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The saga over the artists’ resale right has taken a new turn with the Government vowing to fight the aspect of the measure that most threatens the UK art trade.

On Wednesday last week Trade minister Lord Sainsbury of Turville told a largely hostile audience of his peers in the House of Lords that the Government had balanced the interests of artists and commerce in adapting the European Union directive for UK use.

But he announced that Whitehall would campaign to have the current derogation, whereby the right is limited to living artists until at least 2010, made permanent. This is highly significant because about 85 per cent of money paid out under the levy would go to the heirs of dead artists.

Lord Sainsbury said that the Government had decided to press for the permanent extension because hopes of persuading the world’s major non-EU markets – the United States and Switzerland – to adopt droit de suite had failed.

He also held out further hope to the trade following extensive criticism from opponents to the levy of the Patent Office’s report on droit de suite. Defending the report against claims that it appeared to ignore the art market’s arguments over the costs of collecting the levy, Lord Sainsbury backed figures supplied by the Design and Artists Copyright Society (DACS), saying that collection would cost only £1. And he pledged that any further costs that arose would have to be paid by DACS.

“We were provided with a detailed proposal for the administration of the right by a relevant collecting society,” he told the Lords. “This estimated that costs to business could be as little as £1 per transaction; all additional costs would be covered by the collecting society.”

This will be of particular interest to the trade as both the independent report commissioned by the Government and British Art Market Federation figures estimate collection costs as being somewhere between £30 and £40 per transaction.

BAMF president Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville led a robust attack on the Government proposals, supported by a number of peers including LAPADA chairman the Earl Howe. Only three peers spoke in support of the Government.

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