelly cut short in the greatest crime in human history. Millions more lost friends and relatives; sometimes their whole family was wiped out. Sadly, there is nothing we can do to reverse those appalling losses, but we can at least keep open the hope of the return of lost treasures, when they are identified in our museums, galleries and libraries.

[Neil O'Brien (Harborough) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend is again making an incredibly powerful speech. I do not understand why a sunset clause was put into the original legislation. She is quite right that we must remove it with this Bill, which I hope will pass, but why was such a clause put into the legislation in the first place?

[Theresa Villiers]

It is not entirely clear. The debates on the 2009 legislation did not seem to indicate a great problem of instability. I can only assume that there was concern that the legislation might have a destabilising effect on the collections in our national museums, but although a number of cases have been determined as a result of the operation of the 2009 Act, the reality has been that such cases have been relatively small in number. If there were fears about uncertainty, instability and provoking claims, they have not materialised in practice.

I commend the Commission for Looted Art for its excellent efforts in trying to secure fair outcomes in cases of this nature. The commission shared with me comments and thoughts from a number of families involved, some of which I read out in my speech on Second Reading. I found those comments deeply moving, and what came across clearly from them was the emotional value of being reunited with an object treasured by a loved one who died in the Holocaust, and that a lost relative had held in their hands and valued—for example, books owned by a much-loved grandmother; a painting given by a claimant’s grandparents to his parents; or a favourite painting that used to hang on the dining room wall of a family home. The Nazi regime engaged in systematic confiscation, looting and theft from Jewish people.

[Rachel Maclean (Redditch) (Con)]

I am fascinated to hear my right hon. Friend’s argument and wonder what her response is to some of the opponents of this Bill who claim that the routes available are available only to the rich and that, sometimes, when objects are returned from museums, that deprives the general public of an opportunity to see these priceless works of art. I would be fascinated to hear her thoughts on that.

[Theresa Villiers]

My response is that this legislation opens the way for all who have reason to believe that an object owned by their family member is in one of our national institutions. It is not confined to helping people from a particular family background. It really is important for people at all levels to have the chance—the opportunity—to retrieve an item of property that once belonged to one of their relatives. In response to those potential critics that my hon. Friend has mentioned, I think that I would continue to make the case that it is right and proper and fair that if an item was seized by the Nazis, it should be returned to its rightful owners or to their heirs.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

May I ask my very good friend whether the Bill has any provision for the people who looted this treasure, took it away and then presumably sold it on, or possibly gave it away, because they were acting illegally? Personally, when I have come across looted churches and mosques, I have been involved in securing that property and making sure that treasures are kept there until someone responsible can take possession of them. I am concerned that these people seem to have got away with just stealing this stuff.

[Theresa Villiers]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. No, I am afraid that the scope of this Bill is defined and narrow and relates to specific circumstances to enable our national museums to return looted property. However, there are provisions within the criminal justice system and the system of international law that are aimed at bringing to justice those responsible for crimes committed during the Nazi era.

The goal of those behind the holocaust went even beyond mass murder and mass killing. The evil men and women responsible also wanted to wipe out all traces of Jewish culture in Europe, and confiscation of property was a significant part of that repulsive project, so returning books and artworks covered by the legislation is not really about their monetary value. It is about restoring to people a tangible physical link with a lost loved one, and it is about the conservation of memories and culture that the Nazis wanted to eliminate.

My Chipping Barnet constituency is home to a number of holocaust survivors. I pay tribute to all of them for their courage and dignity and for the work that so many of them do to recount their stories to try to ensure that we never ever forget what happened. We owe it to them to enable this small recompense—the return of cultural property—to continue.

[James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)]

I am very grateful to my right hon. Friend. This is a very, very good Bill. I was brought up in her constituency, and, like Mr Speaker, born in Edgware. Many of my friends and neighbours were of the Jewish faith. Some of them had been in concentration camps, or had family members who had perished there. Fundamentally, there should be no sunset clause on the memory that we keep permanently as a society of that terrible outrage, so that we never forget it and therefore repeat it.

