PA manifesto backs market inquiry

A government-initiated inquiry into the online-physical and e-book sectors in the UK, a digital skills tax incentive for SMEs, and a minimum spend on teaching resources are among the measures in the Publishers Association’s first Publishing Manifesto, released today (19th September).

The manifesto has been produced ahead of this autumn’s political party conference season, and it will be used as a lobbying paper as the PA seeks to influence political parties in the run-up to the May 2015 general election. PA chief executive Richard Mollet said he hoped the document was one “all the main parties can sign up to . . . We’ve eschewed anything that would point in one direction or another”.

The manifesto offers eight main points of policy, beginning with a call for the upholding of the framework of copyright and concluding with recommendations for boosting the public library service. Mollet said copyright was chosen to open the document “because the rights of the author sit underneath everything we do and copyright has also been the area of greatest political contention in the past four years. I’d say we have a strong copyright framework in the UK, and our message to the UK government is: ‘Maintain your strong position.’”

One of the most striking recommendations comes in the document’s second area for discussion, “Fair markets for consumer choice”, which calls on the government to remove anomalies in the VAT system and address “imbalances” in the retail market. It recommends that the government should “initiate an inquiry that acknowledges that the market definition of e-books is separate to that of books in general, into the online-physical and e-book sectors in the UK. This would need to pay close attention to the impact of the prevailing market conditions on authors, small publishers and independent retailers.”

Asked to clarify the context for this measure, Mollet said: “What we’re thinking is, look at the public disputes [between publishers and Amazon] in the US and in Germany: it is incumbent on a national association like ours to consider if those disputes could happen in the UK.

“It depends on the market strength of different players, and we don’t know [the strength of] any one player in any one retail sector. We can’t find out and it is very difficult for publishers to put that information together without falling foul of competition laws. We need an objective, quasi-judicial assessment of the state of play of book retailing in the UK. The people who should inquire are the Competition & Markets Authority, and the business secretary can initiate an inquiry.” Mollet added: “It can only be done by an objective body because it’s not possible for groups of publishers or booksellers. The government should ask the question: ‘Could [the terms disputes involving Amazon, Hachette Book Group and Bonnier] happen here?’”      

Other recommendations include the introduction of a digital skills tax incentive, focused on small and medium-sized enterprises, which would reduce employers’ National Insurance contributions if they hire a specified number of young people into roles with a digital skills focus. Mollet said: “The government wants a more digitally skilled workforce. The industry wants it. This is one idea of how you might bring these desires together. It might not be the right route, but we need some fiscal incentive.”

A more politically contentious measure suggested by the PA is for the Department for Education to require schools to spend a set percentage of its overall expenditure on teaching and learning resources. Mollet commented: “The direction of travel since [former education secretary Michael] Gove is to not ring-fence; to have no minimum spend. But to me this measure sits alongside other things the coalition has said about the importance of textbooks and curated materials—why not insist that schools buy curated resources? On the Labour side, historically they are less keen for a free-for-all in schools.” He added: “I suspect parents want this measure.”

The manifesto also recommends that the next government should bring control of public libraries into a single government department, either by transferring policy responsibility to the Department for Communities & Local Government (DCLG), or giving financial oversight to the Department for Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS), with Mollet commenting on the “routine oddity of the library debate, [when] you have the pursestrings with the DCLG and policy with the DCMS”.