MINUTES OF ORAL EVIDENCE taken before the OPPOSED BILL COMMITTEE On the HIGHGATE CEMETERY BILL Tuesday 2 March 2021 (Morning) In Committee Room 4a PRESENT: Baroness Hallett (Chair) Lord Aberdare Baroness Garden of Frognal Lord Trefgarne Baroness Whitaker _____________ IN ATTENDANCE Nicholas Evans, Parliamentary Agent _____________ WITNESSES: Dr Ian Dungavell, Chief Executive, Friends of Highgate Cemetery Trust Martin Adeney, Chair, Friends of Highgate Cemetery Trust David Jones, Petitioner Paula Swift, Petitioner PUBLIC SESSION INDEX Subject Page Submissions by Mr Nick Evans ........................................................................................4 Evidence of Dr Ian Dungavell ........................................................................................16 2 (At 11.04 a.m.) 1. THE CHAIR: Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the first session of the hearing by the Opposed Bill Committee into the Highgate Cemetery Bill, and thank you, to those of you who have been waiting, for your patience. Our proceedings will be broadcast on the web and a full transcript taken. As far as possible, our proceedings will be analogous to a court hearing but, as a remote hearing has been forced upon us by circumstances, we’ll do our best to ensure things run smoothly. Please indicate if you have any problems and please do not forget to mute yourself when not speaking. The plan is for us to sit today from now until about 1.00, then from about 2.00 till 3.30, and then 3.45 to 5.00. When we take a break during the day, please do not disconnect your Zoom link. Leave it running until we return. That’s breaks during the day. 2. Having explained the procedure, may I ask my fellow members of the Committee if they would declare any matters of interest? Lord Aberdare, I think you have an interest to declare. 3. LORD ABERDARE: Thank you, Chair, yes. I only discovered as a result of being on this Committee that, apparently, an ancestor of mine, John Singleton Copley, is buried in Highgate Cemetery. 4. THE CHAIR: Thank you. And Baroness Whitaker, I think you have an interest to declare. 5. BARONESS WHITAKER: Yes, thank you, Chair. Just to say that I used to live in what was then the Hampstead and Highgate Constituency. 6. THE CHAIR: Thank you very much. I’ll in a moment be handing over to Mr Nicholas Evans, who I think is presenting the case for the promoter. Overall, the scope of the hearing will be that the promoters will put forward their overall case for the Bill and call the two witnesses that we have heard sworn. The Petitioners, Ms Swift and Mr Jones, representing the Jones family, can cross-examine if they wish or suggest questions that the Committee may wish to put. Mr Jones will put the case against clause 4.7. The promoters can reply. Ms Swift will put the case against clause 5.3 and the promoters can respond. And then the Committee will turn to the unopposed clauses and amendments. So with those notes, I would ask Mr Evans to present the promoter’s case 3 for the Bill. Submissions by Mr Nick Evans 7. MR EVANS: Thank you, My Lady, and good morning. Can everybody hear me clearly? 8. THE CHAIR: Yes, thank you. 9. MR EVANS: Thank you. My name is Nick Evans of BDBP Pitmans. I am the parliamentary agent for the Friends of Highgate Cemetery Trust. They are the promoters of the Highgate Cemetery Bill. I’ll be calling two witnesses who we’ve just seen sworn in, Dr Ian Dungavell, who is the Chief Executive of the Trust, and Martin Adeney, who is the Chair of the Trust. 10. Can I start by checking that the Committee and petitioners each do have a hard copy of the bundle of papers and the filled-up Bill that we submitted on 12 February? Good, I’m glad. That bundle has now been supplemented following some further discussions with the counsel to the Committee, who helpfully suggested some further amendments beyond those contained in that filled-up Bill, and so we produced a second paper of amendments. I believe that was emailed around either last evening or this morning. I hope that’s correct. And the House of Lords publishing team has also kindly produced, late last night, a tracked changes version of the filled-up Bill. And I don’t know whether any of these will have found their way to Mr Jones or Ms Swift, but that tracked changes version of the Bill is now on the parliamentary website for this Committee, so you should be able to locate it there. 