[Theresa Villiers]

I wholeheartedly agree with that sentiment.

I would like to close my speech today, as I did on Second Reading, by reading out the thoughts of a family involved in one of these types of cases, not necessarily one directly determined under the 2009 Act, but one that expresses very clearly the underlying principle that we are considering today. Speaking of some paintings that were returned to them, one successful claimant told the Commission for Looted Art:

“They mean so much because these paintings symbolise that lost pre-war world and provide the last link with lives which were utterly destroyed or irrevocably transformed by the Nazis. The objects reflected the character and taste and personality of their owners. Stealing them was another form of taking the people themselves. It’s the meaning of these looted works of art that is central to why restitution is so important. In stealing property, the Nazis made no distinction between rich and poor. They took from both equally and they took everything. And by taking every part of people’s lives, the Nazis were also taking the evidence that people had once lived. So restitution is one way of restoring the dead to the living. That the restitution of looted artworks remains an issue almost 70 years after the war attests to that significance—and not to their financial value.”

Today’s horrific news from the other side of the world shows the horrors that hatred and extremism can lead to even in the modern world. At a time when antisemitic incidents are rising, it is more important than ever to stand up against all forms of hatred, racism and Islamophobia. This Bill is one way in which this House can do that.

Supporting this Bill provides a way to signal that we will not tolerate antisemitism or other forms of hatred, that we will always condemn it and that we will seek to root it out wherever we find it. Supporting this Bill is a way to demonstrate that we will never let the lessons learned from the holocaust to be overlooked or forgotten. Supporting this Bill is a way to show the respect that we bear for holocaust survivors who held on, suffered unimaginable trauma and survived against the odds, and I commend it to the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Julian Knight]

That is an interesting question, and there are people in the museum communities much more qualified to answer it than I am.

[Theresa Villiers]

Let me provide reassurance on this issue. Establishing ownership obviously involves looking at the facts of the case. The 2009 Act provides for that to happen with the oversight of the Spoliation Advisory Panel, and its recommendation to return property is sent to the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. That is the process—the facts are considered, the panel assesses them, and the Secretary of State decides whether to approve the recommendation to return the property.

[Julian Knight]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that clear explanation, and I am delighted to have been an interlocutor between her and my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart).

--- Later in debate ---

[Julian Knight]

I give way to my right hon. Friend to answer that.

[Theresa Villiers]

Yes it has legal force when establishing the ownership of property, and the 2009 Act removes the legal barrier to recognising correct legal ownership.

[Julian Knight]

I shall move on.

This Bill should not be seen as a rebuke to those who drafted and passed the original Act 10 years ago. The whole point of sunset clauses is that they make us revisit previous pieces of legislation, test their underlying assumptions and decide in the light of new evidence and experience whether and how to update the law. That is good legislative practice.

In this instance, after a decade in operation it is clear that the work of the Holocaust (Return of Cultural Objects) Act 2009 is far from done. We do not know how many more items may yet prove traceable to legitimate owners once proper provenance work has been done, and it would be perverse to make it impossible for institutions to return such items in future in order to uphold what has proved to be an arbitrary deadline. The Bill provides us with an opportunity once again to renew our covenant with the Jewish people and all the victims of the holocaust, reflect on the crimes of national socialism and reiterate our commitment to pursuing justice for its victims. I am therefore proud to offer the Bill my full support, and I hope that Members across the House will do the same.

--- Later in debate ---

[Theresa Villiers]

With the leave of the House, I rise to give my profound thanks to everyone who has taken part in the debate today and those who participated on Second Reading and in Committee, including the Front Benchers. Like the Minister, I found the contribution of the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Tooting (Dr Allin-Khan), very moving in talking about the experiences of her family.

I thank officials in the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, particularly Mark Caldon, for their help and briefings on this legislation. I thank Andrew Dismore for his advice and, of course, for his work on the original 2009 Act that we are here to save. Lastly, I thank the Lord Commissioner of Her Majesty’s Treasury, my hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point (Rebecca Harris), for her invaluable assistance in enabling me to navigate the Friday process.

I commend this Bill to the House.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.