HALL-MARKING OF FOREIGN PLATE BILL. (Hansard, 29 June 1939)

THE MARQUESS OF READING

My Lords, this is a short and somewhat specialised Bill, but none the less necessary in order to remove a long-standing inconvenience and anomaly in the existing legislation. The position can, I think, be shortly explained. By the Customs Act, 1842, Sections 59 and 60, it was provided that any plate manufactured abroad which was brought into this country for purposes of sale should be treated in exactly the same way as if it had been manufactured in this country and should be assayed and hall-marked in the same manner. Shortly after that Act was passed, in the same year, it was found that the provisions were too rigid and that some exemption from them must be supplied. By an amending Act of the same year, 1842, it was provided that if the importer could show that the plate 847 had been manufactured abroad before the year 1800, then it was not necessary that it should be either assayed or hall-marked in this country.

That position has obtained ever since, but with rather curious results, because your Lordships may observe that instead of inserting in the exemptions a period of years, a definite year was put in, with the result that, the Bill having been passed in 1842, exemption was at that time provided for any plate which could be shown to be more than forty-two years old—that is, the difference between 1800 and 1842. The position now is that in order to obtain exemption the importer has still to show that the plate was manufactured before the year 1800, with the result that the exemption can now not be claimed for plate brought in at any point of time less than 139 years ago. The short Bill which is before your Lordships' House is designed to rectify that anomalous provision by fixing a period of 100 years. The first clause repeals, in effect, Clause 6 of the amending Act of 1842, and the second clause repeals a clause of an Act of 1883 which, as matters at present stand, imposes upon the Revenue authorities the duty to hold such foreign plate in bonded warehouse until the necessary steps have been taken for its hallmarking and assaying.

So much for the explanation of the Bill. May I add a brief word as to its history? Some three or four years ago the British Association of Antique Dealers, who, as your Lordships know, are a responsible, reputable and representative body, approached the Goldsmiths Company with a request that the necessary alteration in the law should be made. The Goldsmiths Company, in their turn, took the matter up with all the other assaying offices in England and Scotland and obtained their assent, as also the assent of the Hall-Marking Committee, which is a Committee on which are represented all those associations which deal with gold and silver plate in this country. Thereupon approaches were made to the Board of Trade, where they were sympathetically received; and indeed matters progressed so far that a clause embodying the provisions that are now in this Bill was originally included in the Finance Bill of last year, but was crowded out during its passage through 848 another place. In those circumstances it was decided to embody these provisions in a Private Member's Bill. This Bill has already passed through another place without opposition or amendment, and in the circumstances, since the Bill appears to have many powerful and respectable friends and, so far as I am aware, no enemies, I trust your Lordships will give it your support. I beg to move that the Bill be now read a second time.