Lawyers specialising in cultural heritage and the 2022 Charities Act have raised serious questions about the legality of the exemption, which, they stress, was not approved by parliament as it should have been.
“The law is clear that it is not for ministers to circumvent Parliamentary procedure, and seek to amend the effect of an Act of Parliament by other means,” said Erica Crumb, one of the UK’s most prominent lawyers in art and culture law.
Courtesy Ta Nea
In a letter to Stephanie Peacock, the parliamentary under-secretary of state at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, revealed today by the Greek daily newspaper Ta Nea, Christian Baars and Maria Blyzinsky, co-chairs of the International Council of Museums UK (ICOM UK) – the national branch of ICOM in Britain – ask why national museums were excluded from the possibility of returning objects from their collections ‘on moral grounds’, despite the fact that legislation passed by Parliament contains no such exemption.
“The Charities Act 2022 brought this provision in – and designed it clearly and expressly to apply to situations where there was a previous statutory prohibition. The authority delegated to the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport was to decide when to bring the provision in,” said Crumb, a managing partner at the London law firm Bates Wells, who examined the issue in depth along with her colleague Mark Abbott, a senior associate and parliamentary agent with Bates Wells.
“In effect, the government changed the law which parliament had passed. There was no parliamentary procedure, no external scrutiny, and very little public attention,” they stressed.
