Ivory Bill (Second sitting)

Pauline Latham Excerpts

Committee Debate: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 12th June 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Dr Cameron]

Q But you said you work in partnership.

Grant Miller: Certainly with the unit, and it is about the added value of our relationship with them. Border Force could exist and we would go out, detect and disrupt the trade. If we were to lose the unit, the capacity to then investigate and prosecute would be lost, but our key function would still continue, and we would detect and disrupt.

[Mrs Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)]

Q I have a question for each of you. Chief inspector, you talked about this maybe not being seen as that important by some officers, because they obviously have lots of other things to do. What is the smallest artefact that you might have dealt with, and what is the largest—to give us an idea of the range of things that you do?

Chief Inspector Hubble: Would you like to ask Grant his question, while I ponder my response to that one?

[Mrs Latham]

Q But you said that you do intercept stuff, that you look on eBay and that there are 1,400 things that you have not got time to look at. What would be the smallest that you would—and I do not mean this as a criticism—bother with?

Chief Inspector Hubble: If we find somebody who is selling a few items, we would probably work with local police to go and educate that person rather than go for a full prosecution, because part of our work is about prevention. Ultimately, it is not about locking up the bad guys; it is about there not being any bad guys in the first place. If we can work with people and prevent them from committing crime, that has to be a good starting point. If we have low-level criminality, we would approach and deal with it that way.

We have an ongoing investigation at the moment, which I cannot talk too much about. We did a warrant earlier this year where we recovered a significant number of CITES specimens, including ivory, and we are continuing to push that forward. Watch this space for the outcome of that one. Our workload and work remit are significant across the whole spectrum of wildlife crime, from the really low-level individual to the significant traders making lots of money from the illegal wildlife trade.

[Mrs Latham]

Q Mr Miller, you said it was quite easy to detect mammoth compared with elephant ivory. We were looking this morning at whether we get this narrow Bill as quickly as we can and then widen the numbers of animals—that includes mammoth ivory—beyond the CITES regulations. If you are only looking at CITES, and we then passed a Bill with other things in the future, where we added in animals that are not on your list, such as warthog and mammoth—that is not going to save a mammoth’s life, but it will stop people in places such as Hong Kong selling ivory as mammoth to get it through customs—would your brief be able to encompass that? Would you be able to encompass that if we widened the brief beyond CITES, or are you strictly CITES-only?

Grant Miller: No, we are not. The Bill, as it is scheduled at the moment, would list those items as prohibitions, and Border Force’s role is to secure the border against all prohibitions. So that would naturally fall into our remit, and we would be in a position to police that, if that was Parliament’s wish.

[Mrs Latham]

Q It would not be a problem if we widened it out.

Grant Miller: No, it would not be a problem.

[Mrs Latham]

That’s interesting. Thank you.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

Q May I just return to what the chief inspector was saying about how to prove if somebody knows it is ivory, particularly if it has been misdescribed. We have discussed in the past adding something around misrepresentation of an item to clause 1 to cover selling something that has been fraudulently mislabelled so as to avoid detection. Presumably, you would still then have the difficulty of proving that somebody had misrepresented it—that somebody knew it was not bovine bone or whatever.

Chief Inspector Hubble: Yes, we would still have to prove that they knew it was ivory and that they had then mislabelled it, knowing that it was ivory.

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[The Chair]

Okay, thank you; that is on the record. Let us move on to questions.

[Mrs Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)]

Q I have a question for Emma Rutherford. This morning we heard that the size of miniatures should be specified, because a miniature in one person’s eyes might not be a miniature in another’s. Do you have any strong feelings about that—about whether we should specify and, if we did, about what the specification should be? I have a further question for someone else, but I ask that one first.

Emma Rutherford: The suggestion of 6 inches by 8 inches for portrait miniatures—I have some with me, because it is always easier to show an object—is very sensible. I have three very typical portrait miniatures here, painted watercolour on ivory, which represent 80% of 18th-century portrait miniatures painted on ivory—this is the kind of size we are talking about. Six inches by 8 inches will cover 90% or 95% of portrait miniatures.

