Data (Use and Access) Bill [Lords]

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Consideration of Lords message
Tuesday 10th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Data Protection and Telecoms (Chris Bryant)]

I beg to move,

That this House insists on its disagreement with the Lords in their amendment 49F and proposes, in lieu of the Lords Amendment, amendment (a) to Commons amendment 45, amendments (b), (c) and (d) to Commons amendment 46 and amendment (e) to the Bill.

I fear it is an inevitable aspect of ping-pong that there is a degree of repetitiveness about our proceedings. The shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Dr Spencer), said last week that it reminded him of the film “Groundhog Day”, but that refers to the Pennsylvania Dutch superstition that if a groundhog emerges from its burrow on 2 February and sees its own shadow, it will retreat to its den and winter will go on for six more weeks. Well, I can see my shadow and I just hope that ping-pong is not going to continue for another six weeks.

Last week, I covered some misconceptions about the contents of the Bill and what we are trying to achieve separately in relation to artificial intelligence and copyright. I fear that some of those misconceptions persist. The Guardian carried the following sentence this weekend:

“The AI Bill, which proposes allowing‬ tech companies to use copyrighted material, has suffered‬ a fifth defeat in the Lords.”

That was repeated by one of the presenters on the “Today” programme, who stated that the Bill allows AI companies to use copyright material. I am glad the “Today” programme has apologised and corrected‬ the record. Let me reiterate: this is not an AI Bill and it does not propose changing copyright in any regard whatsoever. If the Bill goes forward in the way proposed by the Government, there will be no diminution in the robustness of the UK copyright regime. Sometimes I want to say, in the words of Richard II, “you have mistook us all this while.” ‬‬

[Sir Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)]

I accept what he said at the start of his speech, but the industry is desperate: its intellectual property is being stolen day by day, and the Minister does understand that it wants a timeline and a vehicle. I hope he will confirm that the Government are going to bring one forward.

[Chris Bryant]

The right hon. Gentleman knows that I am not going to do that. He also knows that the enforcement of copyright law is not a matter for Government because it is not the Government who enforce it. I have the enforcement regulations in my hand. Chapter VI of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 makes it very clear that infringement is actionable by copyright owners. In common with many bits of the law and with statute law in the UK, enforcement is not normally by Government. It is by either the prosecuting authorities or by people taking a civil action. Those are the measures that exist in copyright law today and we are not changing them in a single regard. Having said all that, I acknowledge the strong feelings expressed in both Houses about the need to protect the intellectual property rights of 2.4 million people who work in the creative industries in this country, including the significant proportion of the creative industries represented by the tech industries, which this week are celebrating London Tech Week.

It must be said that their lordships have been persistent, so much so that they remind me of a poem by Robert Browning, “A Toccata of Galuppi’s”, about the 18th century Venetian composer Baldassare Galuppi. It uses several musical terms, such as the dominant, and includes the line:

“Hark, the dominant’s persistence till it must be answered to!”

The Lords have been persistent, which is why we have not just listened to them; we have heard them, and we are answering them. Although the Bill, which was drafted largely by the previous Government, did not originally refer to the matter of copyright at all, that is why at a previous stage we tabled specific requirements on the Government to produce an economic impact assessment of the options available to us and to report on key issues, including transparency, technical solutions, access to data and copyright licensing within 12 months.

In response to their lordships, we are going several steps further. First, we are adding two further reporting requirements on approaches to models trained overseas and on how transparency and other requirements should be enforced. Secondly, in response to the call for us to work faster—meeting the point just made by the right hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon (Sir Julian Smith)—we will deliver the economic impact assessment and reports within nine months, rather than 12 months. Thirdly, we are introducing a new requirement that the Secretary of State make a progress statement to Parliament about the documents within six months of Royal Assent.

[Pete Wishart (Perth and Kinross-shire) (SNP)]

The Minister is being generous, as always, in giving way. I welcome the amendments—I think they are helpful and useful—but they miss out and exclude transparency, which is what this is all about. The Lords, the creative sector and artists around this country want a commitment that this Government will deal with issues of transparency. Why will the Minister not sit down and compromise with the House of Lords and ensure that we get a solution that works for everybody?

[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.

[Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Chris Bryant]

I thought that might happen.

[Dame Meg Hillier]

Late on Friday night—after hours and to an unmonitored inbox—emails suggesting that approach were sent to the Chairs of the two relevant Select Committees: the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee and the Culture, Media and Sport Committee. That was the first that had been heard of it. An all-colleague email went round on Saturday morning. This seems to be rather hurried, breathless and not very courteous to the House. The Minister has written two very respected books about Parliament, and I am sure that he did not intend disrespect, but we need to be clear that scrutiny is done through Select Committees and that policymaking is a separate thing. Combining the two is not really appropriate.

