My Lords, I support Amendment 28 in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Stevenson and Lord Collins. It is worth mentioning that UNESCO requests countries to fill in an extensive questionnaire every four years explaining how they are protecting their cultural property. There is a more general aspect: protection. The last questionnaire completed by Germany can be found online and includes, for example, what has been done to protect cultural property from flooding. It is all very well to say that you have done everything in your power to protect
your cultural property from the effects of armed conflict, but if it has deteriorated or been harmed for other reasons, that rather negates the whole point of the exercise. Although military conflict can be devastating, most protection of cultural property takes place in peacetime, and that protection needs to be framed within this wider context.