Fiction and Juvenile Books (Import Restrictions) (Hansard, 17 April 1947)

§ Sir S. Cripps

No, Sir. I regret that this is impracticable, as it would contravene our obligation under the United States Loan Agreement not to discriminate in our import restrictions against United States goods. The matter is somewhat involved, and, with the hon. Member's permission, I will circulate a fuller statement in the OFFICIAL REPORT.

Following is the statement

1. There has been a certain amount of misunderstanding both in the United Kingdom and in other Commonwealth countries about the reasons for the restrictions which were introduced at the beginning of 1947 on the import of fiction and children's books from the latter. The following explanation may serve to put the matter in its proper perspective.

2. Before the war, there was no obstacle (either in the form of import duties or of import restrictions) to the free import of books into the United Kingdom. Total United Kingdom imports of books amounted to about million annually^*, of which the U.S.A. supplied 60–70 per cent., Europe 20–25 per cent., Eire 10–15 per cent., and Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa (taken together) about 2 per cent.

3. During the war, shortage of shipping space as well as of foreign exchange made it necessary to apply import licensing to restrict imports of books from all sources very drastically. After the end of the war, however, an Open General Licence was issued permitting unrestricted imports of books from Commonwealth countries, in order to restore that free 29W flow of books from these countries to the United Kingdom which is clearly desirable. Owing to the heavy demand for books and to various factors which have limited the output of United Kingdom publishers, imports of books from other Commonwealth countries under this Open General Licence speedily grew to very large dimensions—over £800,000 do 1946^*.

4. Towards the end of 1946, however. it became necessary to reconsider the arrangements for the import of books into the United Kingdom owing to the United Kingdom's non-discrimination obligation under the U.S. Loan Agreement. The U.S. Loan to the United Kingdom, it will be recalled, was made on certain conditions; one of these was that, on and after 1st January, 1947, the United Kingdom would not (subject to certain exceptions not here relevant) discriminate against the U.S. in its import licensing restrictions on any product.

5. The import licensing arrangements under which books were freely admitted from Commonwealth countries, while imports from the U.S.A. continued to be drastically restricted, thus became inadmissible as from the beginning of 1947, and had to be altered, so as not to discriminate against books from the U.S.A. This could have been done in several possible ways. One would be to extend the Open General Licence to include books from the U.S.A. but owing to the book shortage and the heavy demand for books in the United Kingdom this would have meant spending anything from 5 to 10 million dollars per year on novels and children's books from the U.S.A.—a dollar expenditure which was clearly far more than the United Kingdom could at present afford. The second alternative was to place the import of books from other Commonwealth countries and from the U.S.A. on a quota basis, allowing each country to send to the United Kingdom the same percentage of its prewar exports of books to the United Kingdom. This, however, would have meant restricting imports from Commonwealth countries to a percentage of their relatively small prewar exports to the United Kingdom, taking no account of the growth of their publishing industries during the war. A third alternative was therefore chosen. In the case of technical, scientific and other non-fiction books, the Open General Licence was extended to include the U.S.A. as well as Commonwealth countries. The import of fiction and children's hooks, on the other hand, was regulated by a special arrangement. Under this, regular importers are enabled to import fiction and children's books without any limit of quantity, provided that 50 per cent. by value of their total imports is in due course re-exported. This does not mean that the importer has to re-export 50 per cent. of the number of copies he imports of any particular hook, or of the books he imports from particular countries; his only obligation is that, if he imports say 10,000 worth of books in all, he must in due course re-export half (by value) of these. In other words, if he can import £5,000 worth of fiction and children's books and subsequently re-export these, he can also import £5,000 worth (of any fiction or children's books he pleases and from any country he pleases) for sale in the United Kingdom.

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6. It should be added that the foregoing arrangement applies in general only to books bound in stiff board covers; special restrictions have had to be placed on the import of paper-covered books in order to prevent comic, crime and "Wild West" magazines and similar periodicals, which the United Kingdom cannot at present afford to import at all, from being imported under the guise of paper-covered books.

7. It cannot be claimed that this arrangement allows as free an import of fiction and children's books from Commonwealth sources as could have been wished; it should however allow a substantial quantity of such books to be imported for sale in the United Kingdom and gives publishers in Commonwealth countries, who have expanded their productive capacity during the war and since, an equal chance of competing in the United Kingdom market with U.S. and other overseas publishers.

8. It will be clear from the foregoing that these restrictions on imports of books from other Commonwealth countries have been imposed, not in order to protect the United Kingdom publishing industry, but simply because the United Kingdom cannot, as yet, afford unrestricted imports from the U.S.A. and, so long as this is so, is obliged to place the same restrictions on imports both of U.S. and of Commonwealth books. Restrictions on the free interchange of books are undesirable as a matter of general principle; these restrictions are kept continuously under review, and it is intended to remove them as rapidly as the United Kingdom's foreign exchange position permits. It may be added that the Publishers' Association of the United Kingdom, while realising the necessity of these restrictions, has represented to the Board of Trade its regret that they have had to be imposed and its desire that they should be removed as soon as possible.

^* Including also imports of newspapers and periodicals.