Data (Use and Access) Bill [Lords]

Anneliese Midgley Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 12th February 2025 Commons Chamber

[Anneliese Midgley (Knowsley) (Lab)]

I will focus my remarks on the impact of generative AI on musicians. I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, and I am a member of the Musicians’ Union.

With a background in the music industry, sharing friendships with many musicians and as a fan, I have been inundated with concerns from musicians about how AI could affect their livelihoods. The music industry has long been structured in a way that exploits musicians. Streaming services have made that far worse, and our musicians will once again lose out if AI copyright laws are not handled correctly. Big tech companies should not be able to generate and profit from music without permission or payment. How can we justify taking money away from British musicians and handing it to tech firms for free? That does not support growth; it undermines it.

In reality, many household names—artists whose music we all know, who have had top 10 hits and whose posters once adorned our walls—are struggling. New musicians can barely get a foot in the door and are often not paid for years. Songs are played more than ever, yet songwriters see less of the money. Someone is getting paid, but not the people who create the music. Unless they are at the very top, making a good living as a musician in this country is becoming nearly impossible. Even those who can sell out venues of a couple of thousand people across our towns and cities are barely scraping by.

The balance is completely off, but we, in this place, have the power to help to change that. Unlike our European counterparts, in this country we have failed to introduce proper protections for creators’ pay over the past decade. As the party of labour, with a commitment to make work pay, this Government should ensure that artists, songwriters and musicians are fairly paid for their work and protected from exploitation by faceless tech companies.

AI can be a powerful tool, transforming industries like healthcare and science by reducing admin burdens and freeing up skilled professionals. But AI that tokenises the toil of artists and spits out soulless imitations does not support human creativity or make it more productive. No one has ever loved a song because of how efficiently it was written. As James Oppenheim wrote in his 1911 poem:

Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes;

Hearts starve as well as bodies; give us bread, but give us roses.

If work is our bread, then music is our roses.

Musicians across the country are closely watching today’s debate. The consultation is ongoing and these matters will be addressed more in due course. I thank the Minister for his ongoing engagement in the matter, but will he assure me that the Government will strive to get the Bill right for musicians and that musicians will not be overlooked in the introduction of Al technologies?

Data (Use and Access) Bill [Lords]

Anneliese Midgley Excerpts

Consideration of Lords message
Wednesday 14th May 2025 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

I think it was my hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley (Anneliese Midgley) and then I will probably go over to my hon. Friend the Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Torcuil Crichton).

[Anneliese Midgley (Knowsley) (Lab)]

The other week, an Observer article reported that a source close to the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology said that

“proposals to introduce an opt-out system of copyright rules was no longer his preferred option but one of several being given consideration.”

That is a very welcome change of heart, potentially, but it does not mean anything unless Ministers are prepared to repeat it in Parliament. Will my hon. Friend the Minister confirm that that is an accurate representation of the Government’s position?

[Chris Bryant]

I am afraid that I will repeat what I just said. First, in the consultation we introduced a package of measures and it hinged on the issue of whether we can deliver not only for AI companies but for the creative industries, to protect their rights more effectively than they presently can. Secondly, as I think I have now said twice at the Dispatch Box, we are open-minded about the responses to the consultation. We have had 11,500 responses to the consultation and we are making our way through all that. A lot of different issues have been addressed.

The issue of the economic impact assessment is a serious one. It is one thing to say that the AI sector in the UK, which is the third largest in the world, is worth x billion pounds to the UK economy, and that the creative industries are worth £124 billion—that is a number that a lot of people have used—to the economy. It is quite a different matter to draw up a proper economic impact assessment on the basis of the various different options.

Data (Use and Access) Bill [Lords]

Anneliese Midgley Excerpts

Consideration of Lords message
Tuesday 3rd June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

I am trying to be tidy in the way I respond to people, so first, I note that I did not respond to the Napster point. Quite a lot of people have made the point to me that we got from Napster to Spotify. There are many problems with Spotify that many musicians, record labels and so on have raised with me, but at least it is better than people taking stuff for nothing. There is an argument—a strong argument, I would say—that in this debate, we want to move from Napster to Spotify, or to something even better than Spotify. I am not sure precisely how we get there, but I am absolutely certain that we need to legislate in the round for all of these issues.

The hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire (Pete Wishart) asked me about the principles of the noble Baroness Kidron’s amendment. Of course we believe in transparency—we are fully subscribed to wanting to provide that. That has always been part of the package that we have wanted to present. There is still the question of what enforcement would look like, and many other issues that any Bill that comes forward would need to address. I am hesitant about introducing a draft Bill, because a draft Bill would take longer to go through.

