§ MR. COOPERTo ask the President of the Board of Trade who are the British delegates to the International Copyright Conference now sitting at Berlin; whether any of the British have had any legal training in English copyright law; and, if not, for what reasons have they been selected.
(Answered by Mr. Churchill.) The principal delegate is Sir Henry Bergne, who attended the International Conference on Copyright in 1885, 1886. 519 and 1896, and was a plenipotentiary for the signature of the Convention of 1886 and the Additional Act of 1896. The second delegate is Mr. Askwith, K.C., Assistant Secretary to the Board of Trade, who, I need hardly say, is a highly-trained lawyer, and who is at present in charge of the Department concerned with copyright. The third delegate is Count de Salis, Councillor of Embassy at Berlin. The first was selected owing to the important part which he has taken officially for the past thirty years in all negotiations connected with the subject; the second for his legal knowledge; and the third in accordance with the usual practice in the case of international conferences, which is that one of our delegates should be a diplomatist.