The second letter, sent recorded delivery (expensive, but usually works) finally elicited the following response from the Duke himself on House of Lords headed note paper:

29th July 1999

Thank you for your letter of 14th June.

The conditionally exempt items are presently situated in 6 different places.  We are contemplating the sale and removal from exemption of various items in view of the new legislation. The remainder we hope to place in museums on long term loan.

Items 541, 4905, 4697, 3545, 8284 and 8222 are on long term loan to London Metropolitan Archives at 40 Northampton Road London EC1R 0HB. The papers are made available to researchers in their reading room. You will, no doubt, be able to make your own arrangements direct.

I shall endeavour to let you know the position with regard to the other items remaining once valuations have been received and negotiations concluded with the Inland Revenue.

Yours Sincerely,

St Albans

Pretty noncommittal, I thought and not really within the spirit of the scheme.  And what's all that stuff about receiving valuations?  That indicates that he doesn't know how much the stuff is worth, surely?

A while went by and, having heard nothing I decided to chase the Duke with another letter (also sent recorded delivery) to try and find out if he was going to let us see the collection or if he had coughed up the tax.  This time I got a response from his bank, Coutts, which went as follows.  It's a bit of a shock to find out that someone so hard up banks with Coutts, mind you, I thought banks were trying to get rid of the less well off customers these days.

23 September 1999

His Grace, The Duke of St Albans, is away at the present time and he has asked me to respond to your letter of 13 September 1999.

I note that you would like to view all of the items entered on the Register of Conditionally Exempt Property but, according to paragraph 5.7 of the Capital Taxes Office publication “Capital Taxes - Relief for Heritage Assets, Notes on the Changes made by the Finance Act 1998”, the facility for giving access to exempt assets only by prior appointment with owners or their agents has been abolished altogether.

The CTO have invited owners of exempt property on the Register to propose revised arrangements for providing public access, in other words, open access. The way in which this open access will be provided is currently under discussion with the CTO. As soon as these discussions are concluded we will be in touch with you to provide details of the revised arrangements.

Yours sincerely

Eh, I thought?  I quickly rechecked the rules and the changes made by the Finance Act, 1998 and came to the conclusion that they had conveniently misinterpreted the changes to try and put us off going to see the stuff so I responded as follows, checking with the Inland Revenue at the same time:

Dear Sir,

Thank you for your letter of 23 September 1999 regarding arranging to visit the items belonging to His Grace, The Duke of St Albans. I am aware that the rules for conditional exemption have changed, but I believe that you have misinterpreted clause 5.7 of the Capital Taxes office publication 'Capital Taxes - Relief for Heritage Assets, Notes on the Changes made by the Finance Act 1998'.

The section you mention (paragraph 5.7) states

"Q: Has the facility for giving access to exempt assets only by prior appointment with owners/their agents been abolished altogether?

A: Yes. All owners of exempt assets with a condition of public access will have to provide a measure of 'open' access to those assets."

The key word in the paragraph is the word 'only'; this is merely stating that owners with works of art on the register cannot restrict access to access by appointment only, they have to provide a level of 'open' access as well as or instead of the 'appointment only' method.

Paragraph 5.10 further clarifies this fact, vis: "It may be possible, in appropriate circumstances, to combine 'open' access with access by prior appointment, especially where the exempt assets are particularly delicate or fragile. These might include, for example, manuscripts, water-colours, tapestries or sensitive wildlife sites. However, in view of the general requirement of 'open' access (see paragraph 5.7 above), you must provide a measure of 'open' access to all the tax-exempt assets."

As I understand it, unless His Grace has already come to agreement with the Inland Revenue on how this 'open' access is to be provided, the existing rules of 'access by appointment only' still apply. I will forward your correspondence with a copy of this letter to the Capital Taxes Office to gain written confirmation of this point.

Yours Sincerely,

I wrote to the Inland Revenue advising them of this and and got this response in which they sort of admit that they haven't made the change in law very clear to practitioners.  Well it was clear to me and I'm just a pleb!

Thank you for your letter postmarked 6 October.

I have spoken to Mr Parnell at Coutts, and advised him that the existing appointments system should continue to operate until a change has been agreed. He now understands the position, and will be writing to you about your request for an appointment to see the items of interest to you.

I am sorry if this misunderstanding has arisen because we did not make it sufficiently clear to practitioners that they should continue as normal until any necessary changes relating to the new legislation were agreed.

Yours sincerely

This was followed by a letter from Coutts again, I wonder if they were worried about being phoned up by the Inland Revenue?

12 November 1999

Thank you for your letter of 25 October 1999

The Capital Taxes Office have been in touch with me and they confirm it is their understanding that, pending agreement over the provision of open access to the exempt objects, access should continue to be available by way of the appointments system.

I have referred a copy of your letter to the Duke and his son for their further instructions. There is now a possibility that all of the objects on the Register of Conditionally Exempt Property will be withdrawn from exemption. Again I am awaiting further instructions on this point. I shall come back to you as soon as I can.

Yours sincerely

Note the comment about he's forwarded a copy of my letter to the Duke and his son. Would that be the "one lord a leaping", Charles Francis Topham de Vere Beauclerk, Earl of Burford that was kicked out of the House of Lords for staging a protest about "the abolition of Britain" in the House of Lords on the 26th October 1999 and again a week or so later after trying to hold a press conference to announce he was standing against Michael Portillo in the Kensington and Chelsea by-election?

I wonder what he thinks about his old man's tax dodging?

Well it's been nearly a month since the last letter arrived so I'm about to request a viewing again and this time list the history of correspondence and copy the Inland Revenue in again and request that a date is given for the viewing.  I'll politely point out that the rules of the Conditional exemption have been broken a number of times (it's been 6 months since I wrote the letter and all I've got back is vague words about taking the stuff off the list).

We shall see...

We've seen! The Duke has removed his collection from the list, so presumably he's paid the Tax bill ;-)