Public Lending Right body to go, but author payments will remain
The government's cull of quangos will extend to PLR, but culture secretary insists authors' library-loan royalties will continue.
The body that administers Public Lending Right (PLR) is to be abolished as part of the government's crackdown on quangos, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport announced today.
But culture minister Ed Vaizey has sought to reassure authors, saying that PLR itself, writers' legal entitlement to payments each time their books are borrowed from public
libraries, will be unaffected.
The Public Lending Right body, based in Stockton-on-Tees, has administered the scheme for the past 30 years. Culture secretary Jeremy Hunt today confirmed it would go as part of the government's programme of "increasing the efficiency, transparency and accountability of public bodies, while at the same time cutting their number and cost". Its functions will be transferred to another body, as yet unnamed.
