Data (Use and Access) Bill [HL]

Debate between Earl of Dundee and Earl of Devon

Report stage
Tuesday 28th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Devon (CB)]

My Lords, this is the first time that I have spoken on the Bill. Given the excellence of the contributions to date, I have barely felt the need to. We are indebted to the tireless work, rhetorical skill and legislative expertise of the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, and the noble Lords, Lord Freyberg, Lord Clement-Jones and Lord Stevenson. I thank them all.

I wholly support the premise of and intentions behind these amendments, although they would not strictly be necessary if we could just be patient and let the law of copyright work as it should and as it has done for over 300 years. Given the Government’s consultation on AI and copyright, and the intense pressure that they have put upon themselves to convert the UK into an engine of economic growth at all costs—sustainable or not—this is an issue of paramount and urgent importance to our creative future and to intellectual property. I offer a short contribution from my experience; after such a debate, I hope it will be additive and not repetitive.

First and foremost, I am an art historian—a cack-handed artist long astounded by the creative genius of our island nation and particularly its flourishing globalisation in the 18th and 19th centuries. Much of that soft power came through the deployment of copyright —first legislated by this Parliament in the Statute of Anne 1709. We invented copyright; it is our duty to preserve and enhance it, not to let it be sacrificed on the altar of economic growth in an unsustainable race against China and America to machine-learned dominance at the expense of human creativity.

Copyright was the child of the booksellers, the purveyors of the printed word through which knowledge spread around the world. Its first skirmishes were jurisdictional, with Scottish booksellers seeking to flood the English market, in breach of copyright, during the 1720s and 1730s. They argued that the law did not apply to them, as their processes—their printing presses—were outside the jurisdiction. Does that sound familiar? The same arguments are deployed today by the foreign generative-AI companies training their LLMs offshore to be deployed onshore. We have seen it all before: copyright succeeded then and will succeed now.

From its printed beginnings, copyright expanded to cover all new media. William Hogarth famously lobbied Parliament to apply copyright to engravings, allowing him to control distribution of his remorseless satire. He was followed soon by Gillray, Punch and our proud heritage of ridicule. Copyright then absorbed the daguerreotype and photography, the phonograph and recorded sound, the computer and, of course, the internet—when avaricious news aggregators such as Google were brought to heel and properly licensed. The suggestion that copyright is not fit for purpose and is unable to address novel technologies—not that much is new in AI—is itself ridiculous. Copyright can and will regulate AI; we just need to give it and our common-law system of justice the time to make the right decisions.

Secondly, I am an IP litigator qualified in both England and California. In that capacity, I am a member of the IP APPG that successfully lobbied the previous Government against the introduction of text- and data-mining exceptions that the AI developers so desperately seek. It is thus disappointing that the Labour Government now seek to revisit exactly the same ground and fight exactly the same battle. I am extremely grateful to the support of briefings provided by the Creative Rights in AI Coalition, and to the multitude of creative talent—both household names and those less celebrated—who have spoken out over many months in support of copyright. Their voices must be heard and it is for them that we fight.

However, it is not just the creative industries that rely upon copyright, as we have heard; it is an essential tool in support of the digital revolutions of recent decades. When in California and ever since, I was privileged to represent a number of the world’s leading technology and digital content companies. All were very happy with the fitness for purpose of copyright to protect their source code, algorithms, graphic user interfaces and digital content, as licensed by the end-user licence agreements to which we are all party. Somehow that copyright is fit for purpose and is readily enforceable in other jurisdictions. The means of enforcing it are fully sufficient and we should not believe protestations to the contrary.

In both the US and UK, major AI copyright disputes are making their way through the courts. We will have an authoritative decision by the summer. We should not rush to legislate in a judicial vacuum before really understanding how the existing law will be applied. As the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, confirmed to me in Oral Questions in November,

“the Government are clear that copyright law must be respected when content is used to train AI models. If copies are made of protected work, licences must be required from the copyright owner unless a specific copyright exception applies”.—[Official Report, 11/11/24; col. 1570.]

