Labour MP calls for sale of human remains to be banned

The sale of human remains should be banned, a Labour MP has urged, as she said Parliament had an ethical obligation to stop the trade.

Bell Ribeiro-Addy (Clapham and Brixton Hill) said there was a growing market in human remains online and in person. The Labour MP said there were more restrictions on the sale of animal remains than humans.

She detailed examples given by a task force from the British Association of Biological Anthropology and Osteoarchaeology of items that had been sold, including shrunken skulls, “lucky-dip bags” of bones, and organs preserved in specimen jars.

Ms Ribeiro-Addy said there was a “substantial market” for decorative objects made from human remains.

“All of this is entirely legal,” she said, introducing a ten-minute rule Bill in Parliament. “While the human remains task force does an excellent job tracking what it can, there are undoubtedly more sales that go unnoticed, and they are the only body who actively attempt to police this trade.”

She continued: “In 2026 one can sell a piece of human remains or an object partially consisting of human remains with no checks on how those remains were acquired, no verification of how old these remains were, who they belonged to, whether consent was given, or what the buyer intends to do with them.”

She said online sellers got around existing rules by misspelling words, mislabelling real names, or advertising them as replicas. If they were found to have broken rules, then sellers would just face online bans, rather than charges.

Current laws mean it is an offence to own human remains under 100 years old unless there is a licence. However the 2004 Act does not explicitly ban commercial sale in most cases.

Last year an investigation by ITV found 80 active sellers on Instagram and Facebook, which offered human skulls to wallets made from human skin. Part of the market is made up of bones from ex-medical skeletons.

The import from China was banned in 2000, after a similar prohibition on those from India 15 years earlier.

In November 2024 a antiques centre in Oxfordshire intended to auction a 19th century skull from the Naga people, who lived in an area that now forms part of north India.

Ms Ribeiro-Addy said: “At present we have stronger licensing rules around animal remains than we do around some human remains.”

She continued: “Ultimately, the only hurdle sellers face is platform moderation. They face no legal barrier at all. In person sellers face even fewer obstacles with no oversight of the human remains sold in curiosity shops, flea markets or satanic markets.”

She added: “There’s a clear moral and ethical case for banning it. There is no reliable way to establish how these remains were acquired, whether they were looted, grave-robbed, their age, or whether any consent was given by the individual themselves or their relatives or descendants.”