ON 2nd March the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry announced to the House of Commons a second extension, until 4th April, of the export licence deferral on Canova's Three Graces. At the same time he said that export control procedures had been 'under review' and that while it had been the practice in the past to consider offers only from public collections when deciding whether or not to grant a licence on deferred items, henceforward offers from any source - public or private - would be considered. This new policy would apply to all new and current applications. Interested parties were invited to submit 'representations' to the Minister for the Arts by 21st March on this proposal, although the 'review' of export control procedures which is said to have led up to it had not involved any prior consultation on this point.

As if to illustrate the most extreme case possible under the new arrangements, it was reported the same day that Mohammed Al Fayed, owner of the House of Frazer re- tailing group, would be prepared, if asked nicely, to buy the Three Graces and put it on display in Harrods. It is not our intention to consider the Three Graces again here other than to hope that by the time of publication some solution slightly less emblematic of the state of Britain in 1990 will have been found. However, the Secretary of State's declar- ation of intent, which involves a radical change in the principles underlying the export procedures, calls for a response.

'It is not possible to consider usefully any system of control without knowing to what ends it is directed and what is to happen to the object controlled'. With these words the 1952 Review of the Committee on the Export of Works of Art chaired by Lord Waverley (the 'Waverley Report') set out to establish the criteria and mechanisms of export control that have been subsequently followed, extending its brief to include recommendations about the funding of public collections in order to acquire works so stopped. The innovation of the Waverley system was that no export licence could be refused unless the object could be purchased from within Britain at a fair price. It was taken for granted that such acquisitions would be on behalf of the National Museums or recognised public collections. The report concluded in equally resounding terms: 'All efforts to preserve our national heritage will be largely nugatory unless the meagre sums hitherto available for the maintenance and development of the public collections are very substantially augmented'.

In principle, any initiative to widen the sources from which money can be found to help public collections to acquire export-stopped works is positive; and if- but only if- the Secretary of State's proposal leads to that end it is welcome. There have in the past been suggestions that private individuals might be encouraged to bid for export- stopped items, provided that they undertook to guarantee public access and also that the objects would eventually pass into a public collection. Without such safeguards the announced arrangements are unacceptable. Nevertheless, Whitehall sources have so far taken the view that the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry does not have the power to impose conditions on private purchasers: no such guarantee would be legally enforceable.

The potential for abuse of the proposed system is infinite, especially as the mechanics of its procedures are as yet unclear. There will, it appears, be nothing to stop a private purchaser from re-selling at an inflated price (enhanced by the copper-bottomed opinion of the Government's ex- pert advisers as to the item's importance). Who will decide between rival private bids and on what criteria? Or will it simply be a question of refusing an export licence and allowing private bidders to fight it out between themselves and the owner? Even under the present system, it is theor- etically possible for the owner to renege on the initial sale during the deferral period and accept another bid from a private British source. Had this been customary, however, it would have been taken as a sign that the system was not working. Moreover, such a bid would not hitherto have been taken as grounds for the refusal of an export licence. In other words, up to now owners have been expected to behave well; now they will be encouraged to behave badly.

The Waverley Report took the view that 'export control must be operated primarily in the interests of this country, the proposed destination of an object being a secondary consideration'. Nonetheless, it noted that foreign museums were justly aggrieved if, 'as sometimes happened, the [stopped] object is not bought for a public collection in this country but remains in private hands'. The owners consulted on that occasion stated a preference for selling to national collections if the international monetary value of the object could be matched. Whether owners will be willing to sell to private buyers remains to be seen - nor is it clear whether wealthy private buyers will come forward, or how the Secretary of State will assess their bids.

In the end, however, it is not the practical difficulties inherent in the new arrangements which are objectionable, but the principles behind them. A narrowly conceived notion of 'national interest' seems to have been replaced the concept of the public good. It is surely not just a question of 'practice' (as the Secretary of State claims) that in the thirty-eight years since the recommendations of the Waverley committee were adopted, only public collections have been encouraged to bid for items stopped for export. It is rather the case that only the public interest has been considered sufficient to justify what the report calls the 'disruption of ordinary channels of trade'. To deliver the 'national heritage' into the hands of private buyers with no conditions attached would be to strain the threadbare fabric of that concept.

In the January Editorial we urged that the anomalous case of the Three Graces should not be taken as a test of the Export Reviewing procedures. At the NACF seminar on export controls and the single European market, speaker after speaker recommended the British system as a model for the EEC to follow. It now appears that, as the result of a hasty reaction to one or two cases, the bias of the procedures may be so altered as to make them entirely unacceptable to all other countries still disposed to identify national interest with public good.