Abstract
MANY protests have recently been made against the prohibitive prices of British Government publications, the old basis of charge-one halfpenny for a sheet of four pages-having been greatly increased by the Coalition Government. The present prices vary from 30 or 40 to about 800 per cent, above the pre-War charges; and, consequently, a large amount of valuable official information does not reach the public for whom it is intended. This is in direct opposition to the policy pursued since the year 1836, when the House of Commons accepted the following resolution of a Special Committee on Printed Papers: “That the Parliamentary Papers and Reports printed for the use of the House should be rendered accessible to the public by purchase, at the lowest price they can be furnished, and that a sufficient number of extra copies shall be printed for that purpose.” From that time until about the middle of the War period, facilities were provided for the wide distribution of such papers and reports.
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Prices of Government Publications. Nature 113, 407 (1924). https://doi.org/10.1038/113407a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/113407a0