Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill
Debate between Baroness Brinton and Baroness Buscombe(9 years, 11 months ago)
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Baroness Buscombe (Con)
My Lords, I support my noble friend the Minister as I suspect—I do not know—that he will not agree to the amendment.
First, I say to the noble Baroness who has just spoken that there is no mention of a particular community in the legislation. It is because, as we all know, it is predominantly people from the Muslim community who have been carrying out these appalling atrocities that those labels are being banded about. The Muslim community has to accept and understand why that is.
Furthermore, the other day I heard about something which I think amplifies why what the Government are seeking to achieve is incredibly difficult. I understand why they want to put this duty on a statutory basis. What I am going to say is almost more shocking to me than what happened in Paris. Somebody I know quite well was telling me the other day that his wife was shopping in a supermarket about three weeks ago in Manchester. She was scouring the shelves, as we do, when she stopped because she could not help overhearing a group of young British Asian Muslim girls talking about going to Syria.
This makes my heart jump when I talk about it and when I think about it. What does that say? It says that there are young people out there of different ages, and probably from different financial backgrounds, who have varying exposure to other faiths and so on and who, we are now hearing, find the idea of going to Syria quite cool. In other words, the importance of Prevent and of the need to try to deter these young people from thinking that somehow it is the right thing is absolutely paramount now. Therefore, we have to find every which way to send out a message, even though it may seem rather severe because it is on the face of the Bill. The threat that we face is severe.
Some of the people coming back from Syria now have carried out the most appalling atrocities. We do not want them talking to these girls, whether it is in supermarkets, in schools or in clubs—wherever it is—and encouraging them to think that it is cool. There has to be another point of view. There has to be a way that we encourage—we urge—all public authorities to do what they can to help these girls and many others like them who may be taken down the wrong path. I understand where my noble friend is coming from and the spirit of these amendments, but I do not think that we should shy away from sending a powerful message through this legislation that we have to do everything to support young people in preventing harm.
Baroness Brinton (LD)
My Lords, my name is attached to Amendments 13A and 13B. I want to comment on my noble friend Lady Buscombe’s contribution a minute ago. I am not sure that it helped the Minister. I think it explained why we need Amendments 13A and 13B, because the most important thing about implementing Prevent is to recognise that each of our communities differs and that each community, area and specified authority should have due regard to the impact in order to understand it and to pass that message back to central government to understand the change in the nature of terrorism and radicalisation.
That is why I believe that Amendment 13B is valid. It is an extra tool in the box to make sure that we are monitoring what is happening, at whatever level and in whatever specified authority, to the range of people it is going to affect—including, interestingly, pupils who are under sixth form and under student age. What is happening is not consistent across the country. There may be young girls in one area talking about going to Syria; there are young Muslim British girls in other areas who are appalled by that. As a society we need to understand the nuances of that. The briefing that we have had from the Muslim Council of Britain sets that out very clearly. The one thing that we must do is to make sure that we do not have alienation on a grand scale. We need to understand that what is happening is not the same in every single community.
Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill
Debate between Baroness Brinton and Baroness Buscombe
Baroness Brinton
My Lords, I want to add my support to the comments that have been made so far this afternoon, but perhaps from a different sectoral perspective. There are certainly a number of concerns about how this clause will affect designers and manufacturers. In particular, universities and colleges want to draw attention to the fact that it will substantially affect teaching, research and design. The ability to display photographs of designs is essential to the teaching of design. The change in copyright terms for these articles would mean that in future, any academics seeking to do this in a way which is not covered by the existing exemptions—including any digital reproductions such as displaying Powerpoint slides during a lecture—would have to seek a licence to do so. This will also apply to publishers reproducing photographs of industrially produced articles, or museums which may wish to display such articles.
We share concerns that this will frustrate the development of the creative sector in the UK, and the teaching of subjects associated with it. As has already been mentioned, the impact assessment focused very much on the commercial uses of designs, such as manufacturers of replica furniture and household goods. I believe that it should consult with non-commercial users of designs which are currently covered by Section 52 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, such as academics, museums and publishers to ensure that its appeal does not have an unduly negative effect. To this effect, I support Amendments 84ZC and 84ZE.
Baroness Buscombe
My Lords, I support my noble friend the Minister in his Amendment 84A to Clause 67. It is a sensible amendment that recognises that the IPO’s original Henry VIII wording was not fit for purpose. If I may say so, it skilfully overcomes legal and parliamentary complexities to meet this stated aim of the Government since this clause was first introduced in another place. As I understand it, the clause now maintains criminal penalties for copyright infringement without inadvertently giving this or future Governments power to introduce copyright exceptions.
Baroness Buscombe
My Lords, I have added my name to this group of amendments, which, as my noble friend has already explained, are to deal with the situation where the Bill as drafted would permit a number of unintended consequences, including permitting the publication of confidential family papers and destroying the value amassed in archives of works.
Clause 68 contains a particular quirk of historic definitions in copyright law that means that films and photographs are defined as published only when they are first hired, sold or made available for hire. As most films are broadcast and photographs appear in newspapers or magazines, they are not as such published and therefore would fall under the scope of the clause. Although on the one hand, the Government want to use the clause to allow organisations such as the British Library to publish medieval manuscripts, it will also enable millions of commercially valuable films and photographs to be put into the public domain. We believe that that loophole can easily be fixed by including in the Bill that unpublished photographs and films should fall outside the scope of that power. The amendments solve that problem in a clean and simple way and will give surety to concerned rights holders but not impact on the valuable contribution that the clause can make to organisations such as public libraries. I urge my noble friend to accept them.
Baroness Brinton
My Lords, I shall speak against Amendment 84AA and the other amendments in the group. I refer back to the point made by my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones about the scope and size of the problem of unpublished works and grey literature. A study by the British Library found that 43% of potentially in-copyright works published between 1870 and 2010 were orphan works. The figure for unpublished works, including letters, diaries, photographs and memos is far higher, and grey literature produced by charities, societies and associations but not for any direct commercial purpose, also contain high concentrations of orphan works. One example of that is a study of sound recordings of political debates in the 1960s, which identified 350 performers, of whom only 100 could be traced, meaning that more than 70% of the content was orphaned; 350 hours were spent trying to clear the rights to use the material; and the success rate—permissions received—was only 4%. That shows us the size of the problem, which is why I am grateful to the Government for the clarifications in the Bill and why we need to oppose the amendments.
Bringing copyright for unpublished work into line with the existing copyright duration would release much valuable historical data into the public domain and would not affect unpublished works created shortly before the 1988 transitional arrangements. As we have discussed in previous stages of this Bill, works of these kinds are, of their nature, orphan works. The copyright holders are incredibly difficult to identify. The British Library notes that it still has material from the 7th century in copyright. As a result, a large amount of material currently in copyright due to the transitional arrangements would be difficult or impossible ever to obtain a licence for.