A tax that could leave us lost for words: Kenneth Clarke would be wise to take a leaf from William Gladstone's book, argues Lord Bullock

FOR those who love literature and value scholarship, the case for maintaining this country's 130-year-old tradition of not taxing books and journals is self-evident. To make any impression on the sceptical, however, the case has to be put on broader grounds.

I recently shared a platform with John Patten, the Secretary of State for Education, and was delighted to find myself in complete agreement with his call to give literacy the highest priority in the Government's educational programme, linking this with weaknesses in the UK's economic performance.

Very few people in Britain are unable to read or write at all. But the demands of a modern economy require far more than minimal skills. According to figures produced by the Adult Literacy and Basic Skills Unit (Albsu), which advises government, around 6,500,000, or one in eight of the UK population over 16, have serious difficulties in reading, writing, understanding or speaking their native language. These figures compare unfavourably with those for our principal competitors in Europe and Japan.

In the past, when there was plenty of work for unskilled labour in this country, this was not a serious handicap to the economy. But today more and more unskilled work is contracted out to low-wage countries in South-east Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe, while Britain, if it is to remain among the advanced industrial countries, increasingly needs to build up a skilled workforce that can match the demands of hi-tech communications and high-value-added industries.

Another study by Albsu estimates that more than 60 per cent of all jobs (including those for manual workers, not just those in the hi-tech range) now require the ability to understand and act on written instructions, obtain simple information, such as telephone numbers from a telephone directory, and understand a price list. How can you use a computer if you can't read?

There is no short cut to advanced skills until the basic skills of reading, writing and speaking have been mastered. There is more than one way of acquiring these, but whichever method is chosen, one thing is certain - you will not learn to read, the primary skill, without access to printed material, at home as well as at school. That includes books, of course, whatever their educational value, but also magazines and newspapers; anything printed will serve for practice.

More than economic issues are involved. The most important task every individual has to accomplish while at school is mastering the arts of communication - reading, writing and speech - so acquiring the confidence that is so important to the young. Of course, it's never too late to learn, but if you let that early opportunity go by it becomes progressively more difficult. Failure has permanent consequences. It means being shut out from so much that makes life interesting - from higher education, from the more rewarding and responsible jobs and from a whole range of leisure activities.

This creates a sense of inadequacy and lack of confidence that combine to produce frustration and resentment and so contribute to anti-social attitudes.

Moreover, a tax which makes it more expensive, and so more difficult, to secure access to reading material is bound to disadvantage most those whose chances of learning to read, and all that goes with that, are already at risk for other reasons: children from single-parent families, from the families of the unemployed, from families dispossessed of their homes and from marriages that have broken up. And there is a tendency for the problem to perpetuate itself. More than half the children from families in which the parents had reading problems and no school qualifications repeat their experience and have low literacy scores.

Higher education in the UK is widely respected throughout the world. Its reputation is confirmed by the fact that a third of postgraduate students in British universities are from overseas and the number of overseas undergraduates in higher education increased by 133 per cent between 1982 and 1991. In the same period, the number of UK undergraduates rose by 68 per cent. This was a remarkable achievement considering that the Government's demands for expansion were accompanied by insistence on cutting unit costs. Libraries, in particular, have found it difficult to square the circle to meet the increased demand for access to the books and specialist journals, on which higher education depends, while cutting back their budgets. This task will become still more difficult if the Government adds a tax of up to 17.5 per cent on every copy of a book and periodical they need to buy, at the same time that the price of producing both is forced up by reduced print runs and increased costs.

But the real weakness in our educational record is not in higher education but in the age group of 16- to 18-year-olds. Only 40 per cent of these go on to full-time further education and training compared with 82 per cent in France, 89 per cent in Germany and 61 per cent in Spain. This is where the Government most needs to concentrate its efforts to raise educational standards, and once again it is the basic skills that most need attention. Even of those who do go on to further education after leaving school at 16, four out of 10 are found to need help with reading, writing and arithmetic.

However hard pressed we were in both the world wars, the government of the day refused to consider putting a tax on printed matter, although it was certainly proposed and then rejected in the Second World War. We are not in such severe straits today as we were then. Now that we are beginning to come out of recession and the Government has committed itself to raising educational standards and improving our economic efficiency, this is surely not the moment for Kenneth Clarke and his colleagues to brush aside the sort of arguments I have set out and re-impose the 'tax on knowledge' which the greatest of Victorian chancellors, Gladstone, finally abolished in 1861.

The author is chairman of the 'Hands Off Reading' campaign and founding Master of St Catherine's College, Oxford, 1960-80.

John Patten's pamphlet 'Literacy and the Opportunity Society' is published today by the Conservative Political Centre, pounds 3.50.

(Photograph omitted)