Publishing Industry

Lord Howarth of Newport Excerpts

Wednesday 6th February 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My Lords, the impact of digitisation on the book industry has been seismic, and one might say, with Gramsci,

“in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear”.

Swirling in the maelstrom, the publishing industry is, however, resilient and adaptable. So, too, are books. The codex was invented by the Romans. It has been refined in every century since, and it remains a technology that will be hard to beat.

What, then, is the role of the Government in supporting this important industry and the place of books in our national life?

The Government should create a fair tax regime. There should be zero-rating for e-books. Google and Amazon should pay their fair share. Meanwhile, Amazon might care to consider presenting a Kindle to every child, of whom 4 million in Britain do not own a book.

The Government should support publishing exports and deal firmly with trade barriers, piracy and infringement of copyright. They should ensure that their regime for intellectual property is coherent, fit for purpose and appropriately balanced as between the rights of creators and users. They should enable Parliament to consider, closely and carefully, any proposed changes to the legislation.

The Government should nurture reading within the national curriculum, working with the Publishers Association, allowing time in the school day for reading and putting libraries back at the heart of schools. They should support the charities which support books and reading. I single out the Reader Organisation, a charity which organises groups to read nothing but high-quality literature: groups of patients in mental health trusts, prisoners, substance abusers and looked-after children. It works in every case. The market for serious literature outside classrooms and middle-class homes can be developed.

The Government should enable local authorities to give decent support to libraries and literary festivals, and to help independent bookshops compete on price. The Arts Council should provide sustained security for serious non-commercial literary publishing, particularly poetry. They should implement the extension of PLR to e-books and audiobooks.

In a letter in the Times on 1 January 1942, TS Eliot, EM Forster, JB Priestley, Bernard Shaw, Rebecca West and others wrote:

“Unless authority suffers a change of mind, the condition of letters in this country will be quickly past prayer … Books and the book trade are not merely another industry. They are the daily food of our mental and spiritual life”.

They went on to quote the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, who had said:

“Books in all their variety offer the means whereby civilization may be carried … forward”.

The Minister is a civilised man, and he will endorse all that we have said. May we hope that our Prime Minister, too, will affirm the high importance of books and the publishing industry in our culture and economy?