Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)

My Lords, in moving Amendment 370B, I shall speak to my further Amendment 370C. I must admit that I felt a little bit indulgent when I asked for them to be taken separately—but, as the noble Lord, Lord Katz, said, the previous group was rather a large one, which took us four and a quarter hours from start to finish. I hope that we can be a bit brisker in this group. As vice-president of the Public Statues and Sculpture Association, I welcome measures in the Bill to protect some of our most venerable monuments. There is a long and lively history of such memorials serving as a backdrop to or focus of protest. As key ingredients of our public realm, it is understandable—perhaps even desirable—that they continue to form part of our national conversations today. As long as those protests leave no lasting damage, many, including, I think, many of the people who are memorialised in them, might well say, “Fair enough”, but war memorials and memorials to wartime leaders hold a special significance in our national life. They stand as monuments to those who gave their lives for the freedom and prosperity that we now enjoy, including, of course, the freedom to protest. It is an insult to subjects and sculptors alike if these monuments are desecrated or dragooned into regular and unthinking protests. It is especially distressing when it happens to monuments that commemorate conflicts of which veterans or bereaved families are still among us.