UK Parliament / Open data

Queen’s Speech

My Lords, it would have been a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan of Huyton. It is, however, equally a privilege to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas of Winchester. I am even-handed in my views about party groupings. My speech will be brief, and in the brew of today's ingredients it will be cultural. Its brevity is occasioned by the decision of the Government to ditch all their anticipated primarily cultural measures from the Queen's Speech rather in the manner of Russian travellers ditching their baggage from sleighs when pursued by wolves through the forests, in prior centuries—the sort of image that terrified me as a child. But the cultural ingredient obliges me to declare an interest as the president of the British Art Market Federation, a role that I have fulfilled since 1996, and for which, since entering your Lordships' House, I have received a retainer, recorded in the Register of Interests. The first Bill to be discarded was the heritage protection Bill, which had appeared in draft, was widely welcomed in principle by interested parties and had been the beneficiary of a whole lustrum of preparation. It is a pity that, after such a gestation, the Government felt that the time required for its parliamentary passage implicitly stood between us and national recovery. To his considerable credit, the Secretary Of State for Culture, Media and Sport issued an extremely prompt and comprehensive e-mail concerning this setback, although the hard copy which he promised would follow has not so far arrived. Perhaps the wolves have eaten it. This was reinforced by a further helpful and comprehensive letter from Professor Sir Barry Cunliffe, who is holding the fort as the acting chairman of English Heritage following the sad death of our much lamented colleague Sandy Bruce-Lockhart. Knowing how ill the latter was, I was deeply moved to receive a letter, personally topped and tailed by him, concerning the latest consultation on Stonehenge during the final month of his life. We all know what happens when a Bill or part of a Bill, for whatever reason, is lost in Parliament. Ministers, who up to the moment of admitting defeat, have been telling us how essential the Bill is, in whole or in part, somehow in the aftermath of defeat make a very good fist of achieving their legislative purposes by other means, and there seems good reason to suppose that the same running repairs can be applied to the vacuum of a Bill that has not yet arrived. We must all hope so. The second relevant Bill to have fallen off the sleigh has been the draft Cultural Property (Armed Conflicts) Bill, which, like the draft Heritage Protection Bill, has been subject to scrutiny by the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee in the other place. Here, there is a genuine potential bonus from delay. There was a difference of opinion between the Select Committee and the Government on the committee’s recommendation 7, about the necessary provision of a list of occupied territories from which cultural property might have been unlawfully removed. The Government believe that their definition of an occupied territory is sufficient, but where criminal offences are involved on the part of any dealer who is participating in this exercise, it does seem counterproductive to ordinary trade if no list of occupied territories is available for the art market to scan. However, if such a list is not within the Bill's capacity, I suppose we must patiently await parliamentary scrutiny and debate for the Government to defend their stance. On the Select Committee’s recommendations 8 and 9, concerning the acquisition or acceptance by dealers of items of cultural property exported from an occupied territory, when acceptance, if unlawful, is a criminal offence, the present delay could be profitably harnessed. It could provide time for discussion between the British Art Market Federation and the Bill’s promoters on the practical processes of due diligence through which dealers have to go and which invariably require a facility and ability to study the object close to. Of course, that discussion could also be done during the period of actual parliamentary scrutiny as the Bill goes through the House in due course, but it seems a lost opportunity not to get the drafting right in advance. If the situation is ambiguous, few dealers will risk criminal prosecution by getting hold of the object; and in the general cultural interest, there seems more than a little virtue in due diligence being facilitated. Such co-operation between the federation over which I preside and the Bill's promoters, in the way that I envisage, worked very well on the Dealing in Cultural Objects (Offences) Act 2003, and it seems reasonable to suppose that it would do so again. There are implications for the historical environment in both the Marine and Coastal Access Bill and the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill, but happily both those Bills are having an introduction to your Lordships' House—indeed their Second Readings are due next week, so we shall return to those shortly. It is also possible that the draft floods and water Bill may have an impact on heritage. Finally, in the DCMS pantheon there are still the Olympics. Three and a half years separate us from them but, other things being equal, another year will have passed before we get another Queen's Speech, and it seems worth taking this chance to identify one particular and significant opportunity cost that the Olympics are imposing on the elements of the DCMS acronym other than the ““S”” for sport. I allude to the planned restoration and exhibition space extension of the Sir John Soane's Museum, which is appealing for £6.3 million and has already secured £2 million by its own efforts. To quote the current edition of the Art Newspaper, an application for half the cost made earlier this year was deemed by the Heritage Lottery Fund as ““faultless”” and ““intelligent and high quality””. This application failed only because the Heritage Lottery Fund’s limited funds of £7 million could not stretch that far. At the time of the application, 13 projects were asking for £35 million and only two got through. The situation for this sector of our economy is not only imperilled by the credit crunch and the recession, it remains a prisoner of the Government’s need to use lottery funding as the drip feed for the Olympics. Blood donation is normally a voluntary process.
Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
706 c530-2 
Session
2008-09
Chamber / Committee
House of Lords chamber
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