Royal Albert Hall Bill [Lords]

John Whittingdale Excerpts

Monday 14th July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Sir John Whittingdale (Maldon) (Con)]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

I am delighted to present this Bill on behalf of one of our great national institutions, the Corporation of the Hall of Arts and Sciences, known to most of us as the Royal Albert Hall. I do so as someone who has enjoyed many performances in the hall, ranging from artists like Muse and Eric Clapton to acts such as Cirque du Soleil, through to the Last Night—and many other nights—of the Proms concerts. I also speak as a previous trustee of the hall, a position I was appointed to between 2018 and 2020, having stepped down as Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport; it was a great pleasure to take on the role of trustee, and I was disappointed that I then had to give it up because I was reappointed to the position now held by the hon. Member for Rhondda and Ogmore (Chris Bryant), the Minister for Creative Industries, Arts and Tourism. Nevertheless, I have maintained a close interest in the affairs of the hall, and I strongly support the measures that are being brought forward tonight. As a trustee, I was able to see in detail how the hall operates and how it pursues its charitable purposes.

It is worth saying a word about the hall, because it is a unique organisation. It was the brainchild of the late Prince consort, Prince Albert, before his death at just 42 years of age in 1861. The corporation was established by royal charter not long afterwards, in 1867, under the chairmanship of the Prince of Wales. The foundation stone of the hall was laid by Queen Victoria in 1867, when she apparently announced without any prior warning that it would not be called the Central Hall of Arts and Sciences, as had been proposed, but would instead be known as the Royal Albert Hall of Arts and Sciences.

Since that time, for more than 150 years, the hall has been a beacon in the cultural life of our nation. It is a place of celebration, entertainment, enlightenment and indeed commemoration. It is one of the most recognisable and famous venues in the country, and attracts thousands, if not tens or hundreds of thousands, of visitors to the United Kingdom every year. I know that the Minister, who represents the interests of the creative industries and the arts, will also be aware of that fact in his capacity as the Minister responsible for tourism.

The building of the hall was not without difficulty. Initial funding came from the commissioners of the Great Exhibition of 1851, who also provided the site, but the actual cost of construction still needed to be raised. The remaining balance was raised through public subscription, which worked by selling seats in the hall prior to it being built; the potential seat owners agreed to invest their money in the building of the hall and, in exchange, would own a seat in the hall for a lease of 999 years. I understand that over 1,000 seats were sold for roughly £100 each on that basis, 20 of them being taken up by Queen Victoria herself.

That unique model has sustained the hall throughout the period since. It is a public-private partnership, which is unique to the hall, I think—I certainly do not know of any others—and it has worked remarkably well. During that time the hall has thrived, despite some extraordinary challenges, including obviously the covid pandemic. The way it works is that the seat holders, who are in many cases either descendants or those who have purchased the seats from the original people who invested their money, are an integral part of the support for the hall. They obviously enjoy access to the seats that they have purchased, but at the same time they hold the hall in trust and have shown remarkable generosity in continuing to promote it.

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Gateshead South) (Lab)]

While I recognise that a lot of the seats have been bequeathed down through the generations, a lot of them are now sold on the open market for much more than what that £100 would fetch in today’s money, keeping pace with inflation. They are now assets because of the amount of money that can be gained from reselling them on the open market.

[Sir John Whittingdale]

Of course, the hon. Lady is right. Essentially a seat in the hall is a property asset—in the same way, if one’s grandfather purchased a property and the descendants eventually decided to sell, it is highly likely that they would receive an amount of money way greater than the original investment. That is a very important point. These are essentially property assets, without which the hall could not have been built. It was built on that understanding and on a 999-year lease, and those who own that lease are entitled to do what they wish with it.

As for those who buy seats in the hall, in my experience of talking to many of them during my time as a trustee, they did not regard it as a financial investment to obtain a huge return; they love the hall in the way that many people do. They wanted the pride of owning an asset while at the same time contributing to the upkeep of the hall. As I will come on to explain, I think that seat holders contribute far more towards the upkeep and maintenance of the hall than they might ever get in return for selling tickets, and they have their right to the use of that seat for events where they are able to do so.

[Mrs Hodgson]

On that basis, if it is not about making money off their assets, would they not therefore return the tickets to the hall for the hall to resell, which they can do? There is also a conflict of interest if they are a seat holder as well as a trustee of the hall. Would it not be better for the ticket to be returned to the hall for the hall to sell, which is what this Bill seeks? They would still get their face-value money back.