If the courts recognise the protection of copyright and the lack of applicable exceptions, injunctive and monetary relief will follow and the market will function. Insurance policies will not cover corporates that deploy AI that is not transparent in its training processes, and such tools will no longer be offered to customers.

I am also confident that market regulators will be interested in investigating how technology giants did not unduly leverage their dominance in search and social media markets to compete unfairly with the creative industries and the human beings upon whose unlicensed endeavours their soaring profits were built; in other words, the market and its existing controls will function, licences will be issued and human creative endeavour will be recognised and rewarded. To the extent that these amendments make that more likely, they have my full support.

Finally, I note my interest as proprietor of a live music, events and heritage venue. I finish by recognising the one silver lining of this existential saga. It is to remind us, in case we have forgotten, that the best way to enjoy creative human endeavour is in person, not through a digital device: listening live to an artist, sitting in a theatre or visiting an art gallery. Artists from William Blake to Neil Young would agree that the “dark Satanic Mills” of digitally generated and digitally accessed art should never replace human experience. Likewise, machine learning should never replace human creativity.

[The Earl of Dundee (Con)]

I too support this group of amendments proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, and others.

It surely goes without saying that our United Kingdom copyright law has to counter the increasing theft of intellectual property by artificial intelligence companies.

As here advocated, we should provide transparency criteria that would allow copyright holders to identify when and from where their work has been taken. I am sure that the Minister agrees with that aim and is well aware of the strong human rights back-up support available to us from the 46 states affiliation of the Council of Europe, of which the United Kingdom remains a prominent member. I am a recent chairman of its education committee.

As many of your Lordships know, first and foremost, Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights protects the right to privacy, including of personal data. Article 1 of its initial protocol protects property rights, including intellectual property rights and copyright.

Secondly, Article 5 of the Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime prohibits system interference by, for example, the transmission of computer data; while its Article 10 stipulates:

“Offences related to infringements of copyright and related rights”.


Thirdly, Article 11 of the 2024 Council of Europe Framework Convention on Artificial Intelligence and Human Rights, Democracy and the Rule of Law safe- guards privacy and personal data.

Regarding copyright protection in recent centuries, we can be justly proud of our own United Kingdom record, beginning, as has already been said, with the Statute of Anne 1710, which granted legal protection to publishers of books.

In the interests of those both here and abroad, we must uphold the high standards of that tradition. The United Kingdom should guide this good practice. Adopting these amendments is a clear example of so doing.

Agriculture Bill

Debate between Earl of Dundee and Earl of Devon

Report stage & Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords & Report: 1st sitting & Report: 1st sitting: House of Lords
Tuesday 15th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Dundee (Con) [V]]

In this grouping, I support various amendments on monitoring and analysis. First, Amendment 18, from the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, advises that impact assessments be published and that public responses to them be taken into account before financial schemes are themselves launched.

Secondly, and correspondingly, my noble friend Lady McIntosh of Pickering’s Amendment 30 would have the Government set out expenditure levels and their predicted outcomes as part of their multiannual financial plans. I am also in favour of Amendment 34, from noble Earl, Lord Devon, which would improve parliamentary scrutiny by insisting that multiannual financial assistance plans be considered for at least two months before coming into effect.

I also support Amendment 32, from the noble Lord, Lord Teverson. We have just heard him eloquently express the reasons why he advocates this. The five-year period, rather than seven, more accurately reflects how long developments arising from the Bill are likely to take. Thus, the amendment prevents an unnecessary delay or transition from the old payment system to the new one.

Finally, I support Amendment 47, from the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, which correctly points out that financial assistance to United Kingdom farmers should take into account how they are operating and competing within the international economy.

[The Earl of Devon (CB) [V]]

My Lords, Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, is this weekend—Shanah Tovah.

The seven-year period cited in Amendment 33 is not accidental. We all know of the seven fat and seven thin cows of the pharaoh’s dream in Exodus. Jewish law prescribes a seven-year agricultural cycle, with a fallow year—the Shmita—every seventh year. What was good for Moses should be good for us, and we should set our agricultural policy in seven-year cycles.

