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4 Apr 2003 : Column 1225—continued
1.34 pm
Shona McIsaac (Cleethorpes): Like the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr. Allan), I am a member of the all-party archaeology group, so I am more than happy to support this excellent Bill. He has already touched on the July 2000 Select Committee report, which I hope the Minister has read. There is also the excellent first report of our all-party group, which, apart from considering the state of archaeology in the UK, made specific recommendations on the trade in illicit cultural objects.
I want to clarify what is meant by "cultural object", as my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore) asked about that. For example, UNESCO says that such objects are
- "broadly defined, and as well as works of art it includes mineral and palaeontological specimens as well as antiquities, objects of ethnographic interest and elements of historic buildings and moments which have been dismembered."
Michael Fabricant: What the hon. Lady is saying is helpful, but, of course, "cultural object" is defined in clause 2(1) as
- "an object of historical, architectural or archaeological interest."
Shona McIsaac: I do not think that that is necessarily the case, although we could argue about it, probably at length, in Committee. As far as I am concerned, certain palaeontological specimens would be covered by the Bill, such as rare fossils. The hon. Gentleman is talking about human remains, but where do those start to become palaeontological rather than purely archaeological? There is a question involving definitions and boundaries here.
Michael Fabricant: Whether something is palaeontological is one thing, but an object would not
have to be stone age to be covered by the Bill. For example, I and most archaeologists would argue that remains found under the city of York, or Jorvik, which is its Viking name, are of archaeological interest. Human remains may be much more recent, and that example relates to about 1,000 or perhaps 2,000 years ago, although I had better not go into Viking history.
Mr. Allan: Twelve hundred years ago.
Michael Fabricant: I am advised that the figure is 1,200 years. Such remains would be a darn site more recent than those from the stone age.
Shona McIsaac: Of course they would be a lot more recent. As my hon. Friends have just said to me, the hon. Gentleman should stop digging. That is my advice to him at this stage.
Some people think that the issue is minor, but I do not think that it is minor at all. It is fundamentally important. The hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam touched on the criminal activities involved in dealing in illicit cultural objects, but we must all consider the fact that by removing objects and selling them illegally people are stealing history. They are denying others knowledge that they could gain through studying archaeological artefacts in situ, which would give us the context.
For example, the discovery of Roman amphorae in Herculaneum would not raise any eyebrows, but finding some in Orkney or in India would create a lot of excitement, as it would be significant. However, if an object is taken away and out of its context, it becomes almost meaningless. We are talking about stealing history—stealing culture itself.
Estimating the value of that market is particularly difficult, but we should consider insurance claims in the UK for stolen artworks, which amount to about £300 million. If only a small proportion of those stolen works found their way into the illegal market, a great volume of money would be involved. The hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam gave a few examples, and I want to add some of my own to the debate to show the scale of the problem that we are dealing with. In 1997, an arrest in Germany brought to light hundreds of icons that had been stolen from 46 to 50 churches in Cyprus.
Mr. Dismore: It is interesting that my hon. Friend has referred to that incident. I suspect that there may not be time for me to catch your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and that was one of the issues to which I wanted to refer in particular. As my hon. Friend knows, I have an interest in Cyprus. I have seen the frescos that were looted from the occupied zone in northern Cyprus, and what happened is important. I pay tribute to the late Dino Leventis, who was one of the great movers behind attempts to deal with the illicit art trade, especially in Byzantine artefacts and remains. Sadly, he is no longer with us, but he played a great part in dealing with these problems.
Shona McIsaac: That intervention shows the nature of the problem. Cyprus has been a particular difficulty, given the political set-up there. Political problems and instability can create an environment in which such thefts, plundering and looting can occur.
In 1998, a police raid on a villa in Sicily revealed antiquities stolen from just one site that were worth more than £20 million. I visited Sicily last year, and I was astonished by the lax attitude taken by the Italian authorities in some of their monuments. As I was going round Roman villas and Greek temples, people were picking at the edges of Roman mosaics and putting tiles in their pockets, but the guards did not bat an eyelid. At the Greek temples, people were picking up small stones and putting them in their backpacks. I was amazed that no one seemed to regard picking up a bit here and a bit there as a problem. Much art and artefacts are stolen from sites in Italy, and tend to find their way on to the illegal and illicit markets in London.
Mayan sites are a particular problem in South America. It is estimated that about 1,000 pieces of Mayan pottery and other artefacts go on to the markets in the USA every month. Many sites in South America are looted and plundered.
