This year's London Book Fair opened Tuesday morning with a look at Brexit and its implications for the future of the U.K. publishing industry. Moderated by Publishers Association CEO Stephen Lotinga, the panel featured Nick Hillman, director of the Higher Education Policy Institute; Ian Hudson, CEO of DK Publishing; and Rosa Wilkinson, director of stakeholder engagement for trade policy at the Department for International Trade.
The biggest concerns raised by both panelists and audience members related to freedom of movement and the "right to remain" for international staff. Hudson reported that among DK Publishing's 500 or so London employees, 81 do not have British passports. Hudson said he wants an "immediate commitment" from the British government guaranteeing European Union citizens currently living in the U.K. the right to continue to live and work following the implementation of Brexit, and a similar guarantee for anyone arriving in the U.K. to work between now and then. Without such guarantees, he explained, it will be difficult both to retain and recruit international staff. He said that the "diversity and internationality" of staff has been crucial to the success of DK, and added that the reluctance of Prime Minister Theresa May to make any such guarantees about a right to remain was nothing short of "inhuman."
"Our economy is going to hurt badly unless we can find a way to retain the free movement of labor," Hudson emphasized. This applies not just to someone in a senior position in the banking sector but also to a "graduate from Romania" who wants to work for DK in London.
During the q&a portion, Charlie Redmayne, CEO of HarperCollins UK, also spoke about freedom of movement and said he supported Hudson. Though Article 50 has not yet been implemented, Redmayne said Brexit has already affected business: HarperCollins has a distribution center in Scotland and a significant portion of the staff there is from Eastern Europe. Between the uncertainty regarding their future immigration status and the weak British pound, people are already "going back home." Not giving that guarantee of security to foreign nationals, Redmayne continued, is already impacting the viability of the business as a whole and will negatively impact British jobs going forward.
Wilkinson replied that "nobody has ever said everyone is going to be kicked out," adding that it is understood that the ability to retain and recruit international talent in both the short and long term is at the "very top of the tree" of business concerns about Brexit. She also acknowledged that the combination of the weak pound and uncertainty about the future is proving to be something of a "perfect storm" for convincing some foreign workers to leave.
Other concerns about Brexit were raised. Hudson said the weak pound has led to significant cost increases for printing outside the U.K. and for maintaining international offices, though he did acknowledge that weaker currency has meant that foreign revenue is now worth more when converted to pounds. Hudson called for the government to commit to the principles of free trade, fighting piracy and building a "robust" intellectual property framework, and both he and Hillman expressed concern over the likelihood that E.U. grants and funding for things like academic research and publishing books in translation will dry up. Hillman reminded the audience that in the first official "vote leave" video, it was promised that science and research would get at least as much money post-Brexit as it does now. He suggested that everyone "hold the government's feet to the fire on that issue." Hudson, meanwhile, worried that if the U.K. government does not adequately replace publishing grants, it will especially hurt small and academic publishers.
Just before the session ended, Lotinga asked for a show of hands of who thought Brexit would be a good thing for the industry and who thought the opposite. There were no hands raised in support of Brexit, while the show of hands for Brexit having a negative impact was nearly unanimous. Wilkinson admitted that she was "not entirely surprised" by the informal vote and confessed that she was actually in the Remain camp leading up to the referendum. But, she said, the more she sees and hears from other governments and colleagues outside the U.K., the more confident she becomes that the future could be "brighter than what you might imagine." --Alex Mutter