My Lords, this is an amendment about which I feel particularly strongly, because it illustrates very graphically some of the nonsense in the Bill. The sentence that I wish to amend is Clause 1(5)(b), which states,
“an item that has ivory in it”.
If one accepted—and I do not—that there is any fairness at all in depriving people of the value of antique ivory objects, surely one can accept that something with an element of ivory in it does not need to be embraced by this Bill. We are talking of such things as the escutcheons on chests of drawers, the insulators of the handles of tea-pots and coffee-pots and the handles of fish-knives and fish forks. What a bureaucratic morass we will create if every item with ivory in it comes within the ambit of this Bill.
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Later we will move to the percentage of ivory and to specific items. Indeed, the next amendment on the list, Amendment 22, also in my name, deals with ivory miniatures. There is an arbitrary limit in the Bill, and Amendment 22 proposes that it leaves out the words,
“with a surface area of no more than 320 cm²”.
We discussed the question of ivory miniatures in Committee. The Government have accepted that ivory miniatures should be exempt, and I am grateful for this. Many miniatures, though not all, particularly from the second half of the 18th century and the first two decades of the 19th century, were painted on ivory; of course, others were painted on vellum and other materials. The Government conceded that it would be a destruction of the heritage of many families with collections of family miniatures if we were not to allow those who had fallen on hard times to sell them, so ivory miniatures under 320 square centimetres are
permitted. But why that arbitrary limit? As the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, reminded us in Committee, many ivory miniatures are slightly bigger than that.
Amendment 22 is a very simple, sensible amendment, which should certainly be put to the vote. All it asks is: let us not have the limit. We know that a miniature is a miniature. We are not suggesting that great oil paintings were painted on ivory or that miniatures are great things in size, but that they should not be so scrupulously and specifically defined. Surely that makes a great deal of sense. Whatever view one takes on the Bill and on items of antique ivory or items containing ivory—[Interruption.] Oh dear, I hope that is not the Library calling.
One accepts that a great bureaucracy will be created here. Even though the Bill will today, I hope, be made better than it was in Committee, we will have people paying registration and other fees, and we will have people with the power to go into houses and see what the occupants have got and all the rest of it. It is a much improved Bill, and we will come to that later, but we should make the bureaucracy as simple as we possibly can.
I do not want to detain the House long. We have had significant debates in Committee and many noble Lords raised these points at Second Reading, but I believe that it is a modest step that I am suggesting. I beg to move.