Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 290-299)

RT HON TESSA JOWELL MP, DR DAVID GAIMSTER AND MR ALAN DAVEY

11 NOVEMBER 2003

  Q290  Chairman: Secretary of State, we would like to welcome you here today. Is there an opening statement you would like to make?

  Tessa Jowell: No, there is not. This is a follow-up session from the earlier session that we did at the beginning of the summer, so, no, I am ready to take your questions and do my best to answer them.

  Chairman: Thank you. Derek Wyatt.

  Q291  Derek Wyatt: We have been quizzing your colleague Caroline Flint about the database issues. It does seem to us incomprehensible that it is nearly four years and still there does not seem to be the likelihood of a database. Can you explain to us why this decision is taking so long to make?

  Tessa Jowell: First of all, I think I can reassure you that we are now, eventually, at a point where certainly a pilot project for the database looks likely to begin either at the end of this year or early next year. I agree with you, it has taken a very long time to make progress and I have taken some trouble to try to understand exactly why we face the degree of delay that we have and it will be for you to judge whether the reasons are sound. It might be helpful to you if we submit as a further very short memorandum an analysis of the period of time since your recommendation was made and the two relevant departments, my Department and the Home Office, embarked on their work. By way of explanation it is important to say two things: first of all, this is an extremely complex project; and secondly, there have been, and indeed remain, differences of view between my Department, the industry and the Home Office about the best way forward and much of the last two or two and a half years has been spent on negotiating those differences. We are now at a point where I think there is agreement about a number of the features of the database. First of all, that it should be open. This particular point points to a point of difference between my Department and I think particularly the police who wanted to see a database to which only they would have access. My Department sees this database as allowing due diligence by those who want to acquire a particular object and checking it against the database is a means of ensuring that that process of due diligence has been undertaken. I have to say that I think the methodology of the database has also been clarified by the process of working up the proposals and then taking through the recent legislation in relation to stolen or removed cultural objects.

  Q292  Derek Wyatt: Is it your view that, with a fair wind now, given the three and a half years lapse, a pilot might start some time in the new year, maybe in March, as we were told by the Home Office half an hour ago, but that it might be another 18 months before we have finally got this up and running? So it will be nearly six years since this was muted. Do you think the pilot will run for three months or six months?

  Tessa Jowell: The intention is that the pilot will run for a year. The pilot itself will be reasonably inexpensive, the estimates are about £300,000. The costs of the fully established database will obviously be greater than that. I think one of other reasons that there was a delay in the early stages was that some very alarming estimates of cost were produced for which neither department had any financial provision. The timescale is now established. The pilot will be up and running. It will run for a year. So in March 2005 I would expect us to be in a position to be able to make a judgment about the form of the final database and for work to be undertaken there. I fully understand your scepticism about the length of time. I share that scepticism. Having looked in detail at the history, I am persuaded that there are answers to the doubts about whether or not this has really been a process in which all the necessary people have been fully engaged.

  Q293  Derek Wyatt: When you make a decision in March 2005 it will not be the case that either you or the Home Office cannot afford the system, will it?

  Tessa Jowell: By then we will be facing a new spending round. We will have to find the means to fund this. It will be new expenditure for my department and I am sure it will be new expenditure for the Home Office. It will be a new proposal and we will have to secure the money in order to implement it in the normal way.

  Derek Wyatt: Can I move on to Professor Palmer who came to see us last week.

  Q294  Chairman: Before you do that, Derek, I would just like to recapitulate because until you just said what you said I thought maybe I was not hearing right. I have just been described in another forum I have been in this morning as senile and cracking up and it may well be that because I am senile and cracking up I misheard. We recommended this back in July 2000. You are now telling us that a decision will be made in 2005. What has taken five years, including the 16 months still to come?

