UK government rules out law change for permanent return of Parthenon sculptures

The government closes the legislative route

Twycross said no assessment of proposals for permanent reunification had been carried out, and that amending the British Museum Act 1963 was not in the government's legislative programme. The 1963 Act bars the museum from permanently disposing of objects in its collection. It allows limited exceptions for duplicates and items deemed unfit for retention. Separate laws cover objects looted during the Nazi era and human remains less than 1,000 years old. None of those exceptions covers the Parthenon sculptures. The debate was prompted by the Earl of Clancarty, who asked whether the government had considered proposals for permanent reunification in Athens.

What a loan would actually require

Twycross said the government recognised "the strength of feeling on this" and supported the museum's statement that it would consider a loan request. Any such loan would require Greece to acknowledge the museum's ownership of the sculptures and to guarantee their return. Athens has refused that condition for years.

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis wrote in the Guardian in September that Greece could not accept any arrangement requiring it to recognise the museum's ownership. Nor would it accept a scheme that would mean it "borrow" parts of its own monument, he wrote. The museum says the British Museum Act 1963 prevents it from returning the marbles and allows it only to lend them. Negotiations that began in 2021 explored a broader cultural partnership, including sending a substantial group of sculptures to Athens while Greece loaned major antiquities to London. No final agreement emerged. The Daily Telegraph reported in September that no talks were under way and none were expected soon, though channels remained open.

Peers split over the loan model

The Lords did not speak with one voice. Baroness Chakrabarti, Labour, was blunt: "If some of the crown jewels had been pinched, I don't think that we would be so glad of a loan agreement".

The Earl of Clancarty compared the divided sculptures to cutting Pablo Picasso's Guernica into pieces and showing them in different museums. Conservative peer Viscount Hailsham warned that a return would set an "unfortunate precedent" for other British museum collections. Twycross called the Bayeux loan, which runs until July 2027, an "interesting idea" and said it was "proving a huge success story". Lord Ricketts asked for assurances that the Bayeux object would go back to France after the loan. Twycross said there was "absolutely no intention" of keeping it, and that it would happen "over my dead body".

The museum's rotation plan

British Museum chair George Osborne told the Greek newspaper Kathimerini that the board would like the marbles to spend time in both cities. Some of their time would be in Athens and some in London, he said. He believes a deal can be done before his tenure as chair ends in three years. Osborne said the museum can lend objects but cannot simply return them under British law, and that changing the law would require parliament. He also said the marbles would stay on public display elsewhere in the museum while the Western Range galleries are renovated. About 60 per cent of the Parthenon's surviving sculptural decoration is in London, according to the Greek Culture Ministry. The Acropolis Museum's Parthenon gallery was designed with spaces left for the pieces held in London.

What happens next

Twycross said the British Museum is currently "working very intensively to find an arrangement within the existing legal framework".

She added that the government would support an agreement acceptable to Greek ministers and to the Greek people. The museum said after the September reports that its position and its openness to a deal were unchanged.