Data (Use and Access) Bill [HL]

Lord Berkeley of Knighton Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 28th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[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.

[Lord Berkeley of Knighton (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as a composer and a copyright holder. I salute the speech of my noble friend Lady Kidron for its strength and accuracy. I too feel that there should be an impact assessment on such important matters.

If noble Lords will spare me one minute, it might be worth mentioning a little bit of background. The record industry more or less ceased to exist when the internet and streaming came along. Of course, they brought enormous advantages, as I am sure AI will, but there was a huge cost. One reason why many great big pop groups have gone on tour in the last few years is that they are not earning money from records. Although there is an interest for the public to gain and disseminate more information, there is a cost for the basic product. Those records brought in money that paid for performers to be employed in studios to make new records. It is a vicious circle: once you stop that income coming in, you stop creativity in its tracks.

We heard Sir Paul McCartney mentioned, and in one sense I am representing the more contemporary classical side. But I too have worked on the pop side, and I can I tell you that a record that we made for medics in Ukraine, with the help of no lesser figures than Neil Tennant and David Gilmour, has had 400,000 downloads so far, yet will produce only about £200 to go to Ukraine. That gives you some idea of how the shift in finance has changed in respect of what records bring in. Of course we cannot go backwards—this is progress—but we do have to be careful. We should think about the example that that sets.

As I said, Paul McCartney was mentioned and, over the weekend, Sir Elton John summed up the feelings of many composers. I am sure he would not mind my representing his words to you here. He said:

“Without thorough and robust copyright protection that allows artists to earn hard-fought earnings from their music, the UK’s future place on the world stage as a leader in arts and popular culture is under serious jeopardy. It is the absolute bedrock of artistic prosperity, and the country’s future success in the creative industries depends upon it”.


I think those words would be reiterated by every composer and creator in this country.

I will make one final point. In some ways, this is not a party-political issue but a cross-party one. It is our creativity that is at stake here. I have spoken in the past about music: the problems with touring and all the things that have hemmed in creativity. We have heard about the £126 billion that the creative industries bring in. There is support on both sides of the House. The Front Bench of the Conservative Party always used to say to me, “We salute the creative industries. We admire what they do and what they bring in to the economy”. The new Front Bench is saying much the same.

But listen to Elton John and listen to Paul McCartney and, if you value the creative industries as much as you say you do, for God’s sake protect their copyright.

[Baroness Freeman of Steventon (CB)]

My Lords, I rise briefly to support these important clauses. I declare my interests as I hold copyright as a filmmaker and writer.

Copyright and IP exist to assert ownership over creative works and protect the interests of creators. This is fundamental to supporting people whose job it is to have ideas, be creative and innovate in a range of different ways. Undermining this and allowing major breaches of that protection risks undermining the whole basis of innovation and creativity within a society, and that cannot be done lightly.

Creators of generative AI models claim that they “need” more and more materials to train their models on, including materials that are the creative works of others—just as, until last week, they had claimed that they needed more and more of the latest chips. We should ask ourselves very seriously why they need these copyright-protected works. What use-cases are there for models that have been trained on copyrighted works that would not be possible with models trained on public-domain materials and works for which the rights have been properly obtained?

King’s Speech (4th Day)

Lord Berkeley of Knighton Excerpts

Monday 22nd July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley of Knighton (CB)]

“Ich fühle Luft von anderem Planeten”,

or “I feel air from another planet”. So begins the movement of the second Schoenberg string quartet, in which Schoenberg broke the mould by adding a soprano to the conventional four players and created music of radiant transcendence. The text is a poem by Stefan George. Listening to our debates over the last few days, I have felt a sense of optimism, of fresh air, not simply because of a sound start by the new Government but, importantly, by the reaction of most Members of the Opposition, as we have just heard. For instance, in the housing debate on Friday, there seemed to be a sense of relief that we will now get on with policies that had tended to stagnate.

What has unquestionably been allowed to stagnate is the arts, and music in particular. Creativity is a multi-billion-pound input to our economy but, more important still, an investment in our cultural identity, informing us of who we are and how we fit into today’s world, an investment in social cohesion no less. It is all too clear that in the last 13 years we have seen an appalling diminution of the arts, from education at primary level right through to university and onwards to arts institutions, festivals, theatres and opera houses—like Welsh National Opera, currently teetering on the brink of a “to be or not to be” conundrum. Will the musicians of WNO be rescued, even at this late hour?

