Britain's artistic community is battling against leading auction houses and dealers to bring in a law forcing the payment of a royalty on artists' works for 70 years after their deaths — in line with writers and musicians.

Most auction houses and dealers are opposed to the law — claiming that it would have a devastating impact on Britain's £8.5billion art market.

The Government is to publish a consultation paper soon on whether it should implement fully a European directive that enshrines the 70-year royalty rule in law.

Artists won the right to royalties across Europe in 2006, but the British Government negotiated an opt-out on extending it to dead artists, first until 2010 and now indefinitely.

But Joanna Cave, chief executive of the Design and Artists Copyright Society, which operates the commission scheme and has collected £4.2million in royalties since 2006 for more than nearly 1,500 living artists, said extending it to dead artists would have limited impact.

In particular, it is limited to 4 per cent of the sale and capped at €12,500.

But Anthony Browne, chairman of the British Art Market Federation, which represents auction houses and dealers, said: “We would simply be handing over a large part of our art market to New York or Switzerland on a plate — because there would no longer be a level playing field.”

The family of the British abstract expressionist William Scott, who died in 1989, said the right to royalties could raise up to £200,000 a year — much of it for Alzheimer's research.

Robert Scott, the artist's son, said: “My father had Alzheimer's for the last eight years of his life while my mother was in a wheelchair for 17 years. They had very little income and had to be supported by me and my brother. During this time I made sacrifices and I feel it is only proper that we should now be able to benefit from our inheritance. I know of other artists' estates in a similar situation.”

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