HC Deb 13 August 1947 vol 441 cc2511-20

4.18 p.m.

Mr. Benn Levy (Eton and Slough)

I wish to bring to the notice of the House the question of the circulation, or, rather, non-circulation of works of art, partly in order to have clarified what is the real position, and partly in order to suggest that if the position is as anomalous as I understand it to be, it might be quickly revised. As I understand it, there is no import tax on paintings or drawings, but there is a tax on sculpture, engravings, etchings, etc., unless they are destined for a museum or certified by the Director of the Tate Gallery to be indeed works of art. The first objection which presents itself is that the Director of the Tate Gallery should be invested with the obligations of an arbitrary censorship. After all, if the position of Director happened to be held by someone like Sir William Reid Dick, it is conceivable that he might not accept the view that a sculpture by, say, Mr. Henry Moore, was in fact a work of art; and conversely Mr. Henry Moore, if he were the Director of the Tate Gallery, might find it very difficult indeed to persuade himself that the products of the diligence of Sir William Reid Dick had anything remotely to do with art. That is the difficulty in which we always find ourselves. I know quite well what is a work of art, and my hon. Friend knows quite well what is a work of art, but he does not know that I know; nor do I know that he knows. That is the eternal dilemma of subjective censorship.

I do not wish to put any further particular emphasis on this point, but to ask now what is the procedure involved. If you spend a year or two abroad hacking away at a five- or six-ton piece of granite, trying to convert it into a piece of sculpture, what you have to do, I understand, is this. First, you have to crate it and send it to England and fill up Entry Form 107 in duplicate. Then you send another form, also in duplicate, to the Director of the Tate Gallery providing information under a further seven heads. You then take two photographs of what you hope to have been a work of art and despatch them to the Director. Then you leave a deposit on security for it for an unspecified sum with somebody, although I am not quite sure and cannot find out exactly whom. Finally, you cart your problematical work of art to the premises of Messrs. James Bourlet of 17, Nassau Street, Mortimer Street, London, W.I, and there it remains and you wait. If, in due course, the Director of the Tate Gallery decides that you have in fact committed a work of art, well and good. If, on the other hand, he decides that what you have deposited at the premises of Messrs. James Bourlet, of Nassau Street, is still only five or six tons of granite, then, presumably, you must just cart it away again—no doubt calling at Carey Street on the way.

Luckily, none of this ever happens because the Treasury have invented an ingenious device for circumventing these difficulties. They just do not let anything in at all. When I learned this orginally, I found it very hard to believe, and I asked my hon. Friend at Question time whether in fact there was a virtual embargo on works of art. He was unable, of course, to deny it, but he said that we were allowed to bring works of art in on condition that they were sent out again almost immediately. As a matter of fact there was one other loophole which he did not mention: I believe that one can bring works of art in provided that they are certified to be household effects, but then there arises immediately the question of what is a household effect. Another censor is involved, and this time I understand it to be a customs officer. The wife of a friend of mine, who is an artist and had painted some pictures in France, attempted to bring them back home. She informed the customs officer that they were indeed household effects and that her intention was to hang them in her bedroom. The customs officer looked at them and, being obviously of the opinion that nobody could possibly want to hang them in his or her bedroom, he decided that they were not household effects and the lady was not allowed to bring them in.

I am sure that my hon Friend will admit that all this is fairly average nonsense, and I believe it to be the case that this situation is not the result of policy at all but of a kind of hangover of old regulations that have been overlooked. The reason given by my hon. Friend in his reply to my Question was, in a phrase, "balance of payments reasons." In these days those are, indeed, very formidable reasons, but we must have some sense of proportion and the dollar saving in this field is quite negligible; for the simple reason that, although the United States of America are very good at producing a number of things, they are not very good at producing works of art. The result is that whereas our total gross expenditure on imported works of art in 1939 was £626,000, the dollar expenditure was only £119,000, which, as I said, is negligible. Is it really worth saving? Is in worth all this dislocation and anomaly which nobody would defend for its own sake?

