My Lords, I shall speak to my Amendments 24, 32 and 36. Before so doing, I reiterate my declarations of interest in the register from Committee stage. In particular, I am president of the British Art Market Federation. I also own a number of ivory objects, as defined in the Bill. At least as relevant as that, I begin by saying that I like and am interested in old things. I had the privilege to chair for 10 years the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art. I am proud that I was appointed by the party opposite and reappointed by the party on this side of the House.
The purpose of my three amendments, which are linked, is simply to remove the requirement for registration of those items containing a de minimis amount of ivory, as described in Clause 7, prior to any possible sale. My arguments seem, in general terms, rather aligned with those of the noble Baroness, Lady Quin, and those concerned about musical instruments. The fundamental point is that my amendments entail no change to the substantive law being proposed, nor to the fundamental structure of the scheme around which the Bill is made.
We all know, as others have said, that we all support the underlying purpose of the Bill, which is to stop elephants being slaughtered for their tusks. The means that have been deployed to bring that about is to stamp on and out the trade in ivory that endangers elephants, graphically and appropriately known as bloody tusks.
The point behind my amendment is simple. The category of items I am looking at has no impact on the trade in ivory to the Far East that is endangering elephants. This point is recognised on all sides. The Government have spelled that out in the Bill’s Explanatory Notes. The conservation movement has specifically said the same, for example in the World Wildlife Fund’s briefing on the Bill. TRAFFIC, probably the most respected collector and interpreter of data about the ivory trade, as reported in the Art Newspaper, agrees. The art world—I draw your Lordships’ attention to a couple of articles by that respected authority Anna Somers Cocks in the Art Newspaper over the summer—is absolutely clear that these items in no way have anything to do with the demand in the east for ivory. Rather, we are talking about—as has been mentioned—inlays, shards and veneers: thin slivers of ivory, not the kind of thing that the noble Lord, Lord Hague, saw at a London airport. The Far Eastern market likes chunks and lumps of ivory that can be carved. The kind of things that I am concerned about cannot be, because they are physically no longer capable of being dealt with in that way.
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It is very relevant that the general approach adopted in the Bill is paralleled elsewhere in the world in this thoroughly commendable and good attempt to outlaw elephant poaching. This pattern invariably includes a de minimis exemption, defined slightly differently from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. As far as I have been able to establish, however, nowhere else on earth is there a requirement to register these de minimis items. This is an example of British exceptionalism.
The category that I am concerned about includes the most numerous items: there are thousands, or possibly tens or even hundreds of thousands, of things in this country that fall within the definition of Clause 7. Many of these have already been mentioned, including brown furniture and tropical hardwood. Most, but not all, of these things are of relatively low value—£150 or less. I do not say that nothing in this category is expensive, but the vast bulk of these items are not, in any way, at the top end of the antiques world’s interest. Finally, while these things are not necessarily identical, they are all very similar, because the vast majority were made in different places across the country by skilled craftsmen from pattern books.
At the risk of stating the very obvious, registration involves two things: first, you have pay a fee. Secondly, you have to actually register. What would be involved, as a result of the Bill, is quite time-consuming and not necessarily completely straightforward. If you want someone else to register for you, you will invariably have to pay for it. The Government have assured us that the fee payable will not be high, but they have also said that it will have to be in line with the HM Treasury
guidelines on cost recovery. Given that the vast majority of possible registrations do not come from this category, the conclusion that I have rather reluctantly come to is that the real reason for introducing the requirement to register is not to protect elephants in Africa and Asia but to use it as a cash cow to bankroll the registration system in this country.
In this context, the definition of “high” depends on the value of the item in question, regardless of the personal circumstances of its owner at the time. As I have said, we are not talking about very expensive things. Secondly, in addition to the fee there is the cost of completing the form, which may involve someone else doing it, thereby incurring an additional charge. How might this work? Somebody gave me this example. If you live in London and your surviving parent, at the other end of England, dies, you may take from their house the odd piece of furniture or whatnot. Most people, however, live in quite small houses and would ask the local auctioneer to clear out their parent’s house. The auctioneer would no doubt do it but would say, “We cannot sell anything that has a bit of ivory in it unless we register it, and we will charge you for that”. By the time you have concluded that you will not get much for the contents, and that you will have to pay the auctioneer’s commission, the registration fee and the cost of the person carrying it out for you a couple of hundred miles away, you will ask yourself whether much is left over. Given that things do not always sell at auction, before you know it this whole process will cost more than the value of the item in question. That is a pretty strange state of affairs.