[Mrs Latham]

Q Does talk of 6 inches by 8 inches include the framing, or is that simply the actual miniature without the frame?

Emma Rutherford: It is sometimes difficult to measure the actual miniatures because most of them are framed or cased, and we cannot get them out easily without damaging them. I would probably do it by sight of the ivory itself and not the frame, because the latter is probably unfair, given the differences in the scale of frames.

[Mrs Latham]

Q Yes. For the two musicians, Paul and David—I don’t know this—are musical instruments still produced with ivory in? Obviously, there is old ivory in musical instruments. Some very valuable musical instruments have ivory in, and I am sure that there must be bows used for violins or cellos that contain ivory, but they will be old ones—

Paul McManus: Correct.

[Mrs Latham]

There would be no new instruments with any ivory content, would there? When did that stop?

Paul McManus: We ceased in two real tranches: 1975 and 1989, when the two different types of element were made mandatory. That means that hundreds and hundreds of what we would class as vintage musical instruments are out there, belonging to musicians, and indeed representing their livelihood in many cases. But we ceased in modern manufacturing as the legislation came in. As an industry, we like to think that we have been very compliant with the right rules. We abhor the trade itself and have nothing but support for everything being done here, but equally passionately we support the exemption for these antique musical instruments that keep musicians in their livelihood.

David Webster: Absolutely. I cannot add to that. As we understand it, since ’89 there has been no use of ivory in the manufacture of accessories for instruments or of parts of musical instruments.

[Mrs Latham]

Q That is very useful to know. In terms of the antique ones, clearly the musicians will value them because they are used to them and have a special feel for them. We have been looking at the exemptions, and is not the most important thing that musicians should be able to continue to use them, if not necessarily to sell them? Surely, it should be very specific exemptions for particularly fine instruments that are verifiably that old—they should be very specific and of particular value, rather than just anything over 100 years old.

David Webster: A musical instrument is a very personal item. For our members—musicians—it is probably the biggest investment they are ever going to make. In some cases, that investment needs to be of some value to them, for example if they need to retire due to ill health or they get to the end of their playing days and they wish to retire with some kind of dignity, which it is everybody’s right to do. The investment in that instrument is the most important thing they have. The ability to trade that instrument is the key to their being able to retire with some dignity and comfort, which is the right thing to do.

[Mrs Latham]

Q What sort of figure are we talking about?

David Webster: In terms of—

[Mrs Latham]

In terms of what they would pay.

David Webster: There is no one figure, but it is hundreds of thousands in some cases, tens of thousands in other cases and thousands in others. It all depends on the instrument, when it was made, who made it, its tonal qualities and who has played it before the current owner. You cannot pin it down to one particular price.

[Mrs Latham]

Q Can you give me an example of something that would be hundreds of thousands?

David Webster: A Stradivarius. Some old and ancient cellos.

[Mrs Latham]

Q Would they have ivory in them?

David Webster: They might do. It might be in the bow. The very small amount of ivory in a violin or a stringed instrument would generally be in the tip or the frog of the bow, and it is a very small amount. There may be a little on the tuning peg. It could be an antique guitar.

Paul McManus: It can be pianos, too. In the 1960s, we had 40 companies manufacturing pianos in the United Kingdom. There are hundreds of old ivory-keyed pianos in circulation around the United Kingdom. They were made when other materials were not readily available. That all stopped back in 1975, but to take a good example, the largest piano auction house in the world is in the United Kingdom. It is called Piano Auctions Ltd. It sold nearly 500 pianos at auction last year, some 60% of which had old ivory keys. Frankly, it would not be in business if it was not selling them. The only alternative to the exemption—I know this would happen—is for piano shops to strip off those ivory keys, throw them in a bin and replace them with plastic ones. To me that would almost seem a double tragedy for the poor animal that gave up the ivory in the first place. Right down in the hundreds of pounds range, there will be an old piano that someone’s grandmother used to own that they are trying to move on to a school or whatever.

