Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement Bill [Lords]

These matters need to be explored in Committee and worked out. I accept that the intentions of other hon. Members, such as the hon. Member for South Staffordshire, are good, and that it is not the intention of the Government, or of the hon. Gentleman, that immunity should be a cloak to allow the putative owner to dispose of a work of art while the possibly better claim of another potential owner is disregarded. We must clarify that, and ensure that the Bill does not inadvertently allow it to happen. The United States legislation contains simple characteristics that make it much better than part 6. For example, immunity under US legislation applies only to civil claims, not to criminal claims. We must make that distinction in part 6. There is a longer notice period that allows potential claimants to identify and recognise works that might be theirs. Sales are not allowed in the United States. Those are simple and fairly uncontroversial amendments, which we should make to part 6 to get it right. The immunity and the regulations need to be much more specific and need more teeth. The due diligence that we are correctly introducing as a result of deliberations in another place should be mandatory. There is no reason why it should not be, and we should make it so. Museums should be required to publish sufficient information to make it possible for a potential owner to establish whether the work of art is a work that they think was taken from their family in the past or illicitly traded. That information should include details of the lender. Often lenders are not keen to identify themselves. Because museums and galleries are so dependent on the generosity of lenders they are very protective of them, but a lender who has nothing to fear and who is confident that they have proper title to the work of art that they are lending has nothing to lose by identifying themselves. The identity of the lender should be an essential part of the information that museums and galleries are required to publish. There should be a longer time for owners to come forward. The system of due diligence should not be self-regulating. There is no reason why it should be. We need a committee based, for instance, on the acceptance in lieu committee—a voluntary committee that would monitor and oversee due diligence and ensure that a proper procedure is followed for all claims to objects that have entered the country under immunity. Those obligations would not be onerous on museums and galleries. They would allow them to have the immunity, but it would be a proper and balanced immunity which would recognise the possible rightful claims of other owners. Without such amendments we will, in effect, be derogating from the commitments that we made when we signed up to the 1998 Washington principles on Nazi-confiscated art. The Government were right to sign up to those principles, but if we enact the immunity in part 6 without the amendments that I have suggested, we will effectively derogate from that agreement, which would be a great sadness. I should have declared a small interest earlier in my speech: I am a member of the National Museum Directors Conference committee on the spoliation of works of art, which advises the National Museum Directors Conference on such matters. In 1998, the committee put out a statement of principles on the spoliation of works of art, which is generally recognised to be sane and balanced. Both sides of the argument, owners and galleries, are represented on the committee—for example, Sir Nicholas Serota, the director of the Tate, and Anne Webber, the joint chair and chief executive of the Commission for Looted Art in Europe, are both members—and the principles that it published in 1998 are sane and have not been criticised. Those principles pitch a balance, which we need to embed in this legislation. We can still improve those sensible and necessary provisions in Committee, because it would be wrong if we were to allow the Bill to be enacted in its present state. The Bill understandably addresses the interests and needs of museums, but it does not address the rights of people who have had works of art looted or otherwise illicitly taken from them. We need to get the balance right—it can be struck—and I hope that we can achieve that, in Committee or at a later stage.