Data (Use and Access) Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Benjamin and Baroness Freeman of Steventon

Consideration of Commons amendments and / or reasons
Wednesday 11th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Benjamin (LD)]

My Lords, it is an honour to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron. I rise to support the noble Lord’s Motion A1. I declare my interest as per the register.

It is with deep sadness that, once again, I am speaking on this issue, which continues to feel like a horror movie—a bad dream in which creators are being victimised. Just yesterday, a friend of mine in the advertising industry told me that his sector will be wiped out by AI in under five years, due to loss of revenue. The same can be said of numerous other creative sectors. This is morally wrong. The Government have promised not to introduce an exception without proof of an effective opt-out mechanism, but there is no effective system available for this. Such technologies are far from being developed, and they do not even work conceptually. A transparency-first approach to AI is essential. AI developers should be required to keep accurate records of all the training material they use and the web crawlers they employ. This is critical to ensuring that creators can identify when their works have been used for AI training, potentially without their consent.

Although everything that needs to be said about this woeful and sad situation has already been eloquently and passionately expressed in this Chamber by noble Lords from across the House—especially the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron—for the sake of clarity, I would like to ask the following questions, so that it is absolutely clear to the many thousands of people in the creative industries exactly where the Government stand on this issue: taking their lifeblood.

Do the Government accept that the creative industries need transparency and assurances before considering changes to copyright law, and, if so, why not prioritise it now? Do the Government believe it acceptable to ignore theft in the creative industries when such inaction would be unthinkable in sectors such as retail and manufacturing? Do the Government agree that creatives are working people and should be fairly paid for their labour? If so, how do the Government expect this to happen without transparency for AI training? How do the Government intend to ensure that AI companies receive high-quality content to train on if creatives are not being paid for their work by AI companies? They are doing it for nothing. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response to these important questions.

It is unprecedented for a UK Government to weaken intellectual property laws for British citizens and businesses, to the advantage of large overseas corporations. We should think about that. It risks undermining confidence in the whole creative sector, which plays a crucial role in the Government’s industrial strategy and the UK’s soft power. The whole of the industry urges and pleads with the Government to prioritise the long-term sustainability of the British creative sector over short-term benefits for AI developers, and to put an end to this unbelievable AI nightmare.

[Baroness Freeman of Steventon (CB)]

My Lords, I have kept my contributions to a minimum during ping-pong, and I will do so again today. However, I must voice my frustration at hearing the Government, here and in the other place, oppose our calls for transparency about AI training data by saying that a data Bill is not the place for it, and that they want to consider transparency about training data as part of their consultation on copyright. Meanwhile, they also say that

“transparency is absolutely key to our ability to deliver the package that we would like to put together”,—[Official Report, Commons, 10/6/25; col. 850.]

despite refusing to accept any timetable for delivering this fundamental aspect. Until we have transparency over the use of data, data owners—copyright holders—cannot use the existing copyright laws to bring cases around current violations of those laws. The longer the situation goes on, the harder it will be for data owners—copyright holders—to bring legal cases. There is an urgent need here, and there is an opportunity to address it in this Bill.