[Mrs Latham]

Q They can gift it.

Paul McManus: They can gift it, but lots of people are still trying to make some money from these products. There are hundreds of them around the United Kingdom. These are all one-on-one transactions. There is no trade here. These are just individual transactions between a musician and another musician. That is the way our industry works.

[The Chair]

Before I call Liz Twist, I want to say that members of the panel should contribute, even if you are not addressed by name, if you wish to. We can make this more interactive. If your contribution is relevant to the organisation you represent, feel free to make it.

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[The Chair]

That is on the record.

[Mrs Latham]

Q We have heard from a lot of people about the ivory trade today and the Bill, which is very narrow. For a number of years I have been advocating that, if we have the ban, which hopefully we will, some specific organisation should verify artefacts as being internationally significant. Do you feel that you are sufficiently qualified to do this job? Clearly, we will look to your organisations and perhaps some others to ensure that we are not just allowing trade in any old rubbish, but that artefacts are very significant. Do you feel sufficiently qualified to do that?

Hartwig Fischer: I am confident that museums in Great Britain and universities have enough experts to be able to deal with these questions and to come up with very sound judgments on the aesthetic or historical cultural significance of any object.

Dr Boström: I concur with that. We have world-renowned experts at the Victoria and Albert Museum in the history of ivory sculpture and objects.

[Mrs Latham]

Q How would you fund that? If people came to you with their particular pieces of ivory, or ivory as part of something, how would you fund that? There would be a cost to you. Would you think of charging whoever it is that wants it?

Dr Boström: We already have an opinions service, which is a public-facing service. Each curatorial department, on the first Tuesday of the month, has a public opinion session. We would certainly be able to offer the service through that. Whether a more robust service beyond that is needed, and what that might be, is one of the discussions that is on the table, I think.

Hartwig Fischer: In view of the importance of what the Bill addresses, I think provision should be made for those experts to give expert advice. There is an investment of time and expertise that should be covered, because it is during working hours.

[Kerry McCarthy]

Q There are specific exemptions in clause 9 about acquisitions by qualifying museums, which you obviously are, which mean that you would be exempt from the prohibition. Could you give an example of where you might need to rely on that exemption for products that are not already covered by the exemption certificate? Am I right in my understanding that the normal prohibition is that it has got to be pre-1918, and has to have a certificate that it is of outstandingly high artistic, cultural or historical significance, but there are some exemptions if a museum is involved? What sort of product would be likely not to qualify for the exemption certificate, but be something that you would want to buy or sell?

Anthony Misquitta: As museums, we are not in the business of selling. We are not really entitled to sell. Once an item enters the collection of a museum, that is normally it. The term we use is de-accession and we have very narrow powers to de-accede. Certainly, once it is in the collection, we are not in the market to then sell it back into private ownership. Normally—99.9% of the time, and probably more than that—when it enters a museum’s collection, that is it forever.

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[Mrs Latham]

Q Can you tell me what you feel the situation would be for sales to overseas museums in the future if the measure goes through? The International Council of Museums is not an accreditation body in the same way as the Arts Council scheme in the UK, so how do feel that that could be relied on to give the right information?

Anthony Misquitta: No museum will be selling to anyone, least of all an overseas institution. Speaking for the V&A, and I have seen the British Museum’s governing statute, I do not think we have the power—I know we do not, and I do not think that the British Museum does—to sell an item to an overseas institution, so I do not think that that would ever happen.

[Mrs Latham]

Q Does it not happen currently, or are they more loans that you give, rather than sales?

Anthony Misquitta: They are loans. I have concerns about loans, which I would like to raise at some point, but no, once an item is in a museum, that is it.

[Mrs Latham]

Q You would never sell anything to another museum.

Dr Boström: In the rare cases that an object is de-accessioned, which is very rare and has so many strictures around it, it would always be through a third party. It would never be a direct sale to another museum; it would always go through an auction house or a dealer; it could never be directly to another institution.

