Ivory Bill

Earl Attlee Excerpts

Monday 10th September 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton]

We will be discussing musical instruments in the next group.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, I have listened with interest to the debate. On the subject of inlays and escutcheons, what consideration has the Minister given to having a de minimis test of thickness? If the inlay or the escutcheon is less than a certain thickness, surely it has no use for recarving at a later stage. Perhaps the Minister could write to me on that point in due course.

[Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)]

My Lords, I have listened to the debate this afternoon with great interest. I have received briefings from the World Wildlife Fund and from the Environmental Investigating Agency, the Born Free Foundation, the David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation, the International Fund for Animal Welfare, the Natural Resources Defense Council, Stop Ivory, Tusk Trust, the Wildlife Conservation Society and the Zoological Society of London. None of them appears to agree with the previous speakers in this debate.

On Amendment 17, the size of the miniature should be defined in the Bill. Otherwise, arguments will arise as to exactly how big a miniature can be. It is important to have this defined in the Bill and not left to some arbitrary decision.

With reference to Amendments 18 and 19, many of the artefacts listed by the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, are simply not in the same class as musical instruments, to which we will return in a later group. Musical instruments are used on a regular basis and are the tools of a musician’s trade and are not an item of antique beauty. They may be that as well, but their main purpose is as a tool of a musician’s trade.

I am disappointed that a university student should accept their fees being paid for by their grandparents selling an antique item which could have been decorated by the body of a dead elephant. I doubt whether many of their fellow students would find this acceptable. The noble Lord, Lord Cormack, believes that we live in a civilised society. It is still a civilised society that allows 50 elephants a day to be killed for their ivory. Whatever the percentage of ivory is set at, it will need to be examined and verified. I could not support, and nobody on these Benches could support, a 20% limit and certainly not a 50% limit.

--- Later in debate ---

The purpose of my amendment is simply to bring this issue once again to the attention of the Government, with the hope that, between now and Report, a way of addressing the pipers’ concerns, and safeguarding our precious and unique regional heritage, is found. I hope that the Minister and my noble friends will respond sympathetically.

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Cormack is an extremely experienced parliamentarian, but his arguments would be a little more convincing if he avoided describing my noble friend the Minister’s response as obdurate.

One of the complaints that we hear about the House of Lords is that we are far too London-centric. I hope that the Minister will pay attention to the suggestions of the noble Baroness, Lady Quin, about the Northumbrian pipes. Perhaps there is something that the Minister could do—some special arrangement. I hope that my noble friend will think about that.

[Lord Beith (LD)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Quin, and I thank her for bringing this amendment forward. Throughout most of my adult life I have had much pleasure from hearing the Northumbrian pipes. They are a sweet sounding, relatively quiet instrument—often played indoors—and were the musical instrument of many shepherds and farmworkers in the area that I used to represent. Subsequent generations of pipers have often come from other walks of life—teachers who have been in a variety of professions—but the core of people on whom the musical repertoire of the pipes has depended, and whose tunes are recorded, came from the farming life of Northumberland.

I want the Minister to understand how important this is to us and how strongly we are pleading for him to do something about what is now seen as a threat, particularly to the new pipers—young people and, sometimes, those in retirement—who have to acquire an instrument. We are talking about an instrument of which there are not large numbers. The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley of Knighton, mentioned how many thousands of violin and cello bows there are in this country. The sets of Northumbrian pipes are numbered in hundreds—not thousands—and it is quite hard to acquire a set now that there are so few remaining craftsmen who make these instruments. Most of the people who are involved in this activity are not wealthy and if the supply is artificially restricted by the exclusion of so many instruments which were made before 1975 and have ivory content, it would be a very serious threat.

I confess that I have difficulty understanding how the 20% exemption could be applied in the area of Northumbrian pipes, although the Minister gave me a moment of hope when he referred to integral voids, such as the area of an interior of a drawer in a chest of drawers. My mind immediately went to the bag in which the air is pumped in from the bellows, which the piper operates with his or her arm. The bellows could at least be inflated when the judgment is made as to what the integral void is and whether it passes the 20% exemption. Describing that illustrates how worrying it would be if we have to depend on such a concept in order to get a reasonable exemption, which I am sure most people, looking at it rationally, would realise was necessary and was not a coach and horses.

What worries me is that there has been a lot of engagement and discussion with various trades and activities about this Bill. Not all of it has led to the outcomes that some would have desired, as the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, has pointed out. I am not convinced that there has been enough engagement yet with Northumbrian pipers and those who are concerned for their welfare. I want the Minister to give us some assurance that he will try to ensure that that engagement takes place and that, by the time we reach Report, there is some way of dealing with this problem. I know that there is pressure not to amend this Bill so that it sails back to the House of Commons, but we are a revising Chamber and it is our job to discover if there are areas where the Bill does not meet the practical requirements of our society. If it is necessary to make a small amendment to the Bill better to meet the needs of Northumbrian pipers, the Minister must be ready to make that amendment, unless he finds a non-statutory way of achieving it. I have not yet seen that, so I think we will need an amendment at a later stage and I hope the Minister will apply himself to the task of finding a solution.