UK Parliament / Open data

Coroners and Justice Bill

My Lords, I support the amendment tabled by the noble Lords, Lord Redesdale and Lord Howarth of Newport. The Minister will recall that at an earlier stage of the Bill, I paid tribute to the effective activities that the Government have undertaken in trying to restrict the market in illicit antiquities. It is all the more sad, therefore, that a glaring loophole has emerged in the working of the legislation relating to treasure, which Amendment 37 seeks to close, as the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, described. It has become clear that many finds of treasure are still going unreported. Why is that? At present, only the actual finder has a legal obligation to report the discovery of treasure. It is quite clear that dealers are, in some cases, selling new archaeological finds without undertaking due diligence to ensure that they have been through the treasure process. There is no legally enforceable obligation at present on them to do so. Monitoring of eBay sales confirms that that is so. There is a major trade in unreported treasure. I will not speak at length about this because it has been well covered by the noble Lords, Lord Redesdale and Lord Howarth of Newport, but this is a necessary amendment to ensure that the Treasure Act works well in practice The noble Lord, Lord Howarth of Newport, has dealt with Amendments 52 and 53, so I will proceed at once to Amendment 68. This introduces a broader group of amendments with the same purpose of reducing the trade in looted antiquities—illegally excavated antiquities—with the ultimate end of preventing or reducing the looting process. It is not restricted to finds made in the United Kingdom: the looting of archaeological sites for gain continues all over the world. London is still a clearing-house for looted antiquities. Some auction houses continue to offer goods for sale without any indication of provenance and without any secure documentation. We thought that that might stop with the passage of the Dealing in Cultural Objects (Offences) Act in 2003, but can the Minister confirm that there has so far been not a single prosecution under that Act? Amendment 68 requires that a person dealing in an archaeological object should produce evidence to show that the object has not been unlawfully excavated. That places a duty on the vendor of knowing and stating the recent history of the antiquity. It will no longer be sufficient to say that it fell off the back of a lorry or was found in the vendor's attic. Time is short, so I will omit my observations on the example of the Sevso treasure because that has been well covered by the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, and I agree with everything that he said. The second case to which I shall refer is as scandalous but less well known in view of intimations of libel action by the lawyers of Mr Martin Schøyen, a Norwegian shipowner. He purchased a major series of 654 Aramaic incantation bowls that had been imported into this country in the 1990s in dubious circumstances and lent them for study to a London university. When the university realised that they might be looted antiquities, it rightly set up a committee of inquiry on which I had the honour of sitting under the chairmanship of the distinguished lawyer, Mr David Freeman. We determined that they had indeed been looted from Iraq, or more precisely concluded, ""on the balance of probabilities that the bowls were removed from Iraq, and that their removal took place after 6th August 1990"," and was therefore illegal. We recommended, ""the return of the incantation bowls to the Department of Antiquities of the State of Iraq"." A copy of that report is in the Library of the House. Despite that, I am sorry to say that the bowls were not returned to Iraq: they were returned to the custody of Mr Martin Schøyen. Under the new clause proposed in Amendments 70 and 68, lending and borrowing would both be dealing in terms of the Bill. It would be an offence to deal in undocumented archaeological objects in such a way—and so it should be: it is scandalous that the heritage of Iraq has been treated in this way. My final case is simple and I shall be brief. On 15 October this year, Bonhams the auctioneers withdrew from its London antiquities sale at the request of the Italian Government some 10 antiquities, among them items formerly owned by the now sadly notorious dealer Mr Robin Symes. I understand that the Italian authorities had already made representations to the Home Office about several warehouses in London containing antiquities formerly in his ownership—many of them, it is alleged, illegally excavated in Italy. What is an auctioneer in this country doing, selling antiquities without a documented provenance? It is scandalous that this practice continues, and to put an end to it is one purpose of this amendment. There are serious matters here, which demand government attention. I shall be very interested to hear what the Minister has to say.
Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
713 c986-7 
Session
2008-09
Chamber / Committee
House of Lords chamber
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