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Repatriation of Historical Objects

I am grateful to have secured this debate, Mr. Benton, and I am pleased to see the Minister in attendance. A few weeks ago, when travelling from my constituency to London, I noticed something interesting at Paddington tube station, and other tube stations after that. It was a picture of a Lewis chessman on a poster. It was a welcome sight, but the caption said, "AD 1150-1200" and "Norway". I was stunned, because there was no mention of the Isle of Lewis. It was as if the connection with Lewis had been airbrushed from history. The chessmen are expertly crafted examples from the Viking civilisation in my constituency. We know two historical facts about them. They were made from walrus ivory, and they were found in Lewis in 1831. The director of the British Museum informed me that most scholars believe that the chessmen were crafted in Norway, because a piece of a queen that was found in Trondheim resembled the Lewis chessmen. That does not change the fact that they were found in, and are important to my constituency, and they could have been manufactured in Lewis, Ireland or elsewhere in the area of Viking civilisation and then traded. The only geographical location linked to the chess pieces is the Isle of Lewis, where they were buried for hundreds of years. I would love to know what incontrovertible evidence the British Museum has to assert in its poster campaign that Norway was the place of origin of the Lewis chess pieces. The museum's defence in The Times was that the Hebrides were then under the rule of a Norwegian king. However, when England was under French rule, it was not France. Is airbrushing the future of historical objects found in the United Kingdom and retained by the British Museum? There are other places where historical objects have been deleted from history. Is that what the people of the midlands should expect for its magnificent Staffordshire hoard? I certainly hope not.