Human Remains (Prohibition of Sale, Purchase and Advertising)

Bell Ribeiro-Addy Excerpts

Wednesday 4th February 2026 Commons Chamber

[Bell Ribeiro-Addy (Clapham and Brixton Hill) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That leave be given to bring in a Bill to prohibit giving or receiving a reward for the supply of, or for offering to supply, human remains or any object partially consisting of human remains; to prohibit advertising the sale, exchange, or offer of sale or exchange, of human remains or any object partially consisting of human remains; to make provision for specified exemptions from those prohibitions; and for connected purposes.

In short, this Bill is about the buying and selling of human remains. To most people, the thought of buying a bag full of human bones, a shrunken skull or a piece of human leather would be unthinkable. In fact, most people would never have thought that this was something they could purchase, but it is. A growing trade in human remains is taking place through social media, on e-commerce sites, at in-person auctions, in curiosity shops and at oddities markets. Human bones, hair, teeth, skin and other organs are frequently sold by private traders to other private individuals, entirely without regulation.

I want to put on record my thanks to the members of the trading and sale of human remains taskforce of the British Association for Biological Anthropology and Osteoarchaeology, who brought the scale of this abhorrent trade to my attention. They work tirelessly to confront, expose and ultimately bring an end to the private sale of human remains. I also want to thank the African Foundation for Development—AFFORD—which, with the all-party parliamentary group for Afrikan reparations, produced the “Laying Ancestors to Rest” report, which addresses the ethical, cultural and historical concerns surrounding African ancestral remains, many of which were taken during colonial rule and continue to be displayed and sold at auction today.

I must apologise in advance to Members and warn anyone with a weak stomach, because some of what I am about to describe is truly stomach-churning. Members of the taskforce have documented and shared examples of sales that they have tracked over the years. These include human skulls and skeletal bones, partial or whole; shrunken skulls; elongated skulls; a Papuan Gulf trophy skull; a child’s shrunken head; and skulls that still have hair and soft tissue attached. They have encountered shops selling lucky dip bags of bones, from small boxes for £50 to larger boxes for £90. They have also come across the sale of wet sample human organs preserved in specimen jars, including foetal hearts and lungs and even slices of human brain.

For Members wondering what on earth someone would want with these remains, there is a substantial market for decorative objects made from human remains. One could purchase a wind chime made from a human skull cap with ribs and clavicles, a candlestick made from stacked human vertebrae, a human finger crucifix pendant, a skull fitted with brass nails for teeth and turned into a lamp, necklaces made of teeth or even wallets fashioned from human leather, and all of that is entirely legal.

I should stress that this is by no means the full extent of the sales that take place. While the human remains taskforce does an excellent job of tracking what it can, there are undoubtedly hundreds more sales that go unnoticed. To my knowledge, the taskforce is the only body that actively attempts to police this trade. In 2026, one can sell a piece of human remains or an object partially consisting of human remains with no checks on how those remains were acquired and no verification of how old they are, who they belonged to, whether consent was given or what the buyer intends to do with them.

The biggest obstacle sellers face is not the law, but the user rules of social media platforms and e-commerce sites such as Instagram, Facebook, eBay, Gumtree and Etsy. Even then, sellers routinely circumvent those rules by misspelling words, mislabelling real names as replicas or advertising collections without explicitly stating an intent to sell before completing transactions through private messages or in person. The most serious repercussion sellers are likely to face is an account suspension, and we all know how easy it is to simply set up a new one. Ultimately, the only hurdle sellers face is platform moderation; they face no legal barrier at all. In-person sellers face even fewer obstacles, with no oversight of the human remains sold in curiosity shops, flea markets or satanic markets.

The UK is not wholly devoid of regulation, however. The Human Tissue Act 2004 makes it an offence to hold human remains that are less than 100 years old for certain scheduled purposes without a licence, but it does not expressly prohibit commercial sale beyond very narrow circumstances. It is silent on the sale of remains as curiosities or private objects outside regulated contexts. At present, we have stronger licensing rules for animal remains than for some human remains. That is what my Bill seeks to address.

Beyond this being an incredibly disturbing trade, there is a clear moral and ethical case for banning it. There is no reliable way to establish how remains were acquired—whether they were looted or grave-robbed—their age or whether any consent was given by the individual themselves or by their relatives or descendants. During the colonial era, ancestral remains from communities across the world were stolen from battlefields, looted from graves, taken as trophies or curiosities, or used in the now discredited racist pseudoscience of phrenology, which sought to claim inherent inferiority based on skull shape. Many remains still in circulation are sold as so-called antique medical skeletons, having been imported in the tens of thousands during the 20th century until the export bans from India in 1985 and China in the 2000s.

I have been informed that the underground trade continues. Imagine seeing your ancestor’s body parts listed at auction as decorative objects. That was the case for some when the skull of a tribesman from Nagaland was auctioned online in the UK as part of a “curious collector sale”—one of thousands of items taken by British colonial administrators. In fact, that has been the case for many African and Asian remains, as is outlined in the “Laying Ancestors to Rest” report. Long after colonial rule and our acceptance that racism is wrong, we continue to deny the people affected dignity, even in death.

Some may argue that remains that are hundreds of years old raise fewer concerns, yet there is good reason to believe that some remains being sold are far more recent than is claimed. Labelling them as antiques does not make it so, and serious questions remain about provenance. A case currently before the US courts involves a man accused of grave-robbing and selling remains online. While we have not seen such a case here, it would be naive to assume that similar practices could not be taking place.

I should be clear that there are legitimate circumstances that the Bill would not prohibit. For example, cost recovery for medical research, teaching and scientific use would remain regulated through existing licensing and ethical frameworks. Nor would it outlaw respectful bereavement practices, such as memorial jewellery containing a lock of hair, where consent is clear. The Bill carefully distinguishes between consented memorial items and the commercial sale of unprovenanced remains.

I believe there is universal agreement across the House that the sale of human remains, particularly where their origin, age and acquisition are unverified, should not be allowed to continue. Although import and export restrictions exist, legislative oversight has allowed domestic sale to remain perfectly legal. This Bill corrects that oversight, and I commend it to the House.

Question put and agreed to.

Ordered,

That Bell Ribeiro-Addy, Siân Berry, Carla Denyer, Jeremy Corbyn, Ms Diane Abbott, Apsana Begum, Dawn Butler, Zarah Sultana and Clive Lewis present the Bill.

Bell Ribeiro-Addy accordingly presented the Bill.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 27 February, and to be printed (Bill 379).