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11.24 am
Mr. Randall: I congratulate the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr. Allan) on his admirable Bill, and thank those who took part in its earlier stages. I am delighted to discover the great expertise of my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), which I am sure the Conservative party will use to great effect in the future.
My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr. Chope) referred to my expert knowledge of underwater vessels. I am not entirely sure where that came from, unless it is connected with the fact that this time last year my private Member's Bill on marine wildlife conservation was holed below the water line in another place, and is now sitting at the bottom of the legislative ocean. I rather hope that it is found not by a team of marine archaeologists, but by a team of salvage operators who will bring it to the surface in due course.
The protection of cultural objects, whether in our own country or elsewhere in the world, is of prime importance. In Iraq and, as I said earlier, in Kosovo, we have recently witnessed the incredible destruction of centuries-old buildings, and the resulting loss of objects that were inside them. But whether we are talking about the churches and monasteries of Kosovo or historic churches such as my local parish church, St. Laurence in Cowley, this is a vital issue. Even the archaeological traces of long-lost legal knowledge that I once acquired have now, sadly, become part of history.
I wish the Bill well in the other place.
11.26 am
Mr. Chope: I too congratulate the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr. Allan), and my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), who has been very actively involved in the Bill.
The Bill has been considered very carefully both before and during our debates in the House, and there was widespread consultation. It has been dealt with in an exemplary way. Its ambit is relatively narrow, but although it is a specialist Bill it is tremendously important to those who are concerned about these issues. I have learned a lot, and I now know that my constituents who have pieces of masonry from Highcliffe castle in their gardens will not offend against the Bill if they decide to sell them in due course.
I think we are all concerned about our heritage and its despoliation by those who seek to make money. That applies not just in this country but elsewhere. Although the Bill is modest and will not involve many prosecutions, it will send a clear signal that we need to protect our heritage. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam for enabling us to do that.
11.27 am
Dr. Murrison: I broadly welcome the Bill, although there are problems of definition, which we have covered in a most amusing fashion. I thank the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr. Allan) for his assurance on architectural salvage, which was most useful, but I think it is important to identify what we mean by a cultural object in this context. I still fear that we are confusing objects of obvious cultural importance—the sort referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Randall)—with the more workaday objects that we might see in this country.
11.28 am
Tim Loughton: We warmly welcome the Bill. I echo what was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr. Chope) about the way in which it has been handled, thanks largely to the expertise of the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr. Allan) and the cool manner in which he has guided it through Parliament. That has not been easy at times, but we have ended up with a very good Bill. The hon. Gentleman may well have fulfilled his political ambition by producing this important piece of legislation, and I envy him for being able to put his name to it.
The Bill has widespread support among all sorts of organisations and individuals who care about culture and cultural objects. It sprang from recommendations
made by the Select Committee back in July 2000, which were taken up by the advisory panel set up by the Minister under Professor Norman Palmer. The panel did some excellent work. The Bill has the backing of the Council for British Archaeology, Rescue, the British Museum, the portable antiquities scheme, the National Council for Metal Detecting and other organisations. The Government should be given credit for the progress that the Bill has made, for taking the issue seriously and for signing up to the 1970 UNESCO convention on cultural objects, which they did last October. For once, then, on this issue, we can give the Government credit where credit is due.As the Minister said, the Bill has all-party support. We have had a good debate and much interest has been shown by Back Benchers. I look forward to welcoming all their applications to join the all-party parliamentary group on archaeology, which is a very important body in these Houses. I belatedly welcome the Minister to her new role. We greatly enjoyed the contributions of her predecessor, not least because he said that he had a particular interest in the Bill and in archaeological matters, and he added the relic of Welsh rugby to the discussions in Committee.
It is important to get the Bill right; it should be proportionate in providing protection and in allowing honest, decent dealers in items of cultural and archaeological significance to go about their business. After all, the art market in this country is an important employer, with some 40,000 people, and London has an international reputation for expertise and honesty in this field. The Bill should add to the respectability of that market.
As the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam said, illegal trading in cultural items is now big business. It is not quite up there with dealing in drugs, but it is becoming an important international business, and there are links to the funding of terrorism. As Julian Radcliffe from the Art Loss Register has said:
- "I used to be sceptical about whether stolen art is being used in money laundering. Now I'm not."
Once items are lost to scholarship, particularly if, as in many cases, they are taken from sites that were previously unknown, that leaves an enormous gap in our understanding of many cultures. Often we do not learn much from the antiquities themselves unless we know their context. Those of us who profess to be amateur archaeologists do not dig up objects for their own sake; we do it to expand our knowledge of why they were there, who made them and how they fit into the cultural thread.
There have been several alarming cases such as the recent one involving a New York dealer who, I am glad to say, was given a sentence of 33 months in jail for conspiring to receive and handle stolen Egyptian pieces. Those pieces had been covered in plastic so that they looked like the cheap tourist knick-knacks brought back from Egypt by holidaymakers. People are going to extraordinary lengths to try to abuse the proper dealings in cultural objects.
Many bodies in this country are doing great things to improve the checking mechanisms. The International Association of Dealers in Ancient Art has plans for its members to conduct searches with a database for all items over the value of £10,000 to make sure that they are not stolen. It is now looking to reduce that threshold to £2,000, which would scoop many more people into the net.
The British Museum set a good example in 1990 when it restricted itself to acquiring only pieces that were documented as having been out of the ground before 1970, when the UNESCO convention kicked in. As the hon. Gentleman said, we should give a lot of credit to the work of Lord Renfrew, who taught both of us at Cambridge in our archaeological days. He also set up the illicit antiquities research centre at the MacDonald Institute in Cambridge, which does a lot of good work in this area.
The Bill's timing has been focused by events in the Baghdad museum in Iraq, and it is right that we should raise the profile of the cultural vandalism and potential disaster that took place there. However, as events have unfolded in recent weeks, it has become clear that the extent of the looting was, thank goodness, much smaller than anticipated. Artefacts such as the bull's head harp from Ur, which is 4,500 years old, the great vase of Warka, which is 5,000 years old, and others from all the incredible cultures in the cradle of civilisations that is that part of the middle east have re-emerged and been returned to the museum.
It was fitting that yesterday the museum was able to re-open its doors, albeit on a temporary basis, to show people that most of the exhibits were still in place. Many of the objects that were stolen had been in store rooms, and were probably taken in planned looting. We should take those matters seriously, and it is right that the Department, in co-ordination with the British Museum, has lent its help to ensure that Iraq's culture is not lost.
If I have one qualification about the Bill, it concerns regulatory impact assessment No. 37. I made this point in Committee and it was echoed by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr. Chope). The RIA says that it is not anticipated that there will be more than one prosecution every two to three years, so it is de minimis to law enforcement agencies. I hope that that is not the case, because although this is a deterrent measure that sends out clear signals that this behaviour is criminal and will not be tolerated, illicit dealing will still go on. Many people will need to be taught a harsh lesson if they are to learn about the seriousness of the legislation. I would hope that we will have some high-profile prosecutions, along the lines of that in New York, which would set an example. We do not want to lock everybody up, but there will have to be more than one such case every one or two years if the Bill is to be taken seriously. The RIA makes a serious underestimate.
That notwithstanding, this is a good Bill. As the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam said, it will make an important contribution to heritage legislation in the UK, and, as with much else that happens here, send out good signals and set good examples for other countries. It has the wholehearted support of Conservative Members, and we wish it a speedy and successful passage through the other House.
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