Coroners and Justice Bill

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, for tabling the amendments, to which I have added my name. I am also grateful to the Government for the progress that we have so far been able to make in strengthening the provisions of the Bill that relate to treasure: agreeing after all that there should be a coroner for treasure; allowing time beyond six months for prosecutions for non-reporting of treasure; and giving the coroner power to require finders actually to deliver treasure. I am grateful also to Ministers for meeting some of us not just once but twice. In Committee, the Government did not accept that the duty to report a find of treasure should be widened to anyone who comes into possession of it and has reason to believe that it has not previously been reported. This is an important matter, which is why we have tabled it again as Amendment 37. It was in the Government’s own draft Bill in 2006. As I understand it, the Government’s reservations are twofold. They have explained that they are worried about the impracticality of monitoring and enforcing such a duty. In Committee, we attempted to explain why we thought that those fears were misplaced. As to human rights, we should certainly ensure that the amendment does not offend the ECHR, but I believe that it does not. We had a searching discussion about this issue at our meeting and our reasons for thinking that it does not offend the ECHR were set out in greater detail in subsequent correspondence. I would now add only the observation that the Treasure Valuation Committee has flexibility in allocating reward money so that up to 100 per cent of it could in principle be provided to somebody who came into possession of treasure and reported it. These matters should be considered case by case, with no preconceptions. On that basis, I think that we can satisfy the human rights requirement. I shall not repeat what I said in Committee about the worrying indications of abuse that the British Museum’s monitoring of the eBay website has brought to light, but I shall just highlight one finding of the British Museum survey. In 26 per cent of cases, the vendor stated that he had no knowledge of where the object was found, from which it is obvious that there are vendors who are buying items that may be treasure without performing due diligence. My noble friend acknowledged in Committee that there was an "undoubted problem". He suggested that education and persuasion were the way forward, but I have to say that there are people for whom education and persuasion simply will not work. Amendment 37 is therefore important in requiring best practice and ensuring that the trade is more transparent. The case of the Staffordshire hoard shows the intense public interest in archaeology. Let us suppose for a moment that the person who found the Staffordshire hoard, that metal detectorist, had not been scrupulous—he was indeed perfectly scrupulous and followed to the letter all the procedures set down under the Portable Antiquities Scheme—or let us suppose that the whereabouts of the site had been prematurely leaked, as all but happened with the BBC. We can imagine that people might have been feeding these important and precious objects through to dealers who were not going to ask any awkward questions in exchange for ready cash. The Treasure Act provides no protection against this. If either of those eventualities had occurred, there would have been enormous public outrage. I cannot believe that my noble friend the Minister wishes to leave important archaeological finds at risk in this way. With the law as it is, we can at best say that the duties on third parties—people who buy, inherit or are given antiquities—are unclear, but we know for sure that, with the vagueness and the weakness of the existing legislation, landowners are being defrauded and important objects are being lost to museums. How did it come about that important antiquities looted from the national museum in Afghanistan were dispatched to London? In 2004, customs officers intercepted hundreds of them, fortunately and to their great credit. I do not think that there can be any doubt that they were on their way to dealers in this country. London has the second biggest market in antiquities in the world, estimated to account for some 30 per cent of global turnover. The Government have a major responsibility in this field. The market in antiquities in this country needs policing, but if it is to be effectively policed there must be a watertight legal regime. I cite one piece of unacceptable practice in the London antiquities market. In 2006, Bonhams, the auctioneers, chose to display a number of artefacts from the Sevso hoard of Roman silver and invited many people to come and see them. These objects had entered the market without any proof of their legal origin, no direct evidence of the circumstances in which they had been excavated and no details disclosed about dealings in them in the period following their discovery. There was no secure history of their ownership and no proper provenance for them. Ethically, they should not have been in the market. It was incontrovertible that they had been illegally removed from their place of origin; no country would have authorised their excavation unsupervised, their export for commercial gain or their exposure to the market, as occurred. In its invitation, Bonhams asserted that these pieces of silver were, ""suitable for exhibition in the world’s greatest museums"." To acquire or exhibit items from the Sevso treasure would have been to violate all the responsibilities that a museum properly has. Bonhams was cocking a snook at the British Government and all their efforts to suppress the illicit trade. How long are the Government prepared to tolerate this kind of behaviour? These instances and the statistics produced by the British Museum exposing cavalier attitudes, or worse, within the trade show the need for Amendment 37 and for a new offence of dealing in undocumented archaeological objects that would be created by Amendments 68 to 73. The Government have a responsibility to clean up this scene and it is urgent that they should do so. My noble friend may say to the House that we should await their review of the Dealing in Cultural Objects (Offences) Act. However, that review was promised as long ago as 2006 and we still have not had it. Perhaps my noble friend will be able to tell us this afternoon when the fruits of that review will be made available. Meanwhile, this Bill and the amendments that we have proposed provide the ideal opportunity to deal with some of the starker needs. Finally, Amendments 52 and 53 to Clause 39, as the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, explained, would correct an omission in the Treasure Act. The Act requires finders of treasure to notify the coroner directly. In practice, 97 per cent of finders report their finds to one of the finds liaison officers employed under the Portable Antiquities Scheme. That was what took place in the case of the Staffordshire hoard and that practice is in accordance with the Treasure Act code of practice. The problem is that the Government’s code of practice is inconsistent with the law. Amendments 52 and 53 would regularise current practice, which works well and is entirely acceptable in itself, empowering the coroner for treasure to designate suitable persons to receive reports of finds of treasure. In that way, finders would be assured that they had fulfilled their legal responsibilities. I emphasise to my noble friend that there is real concern among the archaeological community and the metal detectorists about this anomaly in the law. The requirement that the coroner for treasure should consult the British Museum in these amendments is consistent with the practice created by the Treasure Act, which appoints the British Museum in Section 9 to specific responsibilities. If my noble friend says that new regulations under the existing Treasure Act would solve the problem, I must respectfully disagree. The problem resides in the drafting of the Treasure Act itself; it is the primary legislation that needs to be amended. If these amendments were passed, they would not bind the Government to maintain all the existing arrangements of the Portable Antiquities Scheme, although I hope that the scheme’s success has been so well proved by now that neither this nor any future Government would wish to unravel it. The amendments would also ensure that the coroner for treasure was not burdened with an excessive workload, which was an anxiety that Ministers expressed at earlier stages of this legislation. There are no public expenditure implications in these amendments. I hope that the Government will be able to accept them. If my noble friend finds that he is unable today to commit himself to accept all these amendments, because the Government have not completed their own internal discussions, I hope that he will tell the House that we will return to these matters at Third Reading.