We want to be able to legislate in this area as soon as we possibly can, but we also want to have listened to and borne in mind the full panoply of the responses. People may presume that they know what the 11,500 responses will say, but actually, they are much more diverse. I am not saying that everybody is clamouring for what the Government have laid out; I am just saying that those responses address a diversity of issues, all of which we need to address.

[Anneliese Midgley (Knowsley) (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for giving way again, as he has on so many occasions during these debates, and for his ongoing engagement in these matters, but does he agree that if the Government do not act now to enforce the law, we will basically be allowing what everyone already sees as theft to continue? Would he accept that in any other industry, such as retail or farming?

[Chris Bryant]

My hon. Friend is entirely right about the issue of enforcement, although traditionally it is not for Governments to enforce the law. It is for the courts to do that, although in certain circumstances when there has been a breach of the criminal law, it will be for the prosecuting authorities to consider. In a way this makes my point, which is that it is all very well to legislate on transparency requirements, but if there are no enforcement measures it will not make the blindest bit of difference. All this has to be done in the round.

We have already said that we want to engage with the creative sector and, of course, the technology sector as much as we can. We believe that such engagement will help to chart the way forward on both transparency and technical standards, and possibly on technical solutions to the problem. It may be that the working groups bring other benefits, such as interim voluntary arrangements, until longer-term solutions can be agreed on and implemented. However, we must see what comes of the process rather than imposing preconditions at this early stage.

For all those reasons, I urge Members to vote against the Lords amendment. The first part of the proposed new clause is a helpful addition to the work that we will do and are now committed to doing, but the lion’s share of it would lead to what I believe is confusing law and constitutionally uncertain.

Data (Use and Access) Bill [Lords]

Anneliese Midgley Excerpts

Consideration of Lords message
Tuesday 10th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

In the end, the single most important compromise will be between the AI sector and the creative industries sector. That is the bit that we need to negotiate over the next few months. I disagree with the hon. Gentleman about the idea of simply putting one part of the jigsaw into this Bill. The truth is that if we are going to get to a proper compromise solution, it will require all the bits of the jigsaw to be put together into a comprehensive picture. That means that we need to go through a proper process.

The last time we discussed these things, the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire (Pete Wishart) referred to the noble Lord Peter Mandelson and amendments that he thought were tabled to deal with Napster in the Digital Economy Act 2010. Because I had some spare time over the weekend, I read all the debates on that Act in 2010, and we went through a process to get to that Act: we produced a White Paper and then legislation, which went through both Houses. It was introduced in the House of Lords by Lord Mandelson and in the House of Commons by Ben Bradshaw. In fact, most of that Act was so controversial that in the end, it was never implemented by the Government who took over in 2010, and large chunks of the Act were taken out when it collided with the 2010 general election.

I am not sure that things were quite as the hon. Gentleman thought at the time, but the key point is that we need to go through a proper process of bringing forward conciliation in this area. That means introducing legislation once we have considered the responses to the consultation, bringing forward our economic impact assessments, considering all the different aspects that really matter to the creative industries and the tech companies, and then considering legislation. I want to do that as fast as we possibly can, because I want to get to a solution for all of this problem.

The Government have tabled amendments to put these commitments in the Bill. The amendments were initially tabled in the other place, but they were not voted on by peers, who instead insisted on the amendment that we disagreed to last Tuesday—in fact, as I understand it, the amendments were not moved. They show our commitment to ensuring considered and effective solutions, as I have outlined, and demonstrate that we have unequivocally heard the concerns about timing and accountability.

We need to do one other piece of work. The House already knows that we will bring together working groups to consider transparency and technical solutions. They will have AI and creative industry representatives on them and will be extra-parliamentary.

[Anneliese Midgley (Knowsley) (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for being so generous with his time. On that point, will he outline how the Government will decide which parliamentarians will be on the advisory group and how they will be chosen?

[Chris Bryant]

I am about to come to that—my hon. Friend has a faster timeline than I have. There is of course expertise in Parliament, which is why I commit today that the Government will convene a series of meetings to keep interested parliamentarians informed on progress on this important issue, so that we can benefit from their input as we develop our thinking before any formal proposals are brought back to Parliament.

The working group meetings will include a cross-party group of Members, made up of MPs and peers. We hope that the group can act as an informal sounding board, but it is not intended to replicate or replace the normal scrutiny role of established bodies, such as Select Committees. I see that the Chair of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, the hon. Member for Gosport (Dame Caroline Dinenage), is in her dutiful place as usual; I would not dream of seeking to tell her Committee what to do or how to conduct its business, but we would none the less like to be able to draw on its members and their expertise.