Data (Use and Access) Bill [Lords]

Alison Hume Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 12th February 2025 Commons Chamber

[Alison Hume (Scarborough and Whitby) (Lab)]

I would like to draw the attention of the House to my membership of the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain.

I rise to contribute to today’s debate on the Data (Use and Access) Bill as a creative who worked as a screenwriter before I entered this place. To write a good script takes discipline, focus, sweat and tears—I have found that tea and biscuits help, too. Us mere mortals cannot create something out of nothing. Creativity is an act of synthesis: pulling together the flotsam and jetsam of our experiences and observations and applying them in an original way. We pour our life experiences into our work, creating the humanity behind the lines, which lifts characters from the pages and into the public’s consciousness.

If the public want to hang out by watching the shows that we create, we have on our hands the rarest of commodities—a hit.

Many years ago, I worked on the hit show “New Tricks”. It was a cold case cop drama that ran to 12 series on the BBC, created by Nigel McCrery, who died this week. “New Tricks” was, and remains, a very popular show. Twice a year, I receive the royalties collected for me by the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society. I am paid fairly for my original work when it is rebroadcast around the world, or on digital platforms.

This week, I discovered that the subtitles from one of my episodes for “New Tricks” have been scraped and are being used to create learning materials for artificial intelligence. Along with thousands of other films and television shows, my original work is being used by generative AI to write scripts, which one day may replace versions produced by mere humans like me. This is theft and it is happening on an industrial scale. As the law stands, AI companies do not have to be transparent about what they are stealing. I therefore welcome the principle of the amendments in the Bill before us today, which address this issue. The amendments require generative artificial intelligence firms to be transparent about the content used to train their models, allowing creators to know when our work has been used. Another amendment expands the existing copyright regime, which is completely clear that the unlicensed use of creative content to train AI models is theft, to cover all GAI models marketed in the UK.

Over in the United States, Thomson Reuters has just received a summary judgment on its infringement claim. It is the first pure AI training case decided in the US, and the judge has said that AI training is not fair use. I welcome the Secretary of State’s statement and his listening mode, but the creative industries worry that the Government’s preferred position of creators of original material opting out of having work scraped is not workable because no such model currently exists anywhere in the world. We are worried because creators build our industries. The creative industries are at the heart of our industrial strategy.

[Sir John Hayes]

I fully endorse much of what the hon. Lady has said. We as a House were slow to regulate the internet when it first emerged. The fascination with the new blinded people to the damage it could do. We have had the online harms Bill more recently and so on and so forth. The risk in this case is not that we go too far, but that we do not go far enough. It is important, based on what she just said, that we take swift, decisive and firm action to avoid the eventuality of reducing humans, as she described them, to “mere” puppets.

[Alison Hume]

The right hon. Gentleman makes an important point, and it is crucial that the Government take that into account at the end of the consultation.

[Peter Kyle]

We have heard lots of voices from the creative arts sector. The point of the consultation is to hear from all sectors. So far in the debate we have not heard representations or voices from the technology sector—I look forward to the contribution by the hon. Member for North Norfolk (Steff Aquarone)—but I have been reassured by the technology companies that they are engaging with the consultation and are trying to present the technological solutions for which my hon. Friend inquires. That is why the live consultation is so important: so that I, and we as a House, can judge whether the submissions from technology companies are robust and implementable enough and can see where the technology will go. The consultation is still live during this debate, and I hope that by the time we are in Committee, we can have more of an informed discussion, even though, as I said before, there is the likelihood of further parliamentary involvement down the line in a fully informed way.

[Alison Hume]

I thank the Secretary of State for his reassurances. I know that creatives are worried because the scraping is happening now and will carry on until we have a solution. We must protect the creative industries. They grew by over a third between 2010 and 2023 in terms of gross value added, far outpacing growth in the UK economy as a whole. They are worth more to the economy than life sciences, car manufacturing, aerospace and the oil and gas sectors combined. They are a glorious British success story. They make us proud. They make us feel good. They shape the nation’s identity. They make us, well, us. They are represented in every corner of the UK, with 2.4 million workers, 70% of whom live outside London. They are writers, musicians, photographers, artists—all manner of wonderful creative folk, powering one of our greatest success stories and one of our best engines for growth.

In my constituency of Scarborough and Whitby, I have been entreated by individual creatives and small and medium-sized enterprises to ask the Government to look after their rights and to protect their income. Recently, I proudly served on the Employment Rights Bill Committee—a Bill that will see the biggest improvements for working people in a generation. Creatives are working people, too. Creative work is work. The Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport has talked about her determination to take the brakes off the creative industries and turbocharge growth.

If the creative industries are a fast car, the creative is the driver. Without us, it is the equivalent of a driverless car—fine, maybe, to get from A to B—but if we are to produce the kind of quality scripts behind the superb television dramas that entertain, comfort, inspire and, as recently shown in the case of “Mr Bates vs The Post Office”, effect meaningful change, we need a human being at the wheel. To have a human there, we need to ensure that they are paid for doing what they do best: being original.