  Tessa Jowell: I have tried as candidly as I can, Chairman, to set out for you the reasons for the length of time because I do not think that those who have been engaged in this process see it as a delay. They have addressed the process as a form of dispute resolution because there is a disagreement between the best model for providing the database. Some time has undoubtedly been taken exploring what have been two contrasting models. As to why it will take until 2005, I hope I have explained the reason. There is now sufficient agreement in order to begin this. The pilot will begin next year. It will run for a year. This is a new service. The proposal, quite rightly, no-one would have expected this, by your Committee was not a costed proposal. The process of the last three years has been trying to scope the proposal and get to grips with its costs and, as I say, the costs have been widely divergent. One estimate put the cost at around £12 million, another has put the costs at a much more modest level. These have been the issues which have driven the period of time that it has taken to get us to this point, but I hope you are reassured by the fact that there is now agreement on the way forward and an agreed date in March next year when the pilot will begin.

  Q295  Derek Wyatt: In July 2000 the Prime Minister issued a statement jointly with the Prime Minister of Australia in which he endorsed "the repatriation of indigenous human remains wherever possible and appropriate from both public and private collections". That was also three years ago. Will there be a timetable published with Professor Palmer's report so that we have a better idea of what is intended with respect to all this?

  Tessa Jowell: Again, this has taken a considerable period of time. When I have probed this, the reasons are various. As you will have heard from Professor Palmer in his evidence, this has been a matter of great complexity. As is often the case with such advisory groups, there are difficulties in getting people together. I understand that Professor Palmer had a period of illness. All these have been factors which have contributed to the working group sitting for the length of time that it has and I think, in fairness, we all owe a debt of gratitude to Professor Palmer and the members of the group for the thoughtful and helpful report they have produced. I do not think they were given any deadline by which they were expected to report. So the timescale that they were given was an open-ended timescale. We now have the report, it was published last week and we are proposing to undertake a period of further consultation on the recommendations that have been made.

  Q296  Derek Wyatt: Last Tuesday he was in front of us and on Tuesday evening there was a Channel 4 News excerpt where it seemed, certainly from the television coverage, as though the Natural History Museum was not signed up to this process and would not be so keen to be involved in expatriation. Could you comment on that?

  Tessa Jowell: I have been interested in this. I think you have actually had Sir Neil Chalmers, the Chairman of the Natural History Museum, in front of you. He produced a minority report and there are undoubtedly areas where he disagrees with the main recommendations. I think that we need to probe his reasons for disagreement as part of the consultation that will now follow. For instance, Sir Neil Chalmers' view is that the proposal for an advisory panel is overall prescriptive. He is of the view—and I think that this is an important point of policy that we need to think about and to address—that the recommendations are based on a presumption that where a claim is made the remains will be returned. I think that we will have to engage the public policy, the public interest, the scientific, medical and ethical and other reasons as to why not every application by a national government or group may result in the return of the remains. I think that Neil Chalmers has raised some significant points, particularly significant for the British Museum, that we need to address.

  Q297  Derek Wyatt: So if you are going out to further consultation, what is the timescale in your own mind as to when there will be decisions reached on this?

  Tessa Jowell: The period of consultation is consistent with the Cabinet Office guidelines, it will be a three month period of consultation.

  Q298  Derek Wyatt: Secondly, one of the problems is that the Natural History Museum considers itself to be the best in the world and we understand the reasons for that, but is there a way in which the Natural History Museum could open up in Sidney as part of another Natural History Museum, an association or a partnership? If they are scared about scholarship or if they are worried about how they will be treated, they could have some say in that, but that actually aborigines and Maoris, mainly aborigines, could get access to this in their own country. Is that an area that you broached with the Natural History Museum itself?

  Tessa Jowell: It is not an issue that I have yet broached with the Natural History Museum. It is an issue that I certainly will. It is an issue, as I am sure you will understand, which is raised across the board in relation to the positioning of our great museums as global institutions. I think this reflects the changing role of museums in the modern world where natural ownership may be less relevant than it was 20 or 30 years ago. I am very open to those kinds of discussions. It may well be that one of the consequences of the debate in relation to Professor Palmer's report is to do just that.

  Q299  Derek Wyatt: Are you going to set up a further working group to look at sacred objects within collections, as recommended by the Human Remains Working Group?

  Tessa Jowell: Sacred objects is a part of the overall debate that we have not really addressed. This will be part of the consultation and that will be a first stage, an opportunity to address those particular issues and if it is necessary to set up a further working group then I will do that. What I am not keen to do is to build in indefinite delay rather than confronting some of these difficult issues and helping the trustees of our museums to reach a conclusion.


 
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