The transition period is seven years and the period between multiannual financial assistance plans should be the same. This will allow farmers longer to plan and to commit resources to the published policy. It will permit farmers time to recover from any poor harvest, avoid the politicising of multiannual financial assistance plans and remove their coincidence with the five-year political cycle.

As to Amendment 34, along with the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, I note that the Government have published their own Amendment 35, under which they agree to publish the multiannual financial assistance plan at least 12 months before it comes into effect for all instances other than the first one. However, the first plan is by far the most important. It will make by far the greatest impact on farming and take by far the greatest effort to distribute within the farming community. My amendment seeks at least two months’ notice before January’s plan comes into effect, but even this will not be permitted, it appears. We are told the plan will be available this autumn, but I note that the autumn ends on 21 December.

Just this morning, I spoke with representatives of the Dartmoor hill farmers, who are hugely concerned. These small farmers see the Dartmoor National Park, the Duchy of Cornwall and other large commercial bodies secretly trialling ELM schemes about which these small farmers are wholly ignorant. They are really scared that the rules are changing for large wealthy land managers, who can afford professional assistance, while they—the actual farmers—remain wholly in the dark as to what is coming, as do we.

As to the compelling arguments of the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, I fear that five years will only increase the negative impacts of what may be a chaotic transition. The noble Lord listed many species that he sees fewer of now. I would ask him to consider whether he sees more crows, magpies, buzzards, badgers and foxes than he used to. Their impacts on nesting farmland birds are well established.

Agriculture Bill

Debate between Earl of Dundee and Earl of Devon

Committee stage & Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 14th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Dundee (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I declare my own business interest in farming as already detailed in the register. In this group, I support Amendments 35, 36, 60, 69 and 71. All of them emphasise growing healthy and nutritious food. That also means growing and offering a rather better selection of food than we now do. Therefore, I am also in favour of Amendment 47 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, which advocates a shift in direction to achieve improved diets—still containing, but much less dominated by, animal products. I also support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, which urges more food production in urban areas.

Amendment 63 in my name would encourage urban and peri-urban growing enterprises to provide fresh local produce close to the market where it is required. I hope that my noble friend the Minister agrees that the Secretary of State might provide incentives accordingly. During the coronavirus pandemic, we have witnessed the importance of food security and local supply chains delivering food to where it is needed. Farming endeavours within conurbations can have an immediate and beneficial impact on supply chains, responding accurately to local demands. This contrasts with large supermarket chains sourcing goods from overseas and adding to the carbon footprint of such produce through transport costs.

Small-scale intensive food production uses little space yet reveals a high yield per acre as well-evidenced in the Netherlands. Those examples are particularly suited to towns and cities where ground is in short supply. Green-belt areas could also be freed up for such endeavours. They would also offer quality outdoor employment for people in urban environments.

Some of these projects might fulfil a social purpose too: for instance, city farms to educate children about animals and agriculture; and allotments, to which the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, has already referred, which can teach people about food production at the same time as allowing and encouraging them to grow their own food. Not least, they also enable more green areas in cities for the benefit of those living there.

[The Earl of Devon [V]]

My Lords, I will endeavour to be brief: we have an awful lot to get through. I am grateful to see Clause 1(4) in the Bill. It was remarkable that, in its early iterations, a Bill about agriculture had no specific reference to the provision of food. My Amendment 71 would merely improve upon that provision of food by the specification that it should be both “healthy and nutritious”.

I am grateful for the support of the noble Baronesses, Lady Bakewell and Lady Bennett, on this amendment. I understand that all the amendments in this group are directed to a very similar goal. There is clearly strong support across the Committee for making sure that the food whose production we are encouraging is healthy and nutritious, and not the sort of food that causes ill-health, obesity and so many other issues that are being brought into full focus with the onslaught of coronavirus. At this time, of all times, it has become clear that the health and well-being of our nation are a result of the healthiness and nutrition of the food that we eat. This is therefore not just about agriculture; it goes to a much wider issue.

