Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, whether her Department had held discussions with museums and other cultural institutions on the potential merits of engaging with communities on colonial-era acquisitions and the transatlantic slave trade.

Museums in the UK are independent from the government and so decisions on engaging with communities are operational matters for them and their trustees to decide.

The Department is in regular contact with our 15 sponsored museums, and as part of this has from time to time had discussions on these issues. The Horniman Museum informed us that it had consulted local communities regarding the Benin Bronzes in its collection, before reaching a decision to transfer legal title to the objects to the Nigerian National Commission for Museums and Monuments.

The Department is working closely with National Museums Liverpool on the development and refurbishment of the International Slavery Museum (ISM), which is being co-produced working closely with Liverpool’s communities, and will include a space for a new National Centre for Teaching Black History.