After all, if we accept the assertion of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Mr. Eden) more than six times this sum, this paltry £119,000, is spent by us annually on the importation of American magazines. That continues and, unfortunately also, on the same day that I raised this question, my hon. Friend had had, in answer to a previous Question, to admit that import licences had actually been granted for certain American motor cars. The worst parallel has, I am glad to say, been changed, but until the last few days we had been acquiescent in the loss of £17 million or £18 million worth of dollars on imported American films.

I mention that only because whenever an attempt to justfy it has been made, it has always been on the theory that if we allowed the British film industry its head in a free trade market, somehow or other it would be able to redress the adverse balance of trade by selling British films in America. Nobody who knows anything about the film industry can find the slightest tittle of real evidence for believing that in any foreseeable period of time £18 million worth of dollars net can be brought back into this country from the sale of British films in the States. I mention this because it provides an important contrast. There the balance of trade is violently against us whereas here, in the art world, it was very much in our favour. London was for many decades the prime market of the world for works of art, but it is gradually and dangerously ceasing to be so. What we are doing, if we are not very careful, is to argue that free trade should be allowed in films, where the balance of trade was against us, in the chimerical hope that one day in the far future the position might change. At the same time as that argument was being advanced we were refusing free trade in a field where the balance of trade was in our favour and where, as a result, we were inexorably losing our advantage.

For it happens to be true that before the war free trade in works of art brought us in dollars. I quoted £119,000 as the 1939 figure for imported works of art from America just now, but I said at the time that that was gross. My hon. Friend may have the overall figures although I have had some difficulty in obtaining them, and I think he will be able to tell the House that every year the balance of trade was in our favour in terms of dollars. That is a very important consideration which I think we can emphasise. As I say, I have had difficulty in obtaining the overall figures—a difficulty which does not operate in my hon. Friend's case—but I have managed to find certain individual figures as examples.

Although, for obvious reasons, I cannot mention the firms involved, one leading firm in 1937 bought £100 worth of stuff in America and sold £62,500 worth to America. In 1946 that £62,500 had been reduced to £9,400, which is a very big drop. Another firm which imported nothing from America exported in 1938 £144,000 worth to America. In 1947 that had dropped to £90,000. The drop is significant because, while my hon. Friend might argue—although I do not suppose for a moment that he will be sufficiently disingenuous to do so—that, after all, these regulations do not impede the export trade because an import licence can be granted to anybody who is willing to re-export, I am sure that he will realise that we cannot maintain let alone build up a trade on that basis: you cannot possibly give an assurance beforehand to anybody that certain pictures will be sold within a specified time for dollars.

The second reason why it is important is that, although import licences have seldom been refused when applied for, they have seldom been granted. The technique is largely one of procrastination, with the result that applications are very seldom made. One firm, one of the biggest firms of art dealers in the world, has made only four such applications since 1942, and of those four applications three have been rejected. They tell me that, on a conservative estimate, the rejection of those three applications cost the Treasury 125,000 dollars. Mind you, the firm would have applied for more licences if the difficulties had not been so great. On the basis of their prewar trade they would have brought this country 500,000 dollars at prewar prices. Those prices have since doubled, so there may very well have been a million dollars lost as a result of these regulations.

Perhaps the most important consideration of all is that one cannot continue to export if the stock is perpetually running down. Unless one replenishes the stock one cannot maintain the export trade. London will be no longer the centre of the art trade unless we are very careful. I have laid particular emphasis upon the economic side of this matter. But even if we were losing a few dollars I still say that the position ought to be considered very carefully, because nothing could be more reactionary where works of art are concerned than to shut ourselves behind an iron curtain.

I therefore ask my hon. Friend to reconsider this situation for this reason and for three others that I have given, and which I will summarise. First, our preeminence in the world market is being jeopardised; second, this trade does not cost us dollars but wins us dollars; and third, even if that were not the case, the sum involved is so small and the principle involved is so great that an elementary sense of proportion must dictate other cuts and deprivations before these.

