While there are probably insuperable legal obstacles to getting access to it meetings, where ongoing claims would be under discussion, there seems no reason why there should not be scrutiny of how the Panel has gone about its work in relation to recently completed cases. Were this programme being made now it would focus on the fascinating 27-year long story of what's called the Benevento Missal, that's been a proud possession of the British Library for decades. In March the Spoliation Panel ruled that the Library should give the book back to the cathedral in the southern Italian city of Benevento.

It's an extraordinary literary detective story. The 12th century volume was removed from the cathedral in 1943 to protect it from American bombing : it was then bought by an English soldier from a second hand bookshop in Naples: he later sold it to a London auctioneers from whom it was acquired by the British Museum. In the mid-1970s Benevento clerics traced it to London, and asked for it back. The Museum got in the lawyers, who argued successfully that there was no evidence that it had not left the cathedral before 1933 and that therefore it was not 'spoliated'. The clerics didn't give up, and after themselves spending hundreds of thousands of pounds on lawyers, have had their claim supported. There's a fascinating sub-story in how they traced the descendants of the English soldier and established that he had indeed bought the book ...

Around this story (or perhaps that of another case that will be completed between now and summer 2006) the programme will explore the complex and unsatisfactory legal framework within which the Spoliation Panel works. They may say a work should be returned, but it can't be as British law forbids any public gallery from 'deaccessioning' anything it holds. (In 2002 the Panel acknowledged that a painting in the Tate was 'spoliated goods' but ruled that an ex gratia payment should be made to its rightful owners.) Gerald Kaufman's committee had been scathing in its criticism of government for not introducing legislation to change the situation.