Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, whether it is Government policy that (a) works of art held in the national collections, including the British Museum, should be retained by those institutions in the UK in perpetuity and not gifted to other nations and their institutions and (b) the Government will intervene should any such institution propose an alternative approach.

National museums and galleries in the UK, including the British Museum, operate independently of the Government, but some are prevented by law from “deaccessioning” objects in their collections unless, broadly, they are duplicates or unfit for retention. The two exceptions to this are when the objects are human remains that are less than 1000 years old, and objects that were spoliated during the Nazi era. The Government has no plans to change this law.