Catalogue description Board of Trade: Import Duties Advisory Committee: Minutes and Papers

The Import Duties Act, 1932 (22 & 23 Geo. V. c.8) set up this committee to give 'advice and assistance in connection with the discharge by the Treasury of their functions under this Act'. Those functions included the establishment of a thoroughgoing system of tariff protection. The committee had power to recommend increases or reductions on duties, as well as additions of goods to, or the removal of goods from, the free list. Its terms of reference limited the Treasury's freedom to differ from its recommendations, and its service was invariably accepted. It had some of the powers of a tribunal and became in effect a small non-ministerial government department headed by a commission.

The committee was dissolved by the Import Duties (Emergency Provisions Act, 1939 (2 & 3 Geo. VI, c.97) and its functions were transferred to the Board of Trade. The committee's records were temporarily deposited in the Public Record Office in 1941 and 1948, with the Treasury's approval, were transferred for permanent preservation among the records of the Board of Trade. They contain a complete set of the committee's minutes and papers, and printed copies of the orders made by the Treasury on the committee's recommendation, and of trade agreements with overseas countries. There are also lists of all the committee's papers, and subject indexes to both the minutes and papers.