[Sir John Whittingdale]

I think the hon. Lady raises two separate points. There is the ticket return scheme, which the hall itself has put in place, but that operates on a basis where the sales are all pooled together and then distributed among the seat holders. A lot of seat holders prefer to use that, but they take a slight risk because it may be that not all the seats will be sold, and therefore they will not get the face value on their seat.

Essentially there is a matter of principle involved. If someone owns a property, it is certainly my view that they are entitled to do with it as they wish. The hon. Lady has rightly championed the cause against the exploitation of consumers through secondary ticket sales. I share her concern about bots buying up all the tickets for an event and those tickets appearing on a secondary ticket site 10 seconds later, but that is not the same thing. What we are talking about in this instance is tickets that are already under ownership. They have not been bought up in a primary market; they are owned by the seat holders, and the seat holders can choose how they handle them. As I say, a large number will choose to use the ticket return scheme, but one should not require them to do so. First, that would fly in the face of the principle that these are property assets belonging to the individuals. Secondly, it undermines the operation of the way in which they support the hall.

I want to continue setting out why the hall is such an invaluable institution to this country. It has about 500 employees. Some 400 events take place each year in the main auditorium and many more in other parts of the hall. As I said, there are something like 1.7 million visitors each year. The hall makes itself available on very favourable terms to a wide range of other organisations, such as Imperial College for graduation ceremonies, the Royal Navy for the Mountbatten Festival of Music, and the Teenage Cancer Trust for its fundraising concerts. It also has an engagement programme that reaches out to some 180,000 people of all ages in local communities and schools, giving them opportunities to learn about performing arts and experience live music.

There are something like 5,500 seats in the hall. As of the end of last year, 1,256 of those—roughly a quarter—were privately owned by 315 seat holders. They are people who have either inherited the seats or purchased them from the original owners of the seats. Under the constitution that was drawn up at the time of Queen Victoria, those seat owners are the members of the hall’s corporation. Some may be private individuals, but there are also companies and charities. There is a strong and enduring bond between the hall and those members.

Of the board of trustees, which governs the hall, some 18 out of the 23 are seat holders, as was originally set down. There are five external trustees, one of whom—I was fortunate to hold this position—is appointed by the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. Then there are the commissioners of the 1851 Exhibition, a representative of Imperial College, another from the Royal College of Music, and another from the Natural History Museum.

As I sought to explain, those who hold seats actually do put a lot back into the hall. Even though they own the seat, they nevertheless contribute on top of it to the maintenance of the hall. The first way is by paying an annual contribution known as the seat rate. This is voluntary but is paid by members every year. An independent committee recommends the amount—I think I sat on the seat committee for a time—and it is roughly a pro-rata proportion of the hall’s maintenance costs. This year the seat rate, which members choose to pay, is £1,880 plus VAT per seat, amounting to about £2.3 million plus VAT.

The second way in which members support the hall—this is the crux of the Bill—is by agreeing to forgo their tickets for events on over 100 days each year. Originally when they purchased their seats way back in 1871, members could attend any event in the hall by sitting in the seat they had purchased, but over time, in order to support the hall, members have agreed to give up that entitlement for a set number of days each year, and that currently stands at over 100 events each year. By giving up the right to use their seat, they give it back to the hall, and obviously those tickets can then be sold. It also helps the hall to attract high-quality artists. Each time, a negotiation takes place with somebody wishing to perform at the hall as to how many events will be held on what is called an exclusive basis, for which seat holders will not have the right to utilise their seats. That method of support for the hall, which has evolved over the years, has been extraordinarily successful.

There is also a review of the constitution governing the hall. A working group has identified a range of potential reforms. The hon. Member for Washington and Gateshead South (Mrs Hodgson) referred in her intervention to the concerns expressed by the Charity Commission that there might be a conflict of interest because seat holders both own seats and sit on the council, but I think that is a misinterpretation of the position. As far as I am aware, there has never been any evidence of seat holders abusing their position. Indeed, there is a committee of the hall with a majority of independent members called the conflicts committee that considers whether there is any potential conflict. I was a member of that committee during my time as a trustee.

The Bill contains reforms to the position, which can be achieved only by Act of Parliament. I would therefore like briefly to run through the Bill’s clauses. First, clause 3 removes the six-yearly cap on the amount that can be levied through the seat rate. In the interests of equivalence, it transfers the voting threshold of three quarters from the six-year cap to the annual seat rate. If anything, the six-year cap has sometimes prevented seat holders from contributing as much as they might—particularly during covid, when members were obviously unable to take up their rights because the hall was not available for public performance. None the less, members continued to pay the seat rate in support of the hall.