I want to be fair. Covid was a hammer-blow to an already fragile economy, and Rishi Sunak as Chancellor did his very best to support the creative sector. Unfortunately, the people who slipped through the net were freelance musicians, and it is precisely they who have been most severely affected by the utter catastrophe that is Brexit. Is it not extraordinary that one of our best performing sectors should be hit by a series of own goals from our own negotiators? Do not take it from me; take it from the noble Lord, Lord Frost, who had the good grace to admit that the last Government had got these touring negotiations wrong, despite Boris Johnson’s promise that what happened would not happen.

I say in welcome to our new Ministers, particularly the noble Lord, Lord Vallance, on the Front Bench, that I understand that you cannot magic up great sums of money. However, there are things that you can do to change the sensibility of our times. Led by a flautist Prime Minister, you can invest in a sense of cultural well-being, cultural curiosity, a determination to allow everyone the chance to learn an instrument, not just the rich, as pointed out by my fellow composer, Errollyn Wallen, last week on “Desert Island Discs” and by Kadiatu Kanneh-Mason, mother of that extraordinary family of musicians, on “Private Passions”. She said that in our present state school system, her gifted children—including the cellist Sheku—would have floundered, as the tutoring they received then no longer exists. Is that not an appalling reflection of where we are and what has gone wrong?

Vast sums are not needed to engineer a rapprochement with the EU, with the Erasmus programme, with the exchange of ideas that are so crucial to artistic creativity. The easing of our relationship with our closest trading partner would mean that musicians, be they pop groups or our world class orchestras, would not be mired in expensive and time-consuming red tape and their transport would not be governed by lunatic cabotage rules which require endless changing of lorries between venues.

In his 1948 polemic, Philosophy of Modern Music, the German philosopher Adorno acknowledged that Schoenberg had forged in that string quartet a new aesthetic

“in the midst of expressionistic chaos”,

but he went on to explain how these innovations were the logical development of Beethoven and Brahms. We too must now get across a divide and go back to a vision of many years ago, to the Arts Minister, Jennie Lee, who wrote:

“In any civilised community the arts … must occupy a central place”.


Lisa Nandy, the Culture Secretary, faces a huge but exciting challenge. I and my colleagues are here to help her and her Front-Bench colleagues in your Lordships’ House in any way that we can. Let us all take a breath of fresh air.

EU Programmes

Lord Berkeley of Knighton Excerpts

Thursday 7th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Camrose (Con)]

I will come back to the question of visas, and I take the point. I am pleased to say that we are also reassociating with Copernicus. It is such an important programme for the earth observation sector. Geospatial is in my portfolio as a Minister. I am a great believer in the value that it can bring. What particularly pleases and excites me about the association with Copernicus is access to the EU’s very comprehensive dataset that could help to kick-start our work and the work done in the EU. I am extremely positive about that.

[Lord Berkeley of Knighton (CB)]

My Lords, I apologise to the Minister for missing the opening sentences of his speech. By way of amends, I very much welcome this move. I know the Minister would agree with me that this is all about the exchange of ideas, which is crucial to development. Exactly the same argument could be made about the arts and musicians. The Minister said, very honestly, that lasting damage has been done as a result of this. I ask him to be good enough to take back to his colleagues that lasting damage is being done to music and the arts. Furthermore—this is the most extraordinary thing of all—the noble Lord, Lord Frost, who does not give way very easily, has admitted that the Government got these negotiations wrong. So, if the Government can put Horizon right, please will they put music, arts and touring right as well?

Horizon Europe

Lord Berkeley of Knighton Excerpts

Thursday 11th May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Camrose (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for her question. When the TCA was agreed in 2020, our association to Horizon was agreed as part of that. That no longer happened, but it remains the UK’s wish to rejoin Horizon. With respect to the attitudes on both sides, I welcome the EU’s current openness to engage constructively in these negotiations.

[Lord Berkeley of Knighton (CB)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that, as Sir Paul Nurse has pointed out, science and the arts depend on the exchange of ideas, and that one of the most vital things is social and intellectual intercourse with other countries? At the moment, musicians and scientists are finding it terribly hard to come here, and we are finding it hard to go there. Thus, a vital source of inspiration is being lost.