§ 70. Mr. Dodds-Parkerasked the Secretary of State for Education and Science, in view of the fact that the British Museum contains over 24 million items, being added to at the rate of 2,000,000 a year, what arrangements exist to sort out and dispose of out of date and surplus material.
§ Miss Jennie LeeThe museum's powers of disposal are set out in Section 5 of the British Museum Act, 1963. Broadly, the trustees can dispose of items in their collections, other than duplicates, only if objects are found to be fakes or if they have become useless by reason of damage or deterioration.