4.33 p.m.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade (Mr. Belcher)

I am most grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Eton and Slough (Mr. Levy) for the extremely reasonable fashion in which he has argued his case and particularly for what I took to be his implication that at least I was not insensitive on the matter of the exchange of works of art. In fact, I regret very much that there is such a small attendance of Members, although perhaps that can be forgiven on such a pleasant afternoon as this. I wish that this very important cultural subject could have attracted a greater attendance of Members. I notice the complete absence of the Liberal Party and of the Liberal National Party, and the almost complete absence of the Conservative Party. However, I am glad that culture in this country is, for the time being at any rate, in the safe keeping of the Labour Party, and particularly of my hon. Friend the Member for Eton and Slough.

Mr. Emrys Hughes (South Ayrshire)

I would point out that Scotland is represented.

Mr. Belcher

Yes, Scotland has always had a very great reputation for culture and hon. Members who represent Scotland are keeping up that reputation today.

Let me tell the House the present position. It is true that there is a very complicated and intricate procedure for getting a work of art into this country, but it is circumvented by the Treasury simply declining to allow any imports, so the complicated procedure does not arise. We allow them to come in here for exhibition purposes, provided that an undertaking is given that none of the works will be sold in this country, all of them being re-exported either to the original source or to some other destination at the conclusion of the exhibition. We have had it urged upon us repeatedly by painters of repute that if we are to build up a British school of painting in this country, it is essential that our painters and particularly our younger and newer painters, should have an opportunity of seeing what is being produced currently abroad. I understand that there is especial interest to see what is going on in France. In present circumstances, for obvious reasons, it is not possible for those painters, particularly the younger ones, to go abroad as freely as they did in the days before the war. On the other hand, I imagine it would be difficult to persuade foreign artists to hold exhibitions in this country unless they felt that, at the conclusion or during the course of the exhibition, they would be allowed to sell some of the paintings which they were exhibiting.

It has also been urged upon us that it would assist in building up a British school of painting if our painters could exhibit their works of art in other countries. Naturally, in this as in other matters, other countries are demanding a quid pro quo. If we are to exhibit our pictures from Chelsea in Montparnasse, or wherever these exhibitions are held, the people on the other side say, "That's all right, if we can come along to Bond Street." We have been approached by Dominion and Colonial Governments on this matter, but on balance of payment grounds we have been compelled to resist them, because of the non-discrimination clause in our Financial Agreement with the United States of America, which would make it impossible for us to have in this country exhibitions of paintings from the Dominions and Colonies unless we were prepared to offer equal rights to the United States. We have not been prepared hitherto to admit works of art from the United States precisely because of our dollar shortage and we have not allowed works of art to be included in the token import scheme.

Art dealers have approached us also, asking us to allow them to import works of art freely without any obligation to re-export them. They have not confined themselves to paintings but have included drawings, tapestry, sculptures curios, antiques, coins, and all kinds of other items. I am sure that my hon. Friend will agree that one has to draw the line somewhere. It is not easy to draw a line. Some hon. Members interested in art may be particularly attracted to pictorial art, and other hon. Members may be drawn to sculptured art, while others prefer furniture, and so on. It is necessary to look at these matters very carefully. I doubt very much whether any relaxation is possible but if it is possible to relax it will not be over a wide field. We shall have to define fairly carefully what is a work of art and what is not. Who is to undertake that task of definition, whether the head of the Tate Gallery or a customs officer, I do not know. I can only say that I should not like to have to do it. I hope that the suggestion made in my hon. Friend's speech will not be taken too seriously.

I agree that on the financial side the figures are interesting. In prewar years our chief source of import of pictures and of other works of art was France, the United States coming second. The average import from France in the three prewar years, 1936–7–8 was valued at £656,000 per year. The corresponding average from the United States was £196,000. From Empire sources during the same three years it was £55,000 a year, mainly from Canada and Eire. It has been suggested to us in the light of those figures that we should not fear the non-discrimination obligation in regard to imports from the United States, because of the smallness of their prewar exports of pictures to this country compared with the imports from France and Empire countries.

