Ivory Bill

Debate between Lord Cormack and Lord Carrington of Fulham

Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 24th October 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack]

My Lords, I wish to refer briefly to Amendment 6, which is grouped with my noble friend Lord De Mauley’s leading amendments, as is my Amendment 5. I will not speak to that amendment; my noble friend Lord De Mauley has effectively covered it, because I also want to take out the word “outstandingly”.

My Amendment 6 would take out the words “an important” and put in “a significant”. That might sound of no significance, but it is. My noble friend Lord De Mauley talked about the sorts of objects we will be dealing with here. One of the things that attracts me to social history is the things that people used and gave. I once knew a man—I have mentioned him in your Lordships’ House in earlier debates—who had an amazing collection of theatre and race tickets. Many of them were in ivory. They could not be called outstanding and I do not think that any of them could be called important, but significant they most certainly were. This was a collection that reflected the social history of the mid-18th century: the people who patronised the playhouses or went to the racecourses and gained admission by presenting an ivory ticket or token. A large collection such as the one my friend had is of some value. Many of the examples were indeed individually unique; no other tickets to that particular theatre or performance were known to exist.

I referred to this earlier when I talked about the first amendment: he collected these things because of their intrinsic interest and his own fascination with social history, but also because of the knowledge that collectively, even though he probably had not given more than £10 or £20 for any individual item, the collection was worth something. He knew that if he fell on difficult times or wanted to help a son or daughter, there was a little nest egg that would probably produce a few thousand pounds. If we enact the Bill, we will deprive a collection and a collector like that. We are effectively confiscating private property. We are not physically destroying it, although, as my noble friend Lord De Mauley said a few minutes ago, that might well be the ultimate result, but we are saying to somebody that that property, legitimately and lovingly acquired, is no longer theirs to dispose of for any money at all. That is unjust and wrong. I return to the old, worn record: how does preventing the sale of such a collection, the items in which are all of some significance, help in any way to preserve an African or an Asian elephant in 2019 or 2020?

We are all concerned about the elephants—we keep coming back to that—but there is nothing incompatible between being desperately keen to save elephants and being desperately keen to save elements of our social history.

[Lord Carrington of Fulham]

My Lords, I do not want to intervene for long, but there is a slight problem with the definition of “outstandingly”. What is outstanding to one expert may well not be to another. I raised this at Second Reading. It comes down to what sort of museum collections you are trying to create. Museums such as the V&A or the British Museum are interested only in outstanding items, and they can define what they mean by an outstanding item by reference to what they already have in their collections: to be outstanding the item should add to that collection.

Many museums, however, are not trying to do what the British Museum or the V&A do. The example that I have used before is the Geffrye Museum, a series of old almshouses on the continuation of Bishopsgate, just outside the City of London. The Geffrye Museum recreates middle-class rooms down the ages. Those middle-class rooms will have ivory items—ivory cutlery and tea caddies for example—none of which is outstanding in itself. However, items are outstanding in the sense that the Geffrye Museum considers them exemplars of what was used at that time by middle-class people—and increasingly, in some museums, by working-class people in this country. The definition of outstanding is, therefore, somewhat open to interpretation and it would be much better to remove “outstandingly” and replace it with a word such as “significant”, which would allow much more leeway in deciding whether an item is worthy of a national collection or is something that no one is interested in preserving.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Cormack]

My Lords, I will not detain the House very long on this amendment, which is similar to an amendment I moved in Committee. I was disappointed in the response that I received. This amendment does not touch at all on any of the exemptions or provisions of the Bill; it merely makes the point that if somebody has a certificate, it should remain valid if the ownership of the item passes by inheritance to a member of the family of the registered owner. That seems to me to be sensible, fair and equitable and I cannot understand why anybody would be opposed to it. I beg to move.

[Lord Carrington of Fulham]

My Lords, Amendment 39 is a probing new clause, because I think the issue is already covered in the Explanatory Memorandum. The concern is that if an ivory item or collection of ivory items is not registered, it cannot be sold. If it cannot be sold, it has no value. If somebody dies and a valuable collection of ivories is in their estate and they have left their estate to, say, their children, then the ivories will pass to the children, as I understand it, under the provisions of this Bill—indeed, that is made clear in the Explanatory Memorandum.