Question
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the presence of ancestral human remains in the national collections, and what records they keep centrally of the quantity and location of such items.
Answered on
11 December 2024
No such assessment has been made, and there are no centrally kept records. Museums are independent of government and decisions related to their collections are for their trustees to make.
The Human Tissue Act 2004 allows national museums to remove human remains from their collections provided that they are reasonably believed to be remains of a person who died less than 1,000 years before the day the relevant section came into force.
DCMS issued Guidance for the Care of Human Remains in Museums in 2005 which encouraged museums to establish an advisory framework to assist in determining repatriation claims and provided a set of criteria which need to be taken into account in assessing claims.