Digital Economy Bill

Debate between Duke of Somerset and Lord Stevenson of Balmacara

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Thursday 2nd February 2017 Lords Chamber

[The Duke of Somerset (CB)]

My Lords, I intervene briefly to support this amendment, which seeks to rebalance the need for public access to all types of books against authors’ rights to some modest payment for their work. The PLR gives authors a small income where their books are sold mainly to libraries. The main point is that the PLR was extended to audiobooks in the 2010 Act for on-site loans but the need here is to extend it to remote loans, an area quickly increasing in popularity where items are downloaded to a computer situated away from the library.

We heard that zero remuneration is now illegal after the European Court of Justice ruling last November, so I expect that the Minister will have no difficulty in accepting this simple but important amendment. However, that ruling also drew attention to the difficulty of ensuring that only one copy is downloaded and that after expiration of the lending period no further listening can be enabled. Could the Minister indicate how this might be enforced or will it probably just be ignored?

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

My Lords, briefly, I apologise to the House for the brevity of our Amendment 79B. We ran out of time and did not have the skills or ability to write an amendment that should properly have been in the Budget. We also lacked the temerity to do that. It is an aspiration not a probing amendment; it does not even qualify for that. It is a flag-waving exercise as we ought to think harder about the tax on knowledge. As the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, said absolutely rightly, it is ridiculous that we believe that books in physical form somehow transmit knowledge and are worthy of having a VAT-exempt regime but when they are downloaded they must be subject to VAT. That seems unfair. We support Amendment 74 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, and look forward to hearing the responses from the noble Baroness.