Cultural Property (Armed Conflicts) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2016-06-28
Topic: Culture
Charles Hay (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, in moving Amendment 16 I will also speak very briefly to Amendment 30A. I thank the Minister and her Bill team for their courtesy, time and efforts in these past weeks. I have been approaching this from the point of view of museums, art shippers and art insurers, thinking in particular about international art exhibitions. I declare my interests as set out in the register, in particular that for a good period of time I ran the art and private client division of Hiscox, Europe’s largest insurer of art, and I am currently chairman of the trust that runs the museums in Perth and Kinross, which last week announced its intention to ask the Commissioners for the Safekeeping of the Regalia to return the Stone of Scone to Perth, to a new, purpose-built, specific space, as part of a planned more than £20 million investment in our museums International art exhibitions that the public of so many countries enjoy so much take place only when museums will lend, shippers will ship and insurers will insure. Where any one of those three elements is missing, exhibitions either do not happen or happen with fewer objects. I have been in touch with museums, senior art shippers, insurers and insurance industry bodies to debate the Bill. In each case they very much wish this important Bill well, and these two probing amendments are designed simply to test whether some improvements could be made which would allow for clarity and proportionality of additional work for affected institutions. I hasten to add that no complaint is made about having to do some more work in helping to address the issues this admirable international convention deals with The amendments probe two issues. The first is: how does an ordinary front-line museum curator, art shipping manager or insurance underwriter establish that an object is not "unlawfully exported cultural property"? Secondly, how does a museum, art shipper or insurer carry out due diligence in a proportionate way and avoid having knowledge of wrongdoing imputed to their institution, which of course would be a criminal offence Turning to Amendment 16, Clause 16 is necessarily complex and I foresee that any compliance officer would struggle to write an easy-to-understand briefing note for his front-line colleagues. Most museums and other affected institutions do not have the luxury of a professional compliance officer and it would be left to the front-line person to establish whether they were potentially dealing with unlawfully exported cultural property. I note that in my experience, hooky material will always come with reassuring bogus evidence on these types of questions and yet, strangely, non-hooky material often comes with little or no evidence. The front-line person will ask themselves whether they should deny the loan of a piece of art or the shipment or insurance of that object when it cannot be proven when or from where an object came into a particular collection In fact, there is at least one major collection of the affected subject matter that I know well—a private collection in England which lends regularly to international museums—for which there is very little record of when and where the objects came into the collection. It would be most unfortunate if that wonderful collection was now marooned in the UK Accordingly, I felt that a "safe harbour" approach would assist. Amendment 16 simply allows the Minister to make regulations from time to time about what a proportionate safe harbour might be to help those in the international exhibition business. It may be that to start with there would be no regulations and one would simply watch the progress, but the existence of this ability would make a safe harbour available at any time if there was an unintended series of problems. The Minister would then be able to address problems rapidly and effectively within the Bill Turning briefly to Amendment 30A, the offence in Clause 17(1) has the mental element of knowledge or "reason to suspect". Museums, art shippers and insurers are all bodies corporate. The question, therefore, is in what circumstances such knowledge can be imputed to the body corporate. I am very grateful to the Minister and her Bill team for their excellent work on this point, and indeed their very helpful letter of yesterday afternoon, and I am now wholly happy with the Bill as it stands. Accordingly, I will not move that amendment. I beg to move Amendment 16.