Some may say that the health and nutrition of the food could be secured by the fact that the clause provides that it must be environmentally sustainable. Of course, the two things are vastly different. It is perfectly possible to produce food in an environmentally sustainable way and it not be healthy and nutritious. There has been much talk over recent days of insect farming and novel agritech. You could certainly see insect farming as a very environmentally sustainable means of farming. It is the feeding of waste product, typically to insect larvae, which are then mashed up for their protein. That is the production of food in a very environmentally sustainable way, but I am not sure that it is either healthy or nutritious food, albeit it has an important role to play in the feeding of fish, for example, and other larger animals.

Agriculture Bill

Debate between Earl of Dundee and Earl of Devon

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansarad) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansarad): House of Lords
Tuesday 7th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Dundee [V]]

Thank you. I will resume at the point where I was cut off.

In itself, Clause 1 is evidence of an impressive vision. The Government are committed to preserving the natural environment, thus competent environmental land management can become a clear aim for farmers, who are properly rewarded if they achieve this.

Nevertheless, so far, in other respects the Bill is less clear. What are the Government’s plans for sustainable food production? Post Brexit will they develop new and even higher standards than those of the EU, or instead set aside land for afforestation, public access and wildlife conservation, while leaving agriculture to market forces, as do the United States and Brazil?

Among those options, and although unstated, no doubt the Government would prefer that which combines high standards for environmental land management with those for sustainable food production. Yet, if so, how can these two objectives best be realised? British farmers also perform and compete against cheap imports from the United States, and those from EU states pay a high level of agricultural subsidies.

Perhaps some of the answer, beginning at home, lies in how, in order to further these twin objectives, the Government might better prioritise and adjust existing incentives within the Bill. For if that adjustment is made now in the first place, there will be a greater chance through time and against external market forces. Much of those current joint aims for the United Kingdom of good environmental land management and sustainable food production can be attained.

Section 1 details 10 purposes eligible for financial assistance, and it is certainly right that funding should be provided for each of them if carried out by a farm. Yet where multiple purposes are addressed, the Bill could now be amended so that a financial bonus would apply. For example, if a farm accomplishes fewer than four of the purposes, it simply receives funding for each of them. However, if instead the farm were to carry out more than four purposes, such as five or six of them, it could receive a bonus grant for achieving that level of multiple purposes. There could be a further multiple purpose supplementary payment if seven or eight of them had been carried out, then a further and final one for achieving 10 purposes. For what we want to achieve is that farms should receive supplementary funding for carrying out many or even all the purposes. That is because doing so puts them at a commercial disadvantage to other farms, which might adopt only a few of the purposes—hence the connection between Amendments 1 and 74.

Amendment 1, as a probing expedient, seeks to illustrate that, while the Government’s vision to encourage both good environmental management and sustained food production together is much to be welcomed, nevertheless, the effect of their plans for delivering financial incentives is uncertain in two respects. The first is as a result of the challenge to UK food production from a combination of cheap imports from the United States and from the highly subsidised agricultural products from the European Union states. Secondly, and as already outlined, it is owing to the risk in the first place of an inadequate response to incentives arising from an inconsistent and anomalous delivery to recipient United Kingdom farms, whereby those best at multiple purposes are still insufficiently recompensed within the Bill as it is.

Amendment 74 offers a partial solution through a detailed bonus scheme, as already outlined, whereby farms carrying out multiple purposes would come to be rewarded better and in a fairer way than they are at present within the Bill. Through time, and in spite of international market competition, that would in turn also increase the likelihood that within the United Kingdom the Government could achieve more of the joint aims themselves of good environmental management and sustained food production.

Amendment 45, the third in my name in this grouping, seeks to encourage the purchase of domestically produced animal feed with the intention of reducing carbon emissions from imported feed. Considering the United Kingdom’s agricultural capacity relative to its population, it would be unrealistic to restrict imported animal feed too much. However, these imports have three major disadvantages. First, they undermine the United Kingdom’s food security; secondly, there is the carbon footprint arising from their production and transport; and, thirdly, there is the environmental damage which in the first place their cultivation causes in certain countries, notably soybeans in Brazil and Argentina. Efforts should thus be made to augment the supply of home-grown animal feed. At the same time, United Kingdom importers ought to be encouraged to buy feed from countries demonstrating similar environmental standards to those of the United Kingdom, with the process perhaps guided by international certification bodies. Hence, bearing in mind the Bill’s focus on environmental land management, this amendment on animal feeds simply calls for improved consistency of standards between what the United Kingdom imports and what it produces domestically.

