I welcome the Bill’s Second Reading, and I thank the Secretary of State for her introduction. As she said, the Bill has been a long time coming, as it will enable the 1954 Hague convention to be ratified. It has taken only 62 years. Back in 1954, Winston Churchill was Conservative Prime Minister; Gaitskell, I think—my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) will correct me if I am wrong—was leader of the Labour party; and the Liberals had only six seats in Parliament, so some things do not change too much even over 62 years.
The destruction and theft of cultural heritage goes back long before 1954 and even before the second world war, the events of which triggered the Hague convention in the first place. Hon. Members will remember that in 1700 BC the Assyrians invaded Mesopotamia—now called Ramadi and Falluja in Iraq—stole the stone gods of the Arab tribes and took them back to Nineveh to force the Arabs to negotiate to get their gods back. It is a sad fact that the treatment of cultural artefacts in exactly those locations has progressed so little in the intervening 3,500 years. Indeed, it is worse now because of the destructive potential of modern weapons of war.
The previous Labour Government, as the Secretary of State pointed out, put the ratification of the Hague convention on the political agenda in 2004 and published a draft Bill in 2008, which was scrutinised by the Culture, Media and Sport Committee. Unfortunately, the Bill ran out of time, but we are pleased to see that the Government agree on the importance of protecting cultural property and of making that priority known to the international community by introducing the Bill. We hope that the principles of mutual respect and co-operation will permeate all Government policies from now on.
Cultural property is targeted because it matters. My hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman), who is in her place, campaigned effectively—as did other hon. Members whom the Secretary of State mentioned—for the Government to introduce the Bill. As my hon. Friend has written,
“art, statues, architecture—these aren’t societies’ frills, but a fundamental part of the fabric.”
She is not alone in that belief. It is shared even by those whose first priorities might lie, correctly, elsewhere. Michael Meyer, head of international law at the Red Cross, has said:
“Why is the Red Cross worried about buildings and books when human lives are usually our focus? I will always argue that a human life is more valuable than a cultural object. But culture is essential to one’s identity. It’s an important factor for communities and nations.”