We should inspire the rest of the world to adopt high standards, lead from the front and amplify our influence on the global stage. Britain’s creative industries deserve a dynamic licensing market that protects copyright and drives growth and innovation in both the creative and tech sectors. I look forward to the outcome of the consultation on AI and copyright and to working with the Secretary of State and the Minister to find a future-proofed solution, which protects original work and the ability to earn an income from it. The Labour party was founded on the principle of a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work. Being in government is our opportunity to fulfil that principle for UK creatives.

Data (Use and Access) Bill [Lords]

Alison Hume Excerpts

Consideration of Lords message
Wednesday 14th May 2025 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

Yes. I do not think that people should breach copyright law. I have said that in several debates, and it is the settled view of the Government. We believe that people should not breach copyright law—they should not break the law. Some of the issues my hon. Friend raises have been or are being tested in the courts, and they will be contested more in the courts in future months.

A point I made right at the beginning, when we introduced the consultation, was that there is a fair use system in the United States of America, while we have our system in the UK, and then there is a slightly different system in the EU, which has largely relied on the Napoleonic code understanding of what an author is and what a work is. All those systems are slightly different and have been implemented in different countries in different ways, and they may lead to different conclusions in individual court cases.

That is why we have wanted to look at every single element of this issue, from transparency to technical data, access to high-quality data, issues of enforcement and personality rights. There are a whole series of issues, many of which are yet to be addressed in debates in either Chamber. That takes me back to my point that I do not think this is the Bill in which to do this piece of work, and I do not think that the amendment we are debating will secure what people hope from it.

[Alison Hume (Scarborough and Whitby) (Lab)]

The Minister mentioned the consultation. Could he confirm that the Government no longer consider an opt-out model to be their preferred approach to copyright and AI, and if so, what alternative approach is now being actively pursued or developed with the sector?

[Chris Bryant]

I will say two things. First, we have always said that we were consulting on a package, and part of that package was a technical solution so that rights holders would be able to protect their rights better, in a way that—

--- Later in debate ---

[Alison Hume]

The hon. Member is making some important points. As Lord Brennan said recently, this Bill is an opportunity to regulate AI:

“This Bill, this bus, is an opportunity that the Government should be getting on rather than waiting for another bus several years down the road”.—[Official Report, House of Lords, 12 May 2025; Vol. 845, c. 1932.]

This bus is leaving now, along with the opportunity to protect our creative rights. Does the hon. Member agree with me and share my concern that the Government are going to miss the bus?

[Pete Wishart]

I would always agree with the noble Lord Brennan. As somebody who played with him for many years in a parliamentary rock band, I think we all miss him in this House. He was spot-on when he said that: we have to act now.

Even if the Government want to change copyright law—I still do not know whether that is their intention, and the creative sector strongly opposes that—it will be years before creators have the slightest hope of protecting their work against creative theft. This sector has seen its work taken, used and exploited by tech companies. They came into this process hoping that they would finally get some protection, but instead of being heard, their hopes have been set aside again.

Lords amendment 49B does exactly what the sector has been calling for over many years. The fact that it has been tabled is a credit to the sustained campaign from our artists in the creative sector, who have organised themselves so efficiently and put such a compelling case. They have put so compelling and knowledgeable a case that our constituents have started to understand the complexities of copyright law, and they now realise its value in ensuring that the works of the artists they love, respect and like to listen to are recognised and that they will be compensated for their wonderful works. Despite what the Government say, merely enforcing the existing law will not be burdensome for AI firms, particularly as Lords amendment 49B allows the transparency requirements to be modified for small AI developers and for all UK-registered developers so that they are proportionate. This will prevent start-ups from being burdened with overly onerous regulation. In fact, all this proposal does is put UK start-ups on a level playing field with US tech giants that gain an unfair competitive advantage by ignoring copyright law. Transparency will make the legal risk of copyright infringement too great for AI firms to break the law. It will allow courts to hear cases quickly, establish precedent and kill any argument that there is uncertainty in UK law. If we can see what has been stolen, it is easier to stop its being stolen and to get redress when it continues to be stolen.

It is now up to the Government to fix this. If they are serious about protecting our creative industries—they should be, and I accept that that is what they intend to do—then they cannot stop at working groups and economic impact assessments. That is the bare minimum; it is not, by any measure, enough.

If this is the last opportunity we have to put the case, it is a black day for our creative sectors. They had hoped that this would be the day the Government appeared with something that satisfied at least some of their concerns. They deserve to have their work protected fairly. They were looking for anything from the Government to see that they were clearly on their side and were prepared to do something. I think we already know exactly what they will decide, but the Government now have a choice: remove Lords amendment 49B and turn their back on the creative industries, or find an actual way to protect our creative sector and make sure that they back it.