[Mrs Latham]

Q Why is that?

Dr Boström: To protect against inappropriate de-accession and sale. It is checks and balances.

[Mrs Latham]

Q So that the public can see that you are doing it, rather than it being a private sale.

Dr Boström: Yes.

[Mrs Latham]

Q Right, I can understand that. Mr Misquitta, you wanted the opportunity to say something about loans.

Anthony Misquitta: Yes. The V&A, like the British Museum, has thousands of items on loan throughout the world at any given time. We also loan in items as long and short-term loans. As the Bill is drafted, on my reading a loan is “dealing”. That means is that we can loan a work—in the United Kingdom, for example, I do not think it will be a problem because we would loan a work only to another accredited museum; we would never loan it to a private individual.

On the international stage, we often loan our works overseas. ICOM is a dominant force in the international museum world, but it is not everywhere. For example, we have a very close relationship with an institution called the Design Society in Shekou, Shenzhen, in China. We have a long-term relationship and have loaned a number of items to that institution, but it is not ICOM-registered, so we have to worry about our commitment—these items are out on a medium-term loan of a couple of years. I have an anxiety that when the Bill is enacted, suddenly we will be acting unlawfully, because overnight such loans will become unlawful. It is fixable with some transitional provisions, but that is one of the anxieties that I have.

The other anxiety concerns loans from private individuals. At any given time, we have a number of very valuable loans from individuals—amazing works, amazing individuals who lend us their works, often for decades at a time—but those are loans in from individuals who are not accredited museums. So we have a large job on our hands, which is to identify all those works, to attempt to get certificates for them and to deal with a great deal of logistics in relation to such activity—that is achievable but will involve quite a lot of work on the museums’ part. Again, some generous transitional provisions may help ease that pain.

[Mrs Latham]

Q Surely, if you are not selling it—if you are only loaning it to someone—there should not be a problem. It is the sale of things containing or wholly made of ivory that is the problem.

Anthony Misquitta: The terminology used in the Bill is “dealing”, and the definition of dealing includes the word “hiring”. I am sure the intention is not to capture these loans, but as it is currently drafted the Bill does capture them.

[Mrs Latham]

Q I am sure that is something the Minister will look at.

Hartwig Fischer: I would like to corroborate that. Lending is part of our key mission. We hold these collections for the public and share them as widely as possible. It is also part of our mission as national museums to project British values across the globe by engaging with other institutions by sharing knowledge and heritage. All our museums—ICOM museums included—are bound by an extremely strict code of ethics. Any museum dealing with another institution is bound to check the ethical validity of the other institution. To the best of my knowledge, all museums do that. Again, you have a number of codes and procedures in place to make sure that there is no breach. The fact that museums rank among those public institutions that enjoy the highest trust is evidence that this has worked and is reliable.

[Luke Pollard]

Q Subsection (5) of clause 9, which deals with acquisitions by qualifying museums, provides that

“‘ivory item’ means—

(a) an item made of ivory, or

(b) an item that has ivory in it,

but does not include an item consisting only of unworked ivory”.

Can you help me understand how many of your collections include unworked ivory in this respect? Do you think that exemption is appropriate, or does it actually cover a much larger section of items in museum collections?

Anthony Misquitta: I do not think we are concerned by that. As a museum of art and design, we are not interested in unworked ivory; we are interested in worked ivory.

Dr Boström: That does not really pertain to us, no.

Anthony Misquitta: We are not worried by that distinction, because we work only in highly crafted art and design.

Hartwig Fischer: However, among the national museums is the Natural History Museum, which is one of the grandest and most important of its kind in the world, and it might have—it probably does—unworked ivory as part of its documentation of natural history. So yes, it is likely that our museums have only ivory that has been worked—carved, incised or what have you—but it might very well be that the Natural History Museum, in living up to its purpose and mission, has unworked ivory in its collections.