London faces its own version of the Kent Act

Remember the Kent Act? It forced antiques dealers to register with the local authority and keep detailed paperwork on any transaction over £100. The idea was to clamp down on the trade in stolen and counterfeit secondhand goods.

Now dealers across London face a similar increase in red tape with the London Local Authorities Bill.

And it’s not just the paperwork that the British Art Market Federation are worried about. Their chairman Anthony Browne, who has been spearheading opposition to the Bill for some time, has questioned the greatly increased powers of entry, search and seizure that the Bill proposes to give the police and Trading Standards, and how buyers and sellers might view what could prove to be an invasion of their privacy and confidentiality.

Mr Browne, who gave evidence and personally cross examined key witnesses in committee at the House of Lords last week, wants parliament to put a hold on what he deems another example of piecemeal legislation in the fight against crime.

Backed by the British Antique Dealers’ Association and LAPADA, he has called for the Home Office to be allowed to press ahead with its forthcoming investigations into the potential for nationwide legislation to replace the dozen or more local Acts in various parts of the country.

"Continuing the process of having similar, but slightly different, local legislation enacted on a piecemeal basis in some parts of the UK, but not in others, will create unnecessary and avoidable confusion for the legitimate market in cultural goods," he told the Lords.

And he questioned statistics put forward by the police and Trading Standards to show that the implementation of the Kent Act had been effective, had helped reduce crime and not caused dealers any undue problems. Their evidence, given as part of the Kent Report into the Act, showed that "burglaries from dwellings had declined in Kent by 6.9 per cent from the legislation date of 2000/01 to 2003/4. But Avon and Somerset, which has no local legislation for the registration of second hand dealers, saw a greater decline of 10.3 per cent during the same period".

Whereas the police said that dealers had not complained about the extra burden of responsibility under the Act, BAMF's own investigations had found otherwise. "The whole Act is a waste of time and money Ð the authorities are targeting the wrong people," one dealer had told them, while another said: "The amount of other details demanded by the Act is a terrible waste of time."

"I would suggest that the evidence of the Kent Report, as to the efficacy of the Kent and Medway Act is very far from being conclusive," Mr Browne told the Lords.

"One striking feature of this report is that no single example is given of an instance involving art and antiques. Of the six prosecutions carried out, one related to odometer records ('car clocking'); one involved the sale of a video cassette player; and another involved the sale of unsafe vehicles. The subjects of the other prosecutions are not recorded."

BAMF are concerned that no account has been taken of the unique position of the trade in London in drawing up the latest set of proposals and they foresee further problems if the London boroughs apply the Act at different times and in differing ways.

The cosmopolitan nature of the trade in London, with overseas dealers standing at numerous fairs throughout the year, might be damaged by any legislative change that drew them in and was not thought through more carefully, Mr Browne argued.

"We emphasise that BAMF have always welcomed and supported legislation that targets criminal activity and applies a proportionate burden on the legitimate art market," Mr Browne told the Lords. "If the concern is to deal with fly-by-night 'dealers', using squat sales or occasional sales to dispose of stolen items, then surely legislation could be devised to bear down on them, without the need of burdening thousands of legitimate businesses with additional and superfluous red tape. We would wholly support such legislation.

"We would not be petitioning against this Bill if we thought that it achieved this."