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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