Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988: Sporting Events

Baroness Blake of Leeds Excerpts

Thursday 2nd December 2021 Grand Committee

[Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)]

My Lords, I do not feel offended at all by what happened and am very pleased that we can accommodate the noble Lord’s comments and contribution to this debate. As regards our side, he can relax on that matter.

I am very grateful to the noble Viscount, Lord Astor, for bringing this debate forward. It is one of those areas that the more you look into it, the more complicated and complex it gets. Battling with advances in technology is bedevilling us in so many areas, and it has been very illustrative to hear the cases so eloquently put by both the noble Viscount and my noble friend Lord Lipsey. I also pay tribute to the Library for the briefing that it gave us.

On the protections being called for in this area, I think that we are all looking forward to the Minister’s comments on where we have got to in what is a very technical and complicated debate. I want to add from my perspective just how important sport in its broadest context is to local economies as well as national economies. The noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, gave an assessment of travelling to the Far East. As a long-suffering Leeds United supporter who has been on trade missions to Malaysia and China, I found the collective memory in those places of how Leeds was a great team incredible—because, until they returned to the Premiership, the length of time that Leeds were out of the top flight was quite significant. I am talking about the direct trade talks I had as leader of the council with significant businesses and how important that contribution was. In my time as leader, I was able to secure the triathlon world series coming to Leeds as the UK venue, the television rights that came with that, and the exposure of the city and the whole region that came through securing the grand départ of the Tour de France. It is very difficult to put a value on the importance of that to the sense of well-being as well as wealth growth in our local communities.

I therefore recognise the World Intellectual Property Organization’s comments about helping to secure the economic value of sport and about how that, in turn, stimulates the growth of the sports economy, enabling sports organisations to finance high-profile sports events and providing the means to promote sports development. It is absolutely critical that we look at this through the lens of sports organisations, and we should of course recognise the benefit that the sale of broadcasting and media rights brings and that it is the biggest source of revenue. We should also consider how those funds can then be used to contribute to the development of sport at grass-roots level. Do the Government have plans to encourage intellectual property revenue being directed into the development of grass-roots organisations?

The Sports Rights Owners Coalition has argued that protection against rights infringements is

“key to a sustainable financing of both professional and grassroots sports”

and, as such, it has called on the Government to

“fully recognise, protect and promote the special nature of sport and sports rights”.

We have heard of course how the UK’s Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 allowed organisations that do not charge admission to show television programmes to the public without permission from the owners of film and broadcast copyright in those programmes. The Act was subject to amendment in 2016, when “film” was removed from the list of exceptions. The Explanatory Note to the regulations stated that this change would ensure that

“Section 72 will only provide a defence against infringement (in the showing or playing of a broadcast) of the rights in a broadcast per se, and will not extend to any film rights in the broadcast”.

Five years on, does the Minister believe this change provided greater clarity, as was intended? What impact has this had on the wider licensing framework? The pertinent question for the debate is this: when will the Government publish the response to their review of these changes? If there is any sense of what options for action could follow, I would be very grateful for an understanding of where this is heading.