The illicit trade covers a wide variety of offences. It may just be a failure to get a proper export licence. That is at the lower level of crimes related to cultural objects. At the upper end, people steal valuable items to order. That is increasingly associated with organised crime. There are links with drug trafficking and the illegal arms trade. As the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam said, links with terrorist groups have increasingly been established during investigations into stolen cultural objects.
Sometimes, the object itself, whether it is artwork or an artefact, is used as currency in drug deals. Instead of money changing hands, it is stolen artworks. There is a connection with money laundering and the laundering of artworks carried out in the illegal drugs trade.
Mr. Allan: The hon. Lady refers to the coincidence of the stolen art trade and the drugs trade. That reminded me of an incident that police officers told me about, which showed how things can sadly go wrong. A group of ancient heads were recovered at a port in the United Kingdom. The officers involved suspected that they contained drugs, and tried to ascertain whether that was the case with the aid of a Black & Decker. Given the state that the heads were left in, they had less value than when they arrived.
Shona McIsaac: They would certainly be less valuable after being attacked by a Black & Decker!
There has been a great increase in this illicit trade over recent years, for a number of reasons. One is the opening up of areas in, for instance, Asia and Africa. New sites are constantly coming to light, and are being plundered. Moreover, the looters have better means of detection—better metal detectors, for example. I have heard that some are even beginning to use geophysical surveys to establish where objects are under the earth so that they can dig them up and get out quickly. The internet is providing many new ways of selling the objects, and the police are finding it difficult to track them down.
There has been phenomenal destruction of sites in Egypt. I do not know whether the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam knows of the case of Jonathan Tokeley-Parry, but at the time of his arrest he had been smuggling antiquities out of Egypt since the early 1990s. In an attempt to disguise them, he would dip them in
wax or plastic and then paint them to make them look like cheap souvenirs. Some of the stolen goods have been returned to Egypt, and those—let alone the ones that have not been found—demonstrate the sheer volume of the illicit trade in which he was involved.
Mr. Dismore: I would have mentioned a lacuna in the Bill in my speech if I had had time. Clause 3 refers to the acquisition, disposal, import or export of an item, but not to the alteration of an item. What if someone acquires a piece legitimately, subsequently discovers it to be bogus—or rather tainted—and alters it, but does nothing to dispose of it? I think that that too should be an offence.
Shona McIsaac: According to my recollection of the Bill, it is a question of knowingly purchasing antiquities—
Mr. Dismore: I am talking about altering them.
Shona McIsaac: I think we can discuss that in Committee.
Let me list some of the objects handled by the character I mentioned earlier. There were 25 papyrus texts dating from 300 BC, Coptic textiles, a sixth-dynasty limestone relief of a seated woman, terracotta statues, Graeco-Roman mummy masks, a bronze statue of the god Horus, a royal head carved in granite, coloured reliefs from Egyptian tombs and 35 items looted from the tomb of Hetep-Ka. Further items have subsequently been returned.
That was just one individual dealing with some sites in Egypt. It gives us an idea of the extent to which Egypt is being plundered to feed markets that are largely in the west.
I am also becoming increasingly concerned about looting in Mali, which has more archaeological sites in Africa than any other country except Egypt. A recent survey of just 125 sq m discovered that 45 per cent. of the 834 archaeological sites in the area had already been looted, 17 per cent. of them to a serious extent. Looting is spreading, and it is taking place before proper investigation is possible. We are losing history: history is being stolen. The percentage of sites looted in Mali represents a phenomenal theft of history. Our knowledge of human culture simply vanishes in such cases.
In 1997 and subsequently, the magazine British Archaeology has reported that looted objects are still pouring into the country. That is why the Bill is necessary. We must create a criminal offence: this loophole has been there for far too long.
Objects are being removed from sites in the United Kingdom, too. It is an offence to remove an object from a scheduled ancient monument but not all ancient monuments in the UK are scheduled. I believe that about 20,000 sites are not scheduled, which means that there is phenomenal potential for those sites to be looted.
Even from the scheduled monuments there is looting. The Roman site of Corbridge at Hadrian's wall has been looted on many occasions. One night, about 55 holes were dug into that Roman fort by night-hawks trying to find coins and other objects to sell.
The other site in the UK that caused great concern was Wanborough near Guildford. The horde of coins that was plundered there was worth about £2 million. Again, we have lost the context: we do not know how that find relates to the religious buildings that were on that site.
Although it is not touched on by the Bill, I hope that English and Welsh law can be changed to mirror Scottish law. In Scotland all new finds are property of the Crown and that can help to deal with looting, whereas in England and Wales, new finds are not property of the Crown unless they are deemed treasure, and treasure is determined by the metal content of that find. That is a great loophole in the law. Making all new finds in archaeological sites property of the Crown could help to stop some of the looting of our ancient monuments.
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