18 February 2016
Vellum is for ever (well nearly)
Is £80,000 per annum really such a waste?
by Lynda Goetz
Just over sixteen years ago, on Tuesday 2nd November 1999, plans to end the centuries-old tradition of printing copies of Acts of Parliament on vellum, fine parchment made of goats skin, was thrown out by MPs. The move, already approved by the Lords, was defeated by 121 votes to 53. At the time, making the change from printing two copies on vellum to printing only one on archive paper would apparently have saved £30,000. Vellum, which has a life expectancy of up to 5,000 years, as opposed to between 200 and 500 for archive paper, has been used for the country’s most important historical documents (The Domesday book 1086, Magna Carta 1215 and the Lindisfarne Gospels 7th-8th Century) and acts of Parliament dating back to 1497 that are currently held in the House of Lords Public Record Office.
At the end of October last year, following a meeting of the House of Lords Committee and almost exactly sixteen years after the last attempt to discontinue its use, William Cowley, (http://www.williamcowley.co.uk/) the last vellum and parchment makers in the UK, were advised that once again parliament was considering discontinuing the use of vellum and replacing it with archive paper. Patricia Lovett MBE, a calligraphy expert awarded her MBE for services to Heritage Crafts, picked up on this at the time and started contacting MPs and those in a position to influence the decision. Since then she has led the campaign against the plan. Her blog http://www.patricialovett.com/vellum-and-acts-of-parliament/ contains some fascinating information on the subject, not least the calculation that the actual saving would be only £27,000, not the £80,000 claimed by the House of Lords committee. She also points out that vellum is a by-product of the meat and dairy industry so that no calves would be saved by abolishing the use of vellum and that serious damage would be caused to an ancient craft industry.
Over the weekend of 6th/7th February Patricia Lovett’s pressure group heard that William Cowley had been given 30 days’ notice and that printing was due to stop on April 1st ( a date which caused a few raised eyebrows). This was reported in the press on the Monday as a ‘fait accompli’. However, the furore which resulted from what appeared to be a somewhat undemocratic decision by the Lords without the approval of the House of Commons, which had expected to have a vote on the issue, has resulted in a reprieve for vellum and William Cowley. Sharon Hodgkinson MP raised a point of order on 9th February and by Monday this week the news was that Matt Hancock MP stated that the Cabinet Office would cover the cost of printing on vellum. This might have seemed like the end of the matter, but it appears that the Lords are so keen, for some reason, to dispense with vellum that they have reiterated that they plan to stop its use unless the £80,000 they calculate as the cost is formally offered, which so far has not happened.
Although the House of Lords is the less powerful chamber, it is responsible for recording the Acts of Parliament, so, as the chairman of the House of Commons committee dealing with the matter confirmed, the Lords does have the authority to make the switch. It is somewhat unclear why the House of Commons was able to defeat that authority back in 1999. James Gray, a conservative MP who has led the cross-party move against the switch in the Commons has argued that inscribing laws on vellum conferred on them the dignity they deserved. Although the proposal is to switch to high-quality archival paper there appears to be some concern that this may be the thin end of the wedge. Acts of Parliament are already also published digitally.
James Gray pointed out in a phone interview with the New York Times that the once-popular floppy disk had long since been consigned to history’s dustbin and that the possibility of ‘A Modern Dark Age’* owing to the almost inbuilt obsolescence of modern technologies, is a worry amongst historians, archivists and librarians. This discussion raises a number of issues however looks set to run a little longer. Firstly, are we really about to throw tradition ‘down the pan’ for a pittance? £80,000, if that is the true cost of printing on vellum, is far less than the annual cost of the House of Commons Speaker’s expenses and for that future generations will, all things being equal, have some chance of finding out about preoccupations and priorities in preceding millennia. Secondly, the current House of Lords is made up largely of unelected life peers, most of whom are appointed for political or other service. Is it right that a Committee of the House of Lords should have the authority to decide on something so important? Finally, do we really want to lose yet another of our heritage crafts? William Cowley is a small but thriving specialist business which may not survive if it loses the patronage of parliament. Let us hope that the groundswell of opinion which has arisen in support of maintaining an old, but certainly not pointless, tradition can hold sway over a House of Lords which appears to be hell-bent on completing the vandalism it failed to achieve in 1999.
Lynda Goetz
*A Modern Dark Age Shaw Sheet 15 October 2015
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