Data (Use and Access) Bill [Lords]

Chi Onwurah Excerpts

Consideration of Lords message
Tuesday 10th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

With the leave of the House, Madam Deputy Speaker, I shall make a few comments, because it is important to respond to some of the questions that have been asked. Two of my hon. Friends referred to the report that the BFI published yesterday. I warmly commend it to all Members, not least because it makes points that others have made about AI, but also because it makes the point that if films and high-end television in the UK are to be successful in the future, we cannot have this critical shortfall in AI education, which is entirely piecemeal at the moment. We know about that in the Department, and it is one of the things that we want to change.

Several Members have asked who will be involved in the various different groups. I want to draw on all the expertise in both Houses to ensure that we can find the right answers. I do not want to undermine anything that the Select Committees might do, jointly or separately, and like my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Frith), I am keen for all the parts of the creative industries to engage in this process. The difficulty is that we might end up with a very large roundtable, and people might have to bear with us when it comes to how we structure that.

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West) (Lab)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Chris Bryant]

Okay, although my hon. Friend was not here earlier.

[Chi Onwurah]

I apologise for not being here earlier. I commend the Government for engaging in a cross-party discussion about AI, which is what the country needs to do, but the key issue is ensuring from the beginning that the tech companies understand that transparency in copyright and AI is not a “nice to have” but an absolute requirement, and that if they will not deliver it, the Minister will.

[Chris Bryant]

We have said from the very beginning that transparency is absolutely key to our ability to deliver the package that we would like to put together, and I do not resile from that, but it is only one part of the jigsaw that we need to join up.

I point out to the hon. Member for Gosport (Dame Caroline Dinenage) that some of the items on the amendment paper are things that the two Select Committees asked us to do. She is normally more generous to me, and to others, than she has been today. She has clearly forgotten that the last Government introduced plans that would have produced a text and data mining exemption for commercial exploitation of copyrighted materials without any additional protections for the creative industries. That seems to have slipped her mind.

We have moved a great deal since the introduction of the Bill. The Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology—who is sitting beside me—and I have moved. We have listened to their lordships, and, more importantly, we have listened to what the creative industries have had to say. The hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire (Pete Wishart) asked me whether I had ever known anything like this situation. Other bills have gone to five rounds of ping-pong, but in the past the row has always been about what is in the Bill, not what is not in the Bill. This is not an AI Bill, and it will not change the copyright regime in this country. I want that regime to be as robust as it ever has been, so that those in the creative industries can be remunerated and earn a living, as they deserve to. That is precisely what we intend to achieve, but we want to get the Bill on the statute book as soon as possible. That is why I need the House to vote with us this afternoon, and I hope that their lordships will agree with us tomorrow.

Question put.