[Earl of Devon (CB)]

My Lords, I echo the words of the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, in congratulating the Minister and so many other noble Lords on marshalling such a remarkable number of amendments. In fact, there are so many amendments that it somewhat gives the game away that the Bill means so much to so many people. In the words of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, it is something of a dog’s dinner. I would not be so disparaging, but I would also say that it is more than a single dinner—it seems to be everything the dog has eaten for an awfully long time.

The first four of my amendments in this group relate to the deletion of the word “water” in the provisions of Clause 1. That is because I believe this is the Agriculture Bill, not the aquaculture Bill, the Fisheries Bill, the Environment Bill or the water resources Bill. As drafted—as I understand it, there is no limitation to the definition of water—it could spread the impact of the Bill very far and wide. In proposing a number of amendments, I seek to focus the Bill on agriculture and to not let its very positive environmental aims spread too far beyond those reasonable limits. If the Minister were able to provide some clarity in concluding, it would help us to know what water this applies to.

Noble Lords should know that, as well as a farmer, I am also a holder of intertidal habitat and foreshore rights, and it is interesting to me whether the provisions of the Bill and of ELMS will be able to extend to intertidal habitat. As I understand it, intertidal habitat has enormous potential for carbon sequestration and other very positive aspects, but it is not clear whether the Bill as drafted goes to that area between high and low tide, which is obviously such an important area around the coast of Devon.

Amendment 21 also seeks to remove reference to livestock from Clause 1(1)(d). This is merely so that it conforms to the other paragraphs. It is not clear why livestock should be included in managing land, water or livestock in a way that mitigates climate change, when it is not included in managing land or water in a way that protects the environment. It is very unclear as to why livestock should appear specifically in Clause 1(1)(d) when it does not appear in (a), (c) and (e). I note the points that the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, made around reservoirs, but farmers are not water managers. They use water, and I very much agree that the environmental aim should be to prevent what they do on their land having an adverse impact on water—but they are not by definition water managers, and we should recognise that.

To continue with the water theme, I propose Amendment 91, which adds the term “wetlands” to “uplands” in the definition of cultural or natural heritage. There is lots of important focus on uplands, because they are such an important part of our natural environment. However, I do not want your Lordships’ focus to depart wholly from wetlands, which are equally important to our biodiversity. They are equally marginal in many respects as a form of agricultural land, and are equally important culturally. I took the train this morning through the Somerset Levels, and we all remember the terrible floods they suffered a number of years ago. The focus should not be just on uplands. The other point about wetlands is that, given their often low-lying presence near the mouths of estuaries and rivers, they are often very proximate to large urban settlements. The interface between a large urban population and a rural, ecologically sensitive landscape is very important; it is an important part of ELMS and it should be focused upon.

The final amendment in this group, which I am proud to propose, is Amendment 236, which is supported by the Greener UK group. It seeks to add some teeth to the enforcement of the environmental provisions. As they currently exist under European regulations, good agricultural and environmental condition requirements cover the management of soils. This is in the cross-compliance provisions of the current European legislation. That will be lost from January 2021, and it is not clear that there will be adequate enforcement of the maintenance of the quality and nature of soil going forward.

The amendment adds to the agricultural diffuse pollution regulations and provides the Environment Agency with some teeth in forcing farmers to maintain the quality of soil. Soil is obviously all-important to the management of our agricultural land. Over this past winter we have seen how soil runs off in heavy rain, but how, if you have good organic matter in your soil, in a very dry spring such as the one we have just had you can retain some moisture. It enhances the resilience of our agriculture, and as climate change takes effect, that is absolutely key to our agriculture. Those are the amendments I wish to speak to now.