11. THE CHAIR: Mr Jones is nodding. Ms Swift, can I check whether you have had the tracked changes copy of the Bill? 12. MS SWIFT: Yes, I have; thank you. 13. THE CHAIR: Thank you very much. 14. MR EVANS: I should note that the counsel to the Committee has identified a few further typographical corrections that could be made to that second paper of amendments, but, because none of those affects any of the opposed provisions of the 4 Bill, we would propose to circulate a further paper dealing with those amendments after we have finished with the opposed provisions of the Bill. I hope that’s acceptable in the circumstances. Thank you. 15. Before I call Dr Dungavell to give evidence, perhaps it would help if I set out the background to the Bill and who the promoters are, why we say the Bill as a whole is needed. I would then propose to give an outline of the case for the two opposed clauses of the Bill. That’s clause 4, which contains a power to extinguish rights of burial and clause 5, which contains a power to disturb human remains. Strictly speaking, as Lady Hallett mentioned, only one sub-section of each clause is opposed, but it probably makes more sense if I describe the whole of each clause rather than just those opposed provisions. I would then call Dr Dungavell, who can explain why those powers are needed in more detail. Mr Adeney’s evidence relates more to the unopposed provisions of the Bill and, of course, I’m in the Committee’s hands as to whether you would prefer to hear him at the outset or to wait until we reach the unopposed sections before asking him to give evidence. 16. THE CHAIR: If you could explain a little more, Mr Evans. Would Mr Jones or Ms Swift have any interest in what Mr Adeney would have to say? 17. MR EVANS: Mr Adeney’s evidence isn’t related to the provisions of the Bill that they have opposed; it’s related to who the Trust are, how they came to be the owners and the operators of the cemetery. And as their petitions don’t touch on those points, it would be outside the scope of their right to cross-examine in any event. 18. THE CHAIR: Even if they wouldn’t be cross-examining, they may be quite interested in the background, so I suggest you call your witnesses together. 19. MR EVANS: Very well. Thank you, My Lady. After our witnesses have given their evidence, they would be available for cross-examination by the petitioners in relation to points that they’d raised that are relevant to the petitions and, of course, available for questions the Committee might have. 20. And so, turning to the case for the Bill, as I mentioned before, the Bill is being promoted by the Friends of Highgate Cemetery Trust. The Trust is a charity and its objects are: to promote the public benefits in relation to Highgate Cemetery by any 5 means appropriate and likely to preserve it as a place of historic and other interest and beauty; to permit the cemetery, or such part of it as may be available for the purpose, to be used as a public burial ground; and to secure the repair, restoration and preservation of the cemetery, its monuments and buildings and other artefacts, and their setting for the public benefits. And everything that the Trust does must be done for those objects. That includes its operation of the cemetery and, if the Bill is passed, it includes the powers that it would have under the Bill. 21. The Trust is the owner and operator of Highgate Cemetery and has been since the 1980s. Highgate Cemetery itself is, in the words of the Attorney General’s report to this Committee, ‘A site of national importance and unique cultural heritage’. It’s one of the Magnificent Seven cemeteries created in the second quarter of the 19th century in response to the growing population and the pressure on burial space in churchyards, and it is now a Grade 1 registered landscape and, we would say, one of the best-known cemeteries in the world. 22. However, while the cemetery is a much-loved place of historic interest and beauty, attracting over 100,000 visitors a year in pre-pandemic times, it is more than that; it is a working cemetery and its status as a working cemetery is crucial to its status as a place of interest. Mr Adeney will give some more detail on this but, in outline terms, the cemetery was laid out in 1839 by the London Cemetery Company, and it used powers granted by the Act of 1836, which was included in your bundles, and that bears the very descriptive name, ‘An Act for establishing Cemeteries for the Interment of the Dead, Northward, Southward, and Eastward of the Metropolis, by a Company to be called “The London Cemetery Company”’.