[Chris Bryant]

I completely agree with the last point that my hon. Friend makes. Scrutiny of Government legislation through the proper processes in either this House or the other House—or through Select Committees, for that matter, which do it in a slightly different way—is one thing, and the business of developing policy is another. I completely apologise for the inadvertent sending of the email to the wrong address and all the rest of it.

We are simply trying to engage as many Members in this House and the other House as we possibly can, on a matter that clearly matters to a great number of Members of Parliament because of their constituents. That includes my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Dame Meg Hillier), who I know has a very large creative community in her own constituency. We want to involve as many people as we possibly can. We may be moving faster on occasions than people want, but sometimes the demand is that we move faster. I apologise for the inadvertent discourtesy, but we are simply trying to engage as many people in the future debate as we possibly can.

[Chris Vince (Harlow) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Chris Bryant]

Before I do, I will say that because my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch is the Chair of the Liaison Committee, I wonder if it would be useful if she and I met in the next few days with the Chairs of the two most relevant Committees to discuss precisely what shape all that should take and what would be useful and informative, rather than doing anything that might undermine the process.

[Chris Vince]

The Minister partly answered my question as he went along there. My thought on the group is that it is really important that we get creative voices into the room to have that conversation. Once the group is formed, will part of its remit be to invite members of the creative industry in to discuss their concerns and how we can work together to solve them?

--- Later in debate ---

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

Order. Before the Minister responds, I remind him that we have only an hour for the whole debate. We have four Back Benchers wishing to contribute.

[Chris Bryant]

I feel told off, Madam Deputy Speaker, but thank you very much. I have been told off for talking too long, for talking too short, for going too fast and for going too slow.

My point is that we are already committed to creating two working groups that will look at transparency and at technical solutions to the problems that we face. Both of them will have members of the creative industries and members of tech and AI companies engaged in them. In addition, we want to have a separate group of Members of this House and the other House who are engaged with and have an interest in the subject to help us to develop these policy areas. I think it is best to keep those separate, and that is the plan. As we know, the Secretary of State has already written to the Chairs of the relevant Select Committees, but I hope that what I have just said is helpful.

[Dame Caroline Dinenage (Gosport) (Con)]

indicated assent.

[Chris Bryant]

I see that I am getting a slight nod from the Chair of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee about the prospect of our meeting to sort out a way forward on that.

I will say a few words about ping-pong. Some peers have suggested that different rules apply because the Bill started in the Lords. That is simply not true. Double insistence would kill the Bill wherever the Bill had started, and I take people at their word when they say that they do not want to kill the Bill. It has important measures that will enable digital verification services, the national underground asset register and smart data schemes to grow the economy; that will save NHS time; that will make vital amendments to our policing laws; and that will support the completion of the EU’s adequacy review. Its provisions have the support of all parties in both Houses, which is why I urge this House to accept our amendments in lieu and urge the Lords not to insist on their amendment but to agree with us.

It is worth pointing out that if their lordships do persist, they are not just delaying and imperilling a Bill that all parties agree is an important and necessary piece of legislation; they are imperilling something of much greater significance and importance economically: our data adequacy with the European Union. The successful renewal of our EU adequacy decisions is predicated on us having settled law as soon as possible, and we will not have that until the Bill gains Royal Assent. I cannot overemphasise how important this is, and I am absolutely mystified as to why the Liberal Democrats—of all parties—would want to imperil that.

I am equally mystified by the position of the Conservative party. They tabled amendments in the Commons Committee and Report stages that are almost exactly mirrored by what we have already added to the Bill and are adding today. I very much hope therefore that the Conservative party will agree to our motion. It is not as if it disagrees with any of the measures in the Bill.

I am grateful to the noble Baroness Kidron, who said in the Lords,

“I want to make it absolutely clear that, whatever transpires today, I will accept the choice the Government make.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 4 June 2025; Vol. 846, c. 755.]

It was a point she reiterated later in the debate when she said,

“if we”

—that is, the Lords—

“choose to vote on this and successfully pass it, I will accept anything that the Commons does… I will not stand in front of your Lordships again and press our case.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 4 June 2025; Vol. 846, c. 773.]

The noble Baroness is right. In the end, only one House is elected; only one House constitutes the Government of the day; and, especially where a Bill was adumbrated in a general election as this one was, the unelected House treads carefully. That is all the more important when the governing party has barely a fifth of the members of the other House. We have listened to the other House and taken action. There may be disagreements about the measures we have taken, but it would be wrong to say that we have not listened. It is time for the Houses to agree that the Bill must go forward.