Secondly, clause 4 provides a mechanism whereby members can agree to exclusives—performances where they will not take advantage of their ownership of seats—in excess or of a different kind to those originally permitted by the Royal Albert Hall Act 1966. There is already statutory provision to allow some performances to be exclusive where members have given over their rights, but the hall has gone beyond the 1966 Act such that now a number of events above and beyond those covered by that Act are agreed to by members through voting. That is a way in which they have increased their support for the hall.

That has been agreed through the council and a majority of members—it is done by majority. The question as to whether that has a legal basis is what needs to be clarified through the Bill. Three members have commenced a challenge in the High Court, which, if it were to be successful, would prevent the hall from having as many exclusive events. That would obviously have a damaging effect on the income not of seat holders but of the hall itself. If the challenge were to be successful, the hall could either continue with its practice—potentially in breach of a legal challenge—or decide that it was no longer possible to continue the practice, and therefore then lose the benefit, or it would no longer be able to contract some of the most attractive and valuable events that are staged there at the moment. The purpose of the clause is therefore to resolve the issue in order to allow the hall to proceed—as is the current position—without the risk of legal challenge.

The third clause that I want to address is clause 5, which was added to the Bill by amendment in the House of Lords. It was not part of the original Bill as agreed by the members and it was not sought by the hall. It is certainly the hall’s view that its provisions, which cover both a requirement that extensions to exclusive events need to be agreed by a committee not without a majority of seat holders, and a requirement use the ticket return scheme, which the hon. Lady identified in her intervention, demonstrate a lack of understanding of the way in which the hall works and would be detrimental to the hall. It could mean that seat holders will no longer be able to support the Bill, which is an essential requirement if it is to become law. I know that the hall is very happy to discuss potential ways of addressing the concerns identified through the passage of that amendment when the Bill gets to Committee, which, Madam Deputy Speaker, I think you will be involved with.

At this stage, I ask that the House agrees to the Bill’s Second Reading. We can return to address any particular concerns once it has been through Committee.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Creative Industries, Arts and Tourism (Chris Bryant)]

Well, this is a rum old affair, isn’t it? I think we can definitely put this down as one of the recondite moments of parliamentary democracy. A number of people have asked me today, “What on earth is all this about?” and then said, “What is an opposed private Bill?” or “What has the Chairman of Ways and Means got to do with it?” and all the rest of it—so, yes, it is a strange little moment.

It is nice to see the right hon. Member for Maldon (Sir John Whittingdale), who listed about a fiftieth of all the things he has sat on in his time, and it still added up to rather a large number of things that he has been involved in at some point or other, including virtually every committee at the Royal Albert Hall, apart from selecting the music—

[Sir John Whittingdale]

It would have been very difficult.

[Chris Bryant]

Yes—well, it would have been endlessly hard rock, wouldn’t it, if it was just to please him?

Of course, this debate is timely because the Proms are about to start. The Proms are one of the most renowned British cultural institutions in the UK, where the BBC meets the public in a more open way than in any other. The concerts are broadcast all around the world, and everybody knows about them—not just the last night, but the first night, the penultimate night and all the different bits that have tradition attached to them.

Of course, the Royal Albert Hall, as everybody has referred to, is one of the great cultural institutions of the UK. It is a phenomenally versatile space, apart from anything else. People have mentioned concerts they have been to. Dua Lipa, of course, had a wonderful concert there last year. I think my husband has been to see Kylie there—well, he has been to see Kylie nearly everywhere. I have been to see Kylie nearly everywhere, too—it is always nice to live up to a stereotype, isn’t it? What is amazing is that wrestling and so many other different styles of events can take place there—the right hon. Member for Maldon mentioned Cirque du Soleil, for example.

The Royal Albert Hall is a great part of the British cultural sector, and it is unique in the way it is structured financially and constitutionally. I do not think that anybody has said this evening that it is precisely how one would probably want to constitute it if one was starting from scratch. [Interruption.] I noted a slight Gallic shrug from the right hon. Member for Maldon, so I think he is sort of agreeing with me. I think most of the people who own the seats at the Royal Albert Hall would agree that it is not quite what anybody would design if they were starting again today.

It is worth reminding ourselves of precisely what we are doing with a private Bill, because it is different from a public Bill. “Erskine May” does not get to private Bills until page 1,024 or something, so we can tell that they are unusual. It states:

“In giving any bill a second reading, the House approves the general principle, or expediency, of the measure. There is, however, a distinction between the second reading of a public and of a private bill. A public bill is founded on public policy, and the House, in agreeing to its second reading, accepts and approves that policy; whereas the expediency of a private bill is founded upon allegations of fact which have not yet been proved, so that the House, in agreeing to its second reading, affirms the principle of the bill conditionally, subject to the proof of such allegations before the committee.”

