My Lords, my noble friend Lord Rosser has made some very important points about the Border Force and the transport industry. The Border Force is under immense pressure and public expectations of what the Border Force, with its funding at a very precarious level, should be able to do to prevent illegal immigration into our country are very high. It is not reasonable to expect that the Border Force should form part of that coherent multi-agency and multi-departmental drive to deal with the problems of the importation of illicitly derived works of art that I mentioned earlier. We need the Border Force to be in the team along with the National Crime Agency, HMRC, the police and others. Among the industries and operators who need to be properly invigilated and need to be very well aware that there is a serious chance that they would be caught out if they
were doing illegal things, and that serious consequences would ensue, must be those who knowingly carry arts and antiquities that ought not to be imported, derived from conflict zones or other illegal sources.
My noble friend has made an excellent point. Perhaps the Border Force needs a dedicated unit, as the Metropolitan Police has its own such unit. The difficulty is that, if the dedicated unit consists of only three members of staff, it will not be tremendously effective. Moreover, if there is a dedicated unit, there is a risk that other members of the Border Force might say, “Well, it’s the job of the dedicated unit”, so this has to be a matter for the whole culture and training of the Border Force and it must be correspondingly resourced.
My noble friend’s Amendment 24 deals with the rank of the police officer who might enter premises. It would appear that we do not have many such police officers available for the purpose. I wonder what my noble friend’s response would be to a real-life story touched on by the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, in debate on an earlier amendment. What about the case of an archaeologist employed by the British Museum who is deeply knowledgeable about the issues of looting and damage to the archaeological heritage, cares very much about them and volunteers to become a special constable? He knows more than most people in the world about these issues. However, he has the most junior rank in the police as a special constable. It is important that we do not amend the legislation to preclude this individual from carrying out the work that he has volunteered to do as an archaeological expert and as a very good citizen.