I will say one final word about creativity. We live in an exceptional age. When our parents were young, they were lucky if their family had a television or a record player. They might occasionally go to a gig, concert or play. If they did have a television, they had a choice of just two or three channels. By contrast, today we are surrounded by human creativity in a way that no other generation was. Technology has brought us multiple channels where we can pick and choose whatever we want, whenever we want to see it. We watch more drama than ever. We can listen to our own choice of music on the train, on the bus or in the car. We can play games online with friends on the other side of the world. More books are published than ever. We can read or listen to them. Almost twice as many people went to the theatre last year as went to a premier league match. There are many challenges, all of which we need to address, including that of the interaction of AI with human creativity, but creativity is a quintessence of our humanity. It requires human-to-human connection, and I do not think for a single instant that that will change.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I call the shadow Minister.

--- Later in debate ---

[Pete Wishart]

I am extremely grateful, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I will not detain the House, as I have just a few comments to make. Let me begin by saying that it is an absolute pleasure to follow the Chair of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Gosport (Dame Caroline Dinenage). I had my criticisms of the previous Government, but they did not extend to her. She was someone who understood the issues, and someone who was prepared to try to find a solution. Whereas the previous Government were appalling in the way they dealt with these matters, she at least made every effort, through the work of her Committee, to get to the heart of the debate.

This has been an extraordinary episode, and I cannot believe that we are back here for the fifth time. The issues are usually resolved and dealt with in circumstances such as this, and a meaningful compromise is reached between the Lords and the Commons, but that has failed to materialise during what has been a remarkable session of ping-pong. The whole episode has been as interesting and dynamic as it has been entertaining. The Minister and I were elected at the same time—I think we celebrated our 24th year of continuous membership of the House over the weekend. I am sure he will agree that he has never seen anything quite like the way in which we have reached this stage, but if he can give an example to the contrary, I shall be keen to hear it—I know that, given his almost photographic memory, he would be able to provide the details.

What disturbs me is the Government’s failure to attempt to secure some sort of meaningful compromise. Their inability to do that is quite baffling. I am trying to think of a few ways in which we might get round this. It might be an idea to get the Secretary of State and Elton John in the same room and lock the door: perhaps when the two of them emerged, we might be able to come up with some sort of solution. We are in the realms of trying to find a way forward, and that might be one way in which we could do so.

By refusing to listen to the strong view of the Lords and respect the convention that ping-pong is a process at the end of which a workable compromise generally appears, the Government risk undermining their own legislative process. Having looked at the Lords amendment again, and having listened carefully to the debate the other day, I cannot see anything wrong with an amendment that simply asks for a draft Bill containing provisions

“to provide transparency to copyright owners regarding the use of their copyright works as data inputs for AI models”.

I thought that was what we were all trying to achieve, and I am surprised at the Government’s intransigent resistance to a fairly modest attempt to find solutions.

I have looked at the Government amendments as well, and I welcome them. As I have said to the Minister, the one that excites me most involves this House, parliamentary resources and the ability to play a meaningful part in these matters. I hope that he will be able to extend that to all parties across the House.

[Chris Bryant]

Even to you.

[Pete Wishart]

I am thrilled and excited by the prospect of being part of that work, and I look forward to joining the Minister, but I think that it must be as open as possible so that every single aspect of this can be harnessed and used as part of the Government’s work. What the Government amendments do not do, however—and this is a key issue—is pay attention to the transparency issues.

The peers have rejected amendments that the Government have tabled previously. As the Chair of the Select Committee said, the Government are bringing these amendments back to try to distract us and give us the impression that they listened to the House of Lords and were near to reaching a compromise, but nothing of the sort is the case, because the key issue is the transparency that the House of Lords, the creative sector and artists across the UK want to see. The existing law should be enforced to protect the wages of 2.4 million creative workers, and the Government must produce a “meaningful compromise” amendment.

It is also entirely possible for the Government to take powers to introduce transparency via regulations, recognising the urgent need to prevent mass theft by AI firms at the earliest opportunity, and I do not know why they have not explored that option. The wages of those 2.4 million UK creators are at stake, as is the principle of the rule of law. The creative industries have made it clear that inaction on the Government’s part is giving “big tech” the freedom to break our laws and destroy jobs. Copyright is not an abstract concept; it is what secures our creative success.

The Government will win in this House today, and they will probably win the whole debate—they will get their way. However, they have lost the battle. One good thing that has come out of this is the fact that people now understand that our copyright laws—our gold-standard copyright regime—underpins the success of the UK’s creative industries across the board. Some of the greatest artists in the world are from these islands, and they have achieved their success because of intellectual property rights and our copyright laws. To muck about with those as we have over the past few months undermines all that, and undermines the ability of those artists to continue to lead in their sectors. I hope that, even at this late stage, some sort of compromise can be found with transparency at the heart of it, and I appeal to the Minister to consider that seriously.

[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.