I am sure the Committee stage will be interesting, as the right hon. Member for Daventry (Stuart Andrew) said, because these allegations of fact will have to be proven. That takes us to the several points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Gateshead South (Mrs Hodgson), who is one of the most redoubtable experts on the issue of ticket sales in this country. I very much hope that we will be able to put the biggest smile on her face later in this Parliament when we come up with legislation to tackle the issues around the secondary ticketing market, which we are determined to do.

I take issue slightly with something that the right hon. Member for Maldon said. He said, “Private property is private property and we never want to interfere with it.” In one sense I agree with him, of course, but when it comes to the sale of tickets, I am not sure that that quite applies as cleanly as it might in other forms. If the value returns to the artists or the venue, I do not have a problem, but when the value from the secondary ticketing market simply disappears into the trousers of online touts and bots, many of which are not even based in this country, I think that that is a problem.

[Sir John Whittingdale]

rose—

[Chris Bryant]

Oh dear.

[Sir John Whittingdale]

The Minister and I will undoubtedly debate the Government’s proposals for secondary ticketing at a future date, but I want to make it clear that what we are talking about here is not touts or bots, but people who own a seat and the right to sit in that seat and who choose to sell it to somebody else, which is a very different prospect from the one that he outlines.

[Chris Bryant]

Of course. I was merely responding to the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Gateshead South. If we had a debate in which there was a venue mentioned and she were not to stand up and make a speech about ticket touts, we would think that something was wrong; we would go and search all the A&Es in the country to find out what had happened to her. She said that she supports clauses 4 and 5. I think that the right hon. Gentleman supports clause 4, but he is not quite so keen on clause 5 because it was inserted in the House of Lords. As he knows, we are doing a very simple thing tonight: deciding whether to give the Bill its Second Reading. For a private Bill, it is traditional for the Government—as for the Opposition—not to stand in the way, nor to urge people one way or the other.

I repeat a point made in the House of Lords by my noble Friend Baroness Twycross, however: we are disappointed that some concerns about the potential conflict of interest between the hall’s charitable objectives and the private financial interests of individuals have yet to be met. The right hon. Gentleman will know that the Charity Commission has taken a view in this space. I think that some of those issues still need to be addressed more fervently; whether it happens through this Bill or through other means, at some point we will have to address them.

The right hon. Member for Daventry said that the Bill had been hovering around for some time, but it was interesting to hear the right hon. Member for Maldon say that people at the Royal Albert Hall are wondering what other constitutional changes should be brought about. One would hope that if we are to have a private Bill on the Royal Albert Hall, we can do it just once in a Parliament, or in a decade—or in a lifetime, frankly. It would be good if we could address all the issues in a single Bill.

Nevertheless, as is the tradition with all private Bills, the Government neither support nor oppose this Bill. That sounds like a strange moment in British politics, doesn’t it? But the last time I went to the Royal Albert Hall was for Emeli Sandé. I think one of her songs might be apposite at this point. [Hon. Members: “Don’t sing!”] No, I am not going to sing. What’s wrong with Emeli Sandé?

Oral Answers to Questions

John Whittingdale Excerpts

Wednesday 25th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Feryal Clark]

As I have said, I work very closely with my counterparts in the Department for Education. Earlier this year, we launched safe standards for the sector and provided guidance on how to safely develop AI tools for education. The DFE has also provided guidance to schools on how to safely use AI in schools. That work is ongoing. As I have said, we are working both with the sector and with educators to make sure that we get this right.

[Sir John Whittingdale (Maldon) (Con)]

5. When he plans to bring forward legislative proposals on AI.

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

As soon as we have legislative proposals on AI, we will introduce them to the House and let the right hon. Member know in the usual way.

[Sir John Whittingdale]

Is the Minister aware of the concerns about the proposed creative content exchange, which appeared without consultation in the creative industries sector plan? Will he confirm that any AI legislation will not seek to impose a statutory licensing model, but will instead facilitate a market-led, dynamic licensing model based on robust copyright law and enforceable through meaningful transparency?

[Chris Bryant]

The right hon. Member has become terribly Eeyore-ish of late—he has been eating too many thistles, I think. The truth of the matter is that this is a really good idea. It is only at an embryonic stage. It was consulted on in the creