Parthenon Marbles

Lord Sassoon Excerpts

Tuesday 8th February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, fortunately for all Ministers, government policy is not made by the things that Ministers wrote when we were undergraduates. The Prime Minister has made the long-standing position of Her Majesty’s Government clear to the Greek Prime Minister, most recently when they met in November.

[Lord Sassoon (Con)]

My Lords, as a former trustee of the British Museum, may I ask my noble friend the Minister if he agrees with me not only, as he said, that the British Museum is prepared to lend objects—and is at this point lending objects to many countries generously on a long and short-term basis—but that this requires an acknowledgement of the good title that the British Museum has to those objects?

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

I congratulate my noble friend on his recent appointment as chairman of Sir John Soane’s Museum. He is absolutely right that the British Museum is indeed a very generous lender, both overseas and within the United Kingdom. Before the pandemic, the British Museum normally loaned over 2,000 objects to around 100 venues outside the UK every year. In addition, as I say, many millions of people come to see the items in its global collection in Bloomsbury. The British Museum will consider any request for part of its collection to be borrowed, but that requires its legal ownership of those items to be recognised.