My Lords, this Bill, which received its second reading in July, is far-reaching and has real implications for many people whom this House does not always consider. Before I move the amendment and explain why I think it is important, perhaps I might strike a note that I am sure will receive the approbation of everyone in the House and also those who have now quitted it—namely, that we wish to send our warmest good wishes to my noble friend Lord Carrington of Fulham, who is in hospital at the moment. We hope to see him back in full fighting form by the time that this Bill reaches Report.
I thought it would be sensible to table, at the very beginning of this Bill, an amendment that enables us to discuss the fundamental, controversial point. I do not think that anyone in your Lordships’ House, present or absent, does not wholly subscribe to the aims of the Bill as they have been enunciated over the past year or more. We all deplore the poaching of elephants and we all wish to see those noble creatures, both in Africa and in Asia, preserved. We wish to see them multiply and we should have absolutely no compunction about treating those who poach these animals with the utmost severity. Equally, we should treat with the utmost severity those who work the tusks of the animals and those who profit from what has been worked. That, I think, is common ground across the House.
But one does not save an elephant from being poached by effectively forbidding people to own and treat as proper property ivory items that are one, two, three, four or five centuries old. It is true that the Bill has certain limited exemptions: items of supreme museum quality
and those which contain, in the case of furniture and so on, less than 10% ivory, while in the case of musical instruments, less than 20% ivory, as well as miniatures, as long as they are less, I believe, than 320 centimetres in size. The very recognition that there should be exemptions creates a situation which is arbitrary in the extreme. The Government accept these exemptions and they therefore acknowledge that it is entirely proper for antique objects of either great importance or which have a small percentage of ivory to be saved. But where does the ivory come from? It is ivory that has come from elephants in the past and the recognition of this makes a nonsense of the proposition that all other antique ivory should, in effect, not be allowed to be kept or traded or sold. What I am saying in the amendment is that we should look at this carefully before proceeding.
I shall give your Lordships one or two examples. Only the other day, when I tabled my amendment, I had a letter from a body of which I had not previously heard: Chess Collectors International. Many people in our country enjoy playing chess, and until the beginning of the 20th century a very large number of chess pieces were made of ivory. Perhaps the most famous of all in this country are those made of walrus ivory, the Lewis chessmen in the British Museum. But there are many others, many of them made from elephant ivory. Often these chess collectors have purchased these sets not only because they wish to play chess with them but because they regard them as some of the finest small sculptures in existence and objects of beauty and importance.
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It is not difficult for somebody who has a collecting instinct to decide that he or she will try to collect various sets of whatever they are interested in, and so it is with chess collectors. It is not difficult, therefore, to have a collection worth many thousands of pounds. As I explained to the Secretary of State when he kindly telephoned me on Saturday morning, there may be many people in his constituency and in other constituencies around the country who have a collection of that sort.
We are in effect, by saying that after this Bill comes into force they cannot dispose of those sets for monetary gain, sequestering private assets. That ought to be inimical to any true democrat—the confiscation by legislation of legitimately acquired and entirely legal private property. As my correspondent points out in his notes to me, over a lifetime of collecting the average collector can have a number of sets worth £20,000 or £30,000, often acquired with the knowledge that there is a little nest egg if he or she hits hard times or something to leave to the children. There is something to cover the costs when that person goes into care. If we, at a stroke, take away the value of that, we are confiscating private property because we are making it worthless.
The immediate consequence, even of the Bill being before your Lordships’ House, is that we have already apparently lost a royal ivory set from early to mid- 19th-century design by Edward Bird of the Royal Academy and carved in London. That has gone to Switzerland. At risk is an 1860 set known as the Lord Lyttelton set, named after George Lyttelton, the fourth
Baron Lyttelton, Under-Secretary of State for War and the Colonies at the time of Sir Robert Peel. It is an object not necessarily of museum quality in itself, but of real historical interest and importance. There are many others as well. I merely mention chess sets as an example, because there is no point, in this House where there so many experts, in merely mouthing platitudes and generalities. One wants to give specific examples.
Another was brought to my attention by a lady who is a great expert on netsuke, those little Japanese toggles. Sometimes they have the most extraordinary tiny carvings of great beauty and importance. They are not all ivory; some are wooden and some are stone, but there are ivory ones. As the lady who wrote to me said, it is possible over a lifetime to have amassed a collection worth many thousands of pounds. From the moment this Bill comes into force as an Act of Parliament, unless it is amended along the lines that I am suggesting, that property will be worthless.
Later, we will debate exceptions for things of museum quality, but all I will say at this stage is that a thing does not have to be of museum quality to be interesting, beautiful or historically important. Also, what is of museum quality in Lincoln, where I have the honour of living, is not necessarily of museum quality in London. Again, it is arbitrary. We have not addressed this issue with the detailed attention it deserves. The Bill smacks of gesture politics. If we forbid the sale of virtually all ivory objects, we are doing something and are seen to be doing something, but this is a question not of doing something, but of doing the right thing.
The noble Baroness, Lady Quin, will address an amendment later in our deliberations on a specific exemption that causes her concern. I am trying to point out that there are many such examples. In the amendment, I set a cut-off date of 1918. Anything certified as having been made before 1918 should be exempt because we will enter a bureaucratic quagmire if we do not do something such as this. Ivory will have to be certified or it will be got rid of. What about those of you with grandmothers’ ivory-handled fish knives, hairbrushes or perhaps—my favourite example—like a friend of mine, who had a large collection of those little ivory tokens that were used to gain admission to the race track and London theatres in the 18th century? These are not objects of great beauty or great intrinsic worth, but they are very important to the historic fabric of our country. It seems important that we address this.
I want to use an analogy. I suspect we are all as anxious that the rainforests should be preserved as we are that elephants should be preserved, but do we seriously think it would be sensible to mount a campaign or introduce a Bill to forbid the sale of 18th-century mahogany furniture? One has only to state the proposition to illustrate its absurdity. It is important that we address this basic fact at this stage of the Bill. We are talking about the legitimate rights of ordinary, decent people to realise their assets if they need or wish to do so. As so many people will be caught up unwittingly in the tentacles of bureaucracy which it will be necessary to establish after the Bill becomes law, it would be in the good interests of all if we said that what was made before 1918 is not our concern because it will save no elephants and punish no poachers.
Of course, those who deal in ivory, such as auction houses and dealers, should have to pass a strict certification process. For those who transgress—and some will, just as some people fake paintings by great artists—the full weight of the law should come upon them. I submit to your Lordships’ House that this is a sensible way to proceed. It does not in any way demolish the Government’s good intentions in respect of elephants, but passing the amendment—or something similar to it—will produce a Bill that conforms far more to the principles of common sense. I beg to move.