Mr. Brendan Bracken (Bournemouth)

What kind of pictures were they? Were they works of art?

Mr. Belcher

They were pictures. I take it that they were works of art. We are dealing generally at this moment with works of art. If the right hon. Gentleman is suggesting that no works of art are produced in the United States of America—I do not know that he is—I am not competent to argue about it. I should have thought it would have been possible for works of art to be produced in the United States of America as in almost every other country.

Mr. Bracken

The hon. Gentleman must not consider that I think works of art are not produced there. I happen to know that many works of art are produced there. But I am surprised at the figure for imports, and I wondered whether there was any re-import.

Mr. Levy

Would my hon. Friend say if that figure includes the re-importation of works of art which have been sent out to the United States of America, for example, where an art dealer has a firm in New York to which he sends out works of art and then brings back those which are not sold? Are those included?

Mr. Belcher

I do not know. This is the total figure of imports into the country from the United States. If there has been an importation into the United States and the subsequent re-export to this country, the figures I have quoted would include that re-export. I can give the House the figures showing the imports of pictures from the United States in the years, 1936, 1937 and 1938, and the exports and re-exports of pictures from this country to the United States in the same years. They are interesting. In 1936 our imports were £117,000 and exports and re-exports £537,000. In 1937 imports were £227,000 and exports and re-exports £512,000. The 1938 figures are not so satisfactory from our point of view because the imports were £245,000 and the exports and re-exports £313,000, but I agree that if we are dealing with the matter purely on currency grounds the prewar figures appear to lend some substance to my hon. Friend's argument that permitting the resumption of this trade might very well be to our advantage in a dollar sense. As I told my hon. Friend recently, the matter has been discussed and is still being discussed between Departments but we have not yet agreed upon a plan which would be satisfactory to all the Government Departments concerned. The basis of any such scheme would be that if we were to allow imports freely, so far as currency is concerned, the scheme would depend for its continuation on whether or not we were able to show, if not a profit in dollars, at least something like equality in dollars.

I do not think it could be suggested at the present time that the free importation of works of art would mean a considerable dollar drain. On the figures we have had today, I do not think that that could be shown, but I would not like to suggest at the moment that we could easily have a scheme for the free importation of works of art. We would require to have safeguards. We should have to safeguard ourselves against people who might be buying works of art as a speculation. My hon. Friend would not want to make it possible for people to obtain works of art from the United States in this difficult currency time as a speculation or insurance against inflation. I should regard such people as guilty of questionable transactions. It would be very different if the purpose were to build up a school of art here in this country or to make available to our people something of cultural value.

Mr. Bracken

Is the hon. Gentleman talking about modern works of art?

Mr. Belcher

Any works of art. If they are the work of current painters in the United States of America, they will be modern works of art, but they might exist in private or public museums in the United States, in which case they might be modern or ancient.

Mr. Bracken

Is it not the case that no duty is payable on works of art over 70 or 100 years old?

Mr. Belcher

One does not have to pay duty on any such works of art at the moment because we are not issuing any licences in such cases. The burden of my hon. Friend's argument is that we should be issuing licences. We have had no request for importation on behalf of public galleries. If we had, they would have to be treated in the same way as any other requests for importation. I can only say to my hon. Friend, as I told him at the beginning, that I am not insensitive to this subject. I realise that there are other considerations quite as important as the material consideration with which we are concerned most of our time. There are cultural and moral considerations. I regard cultural considerations as of prime importance. I will promise that while this question is under discussion between the various Departments concerned, I will personally give the greatest possible attention to it with the most sympathetic attitude that I can summon up, and although our present currency difficulties, about which we have been so preoccupied during the last three or four days, make it extremely difficult to come to a favourable decision on the matter, I can assure him that there is no lack of sympathy so far as I am concerned, and that I will not lightly allow a decision to be come to which will reject out of hand the possible free importation of works of art.