LENDING AND BORROWING OF OBJECTS (Hansard, 5 May 1983)

§ Mr. Channon
I beg to move amendment No. 9, in page 5, line 28, leave out 'trust or'.

Mr. Deputy Speaker
With this it will be convenient to take Government amendments Nos. 10, 11, 19, 20, 21, 29, 30, 31 and 32.

§ Mr. Channon
The amendments cover a very small point and follow the precedents of the National Gallery and Tate Gallery Act 1954 and the Imperial War Museum Act 1955. They make a minor adjustment to the provisions governing loans by the Victoria and Albert and science museums and the tower armouries.
A distinction must be drawn between trusts and conditions in provisions affecting the boards' powers to make loans. The donor of an object subject to a condition may be entitled to the return of the object if the condition is breached. He continues to have an interest in his 480 donation and it is proper that he be consulted if he has restricted its loan. A donor who has given an object subject to a trust, however, has in law abandoned any personal interest in the object concerned and has no right to retrieve it if the terms of the trust are breached. It would therefore be anomalous to impose on the boards a duty to obtain the consent of the donor when by the manner in which he has donated the object he has relinquished any right to it.
I assure the House that the amendments are in no way intended to alter the basic premise underlying the provisions of the Bill which I have scrupulously tried to achieve—that trusts and conditions attaching to objects must be observed. There is nothing unprecedented in this. The two Acts that I have cited have existed for more than 20 years and so far as I know there have been no cases of difficulty.