British Museum Act 1963 (Amendment) Bill 2009-10

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House	Bill	Date
	Bill 37 09-10 (As Presented) | PDF version, 75KB	09.02.2010

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Latest news on the Bill

This Bill was presented to Parliament on 6 January 2010 This is known as First Reading and there was no debate on the Bill at this stage. 

The 2009-10 session of parliament has prorogued and this Bill will make no further progress.

Summary of the Bill

At present the British Museum is prevented by statute from disposing of objects in its collections except in very limited circumstances. The Bill’s purpose is to amend the British Museum Act 1963 to enable the British Museum to transfer to another institution, for public exhibition, any object from its collections, in certain circumstances, where public access is guaranteed. Those circumstances are:

• where the object would be more widely accessible to visitors than in the British Museum
• where it would be more appropriately displayed in the recipient institution than in the British Museum by reason of its historic links
• where the object came to form part of the collections of the British Museum in circumstances which make its retention in the collections undesirable or inappropriate

The Bill confers a general power but its sponsor envisages only one situation in which it might realistically apply: to repatriate the Parthenon Marbles to Greece.

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