UK Parliament / Open data

Cultural Property (Armed Conflicts) Bill [HL]

I might need to ask for a short break shortly to get my papers in order. This amendment is the pretty one. The Bill contains a diagram, which is unusual in parliamentary drafting. We do not often get to look at the symmetry and angles with which the rather crude representation of the emblem appears in Clause 3 in Part 8. If your Lordships have not seen it, I draw your attention to it, because we are now talking about culture. It helpfully has a key, which says that it is white and royal blue; it looks black to me but let us not worry too much about that. The point is that it has been used and has been found to be effective in its impact. I think the best-known example of its use was in the recent Iraq conflict, where the emblem was painted on top of the museum. That certainly saved it from being bombed but unfortunately it seemed—I am not sure whether this is true, but it is certainly a good story—to alert those people who had not perhaps known that it contained valuable artefacts to the fact that it was a storehouse of things they could loot, things which have subsequently been brought through to the international market. So it does not always work.

However, it is obviously a feature of the convention and we do not oppose it. Our amendment simply reflects on the way in which the emblem is restricted in its use—which is dealt with in the protocols and regulations. Again, a set of phrases is used that is redolent of the 1950s in terms of sticky paper, etching and watermarking, but there is no sense of how it might need to be applied in the digital age. It is a probing amendment, as all my other amendments are, to draw attention to the need to think about how we might update and improve the requirements and to give the Minister an opportunity perhaps to make a few points on how the emblem would be used in future. I beg to move.

Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
773 c1500 
Session
2016-17
Chamber / Committee
House of Lords chamber
Back to top