Data (Use and Access) Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Leong and Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay

Consideration of Commons amendments and / or reasons
Monday 2nd June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, this is my first time speaking on this Bill, so the Government Chief Whip will be pleased to know that I am not able to repeat comments I have previously made. I have followed the debates on it closely and followed, with great admiration, the campaign led by the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, not just in this Chamber but far beyond it.

This has never been a question of party politics. Indeed, it is striking that the initiative here has been led from the Cross Benches and the Back Benches in both Houses, as the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool, just pointed out. The noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, has led the charge. She has put her case clearly and been extremely reasonable and patient in the face of answers even more frustrating than those I used to give her when I was at the government Dispatch Box. More than that, she has been proactive in seeking solutions. The morning after her victory in the last round of ping-pong, she was up early to welcome to your Lordships’ House academics, policymakers and practitioners from not just the creative industries but the AI sector as part of the University of Oxford’s consultation on copyright and AI, as she mentioned in her opening remarks.

The Government keep making this sound like it is a binary choice between two competing sectors. It is not. As my noble friend Lord Vaizey just reminded us, responsible innovators from the AI sector know how vital design and creativity are to all parts of our economy, as well as to our society. They do not want to base their businesses on the theft of others’ intellectual property, paternity rights, maternity rights, pension rights and so much more, as the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, said. It was announced last week that Taylor Swift had succeeded in buying back the rights to her first six albums, after many years of legal wrangling, for a nine-figure sum. It would be a cruel irony for her to have expended all that time and money only for her brilliant work to be stolen and fed into a large language model with no transparency and no accountability.

The creative industries have spoken with one voice on this—something that is rather unique—but well they might, for this is existential to them. That is why it is so disappointing that the Government have not responded to the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, and the many noble Lords who have joined her in the Division Lobbies in the previous rounds of ping-pong to express their concerns about this issue. They have not engaged on the point of substance behind her amendments but have relied on arguments of process. There is nothing in the noble Baroness’s latest amendment in lieu—her third attempt to offer a solution to the Government—that engages the financial privilege of another place.

I hope we will hear more from the Minister on the substance of the argument and on the substance of this new amendment, rather than an attempt to run down the clock or to hide behind process. I hope we might yet, even at this late stage, get a glimmer of the compromise that the noble Lords, Lord Cashman and Lord Brennan of Canton, and others have hoped for. There is a long-standing convention that your Lordships’ House respects the will of the elected one, of course. But it would not be a constitutional crisis, as the Minister put it in the closing words of her opening remarks, for noble Lords to continue to express their concerns about this Bill, because that convention relies on the Government engaging faithfully and relying not just on points of process but on points of substance.

At a time when the Government are seeking to weaken the scrutiny functions of your Lordships’ House by removing almost 90 Members—all but three of whom are from outwith their own Benches—they need to treat your Lordships’ House with a bit more respect if they want those conventions to be adhered to. I pay tribute to the tenacity of the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron.

[Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Leong) (Lab)]

My Lords, as my noble friend the Chief Whip said at the start of this debate, we are now into the third round of ping-pong on this Bill. These issues have been extensively debated across Committee, Report and ping-pong. A cross-section of Back-Benchers has spoken, and now I invite Front-Benchers to speak.

Football Governance White Paper

Debate between Lord Leong and Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay

Thursday 23rd February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, both Front-Bench spokesmen have underlined the importance of football in our national life, going beyond just the many people who enjoy and play football matches. Its role in our national psyche is well underlined this week by the announcement of the play “Dear England”, by James Graham, coming to the National Theatre this summer and inspired by Gareth Southgate’s letter; I look forward to it and to seeing Joseph Fiennes play him.

I am grateful to noble Lords for their words of welcome for the White Paper and the action that the Government are taking. I think that makes this a “friendly” in football parlance—

[Lord Leong (Lab)]

Pre-season.

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

Pre-season—normal service will be resumed soon.

On the point about speed, these are technical areas and my right honourable friend the Sports Minister has made clear how hard he has worked and the extensive engagement he has had with fans and others to make sure that we get it right. We make no apology for that, but we want to see these proposals put into action swiftly. That is why the consultation we are proposing will be a swift and short one of four weeks, so that we can bring forward the measures that are needed. Where that requires legislation, that will be set out in the usual way for parliamentary business, but we want to see action taken. As noble Lords have heard me say before, there are many things that do not need to wait for legislation and that clubs can be doing, particularly on financial redistribution. I hope that the publication of the White Paper today further underlines for them the seriousness with which the Government and fans want these issues to be taken.

The noble Lord, Lord Bassam, asked whether women’s clubs will be regulated. Although the regulator will be designed to regulate the top five tiers of the English men’s professional game, in many places there is clear read-across and overlap with the women’s game, particularly in leagues where teams operate under the same legal entity as their male counterparts. Some women’s teams will be subject to indirect regulation in areas such as the owners’ and directors’ test and financial regulation. We are giving further consideration to such areas of overlap and how they could be managed. He will also know that the review of women’s football which the Government commissioned, and which is due to conclude later this year, will, I am sure, take that into account as well.

The noble Lord, Lord Addington, talked about using the power of the state here, and it is an important point to make. The regulator will have targeted powers of last resort to intervene in relation to financial distribution if a football-led solution is not brought forward. A mutual agreement remains the preferred solution to resolving the issues of insufficient and destabilising financial flows. The regulator will take an advocacy-first approach to regulation but will be given the powers to mandate and intervene swiftly and boldly when that is needed. Checks and balances will be embedded in the design of the regulator and its system to ensure that it exercises its functions in a fair and appropriate way. For instance, it will be subject to legal processes to govern how it uses its powers, including requirements to consult and to meet set thresholds for intervention. As the Statement said, we are looking to act in a proportionate manner here.

Finally, the noble Lord mentioned Newcastle United in relation to the owners’ and directors’ test. Although I cannot comment on specific instances, it gives me the opportunity to wish Newcastle good luck for Sunday. I would be remiss if I did not do so, particularly with family back at home on Tyneside. I wish them the best for the match on Sunday.

Broadcasting: Children’s Television

Debate between Lord Leong and Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay

Thursday 2nd February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

Commercial broadcasters do indeed provide excellent content, but public service broadcasters play a unique role in ensuring that underserved groups are catered for. There is not always the same commercial potential in children’s television programming, which is why it is right that we have particular areas of work to focus on that.

[Lord Leong (Lab)]

My Lords, as we all know, BBC World News is banned in China. Are there plans to ban Chinese news channels and propaganda channels in the United Kingdom?

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

Sanctions, of course, are always kept under review, but by their nature, the Government cannot discuss them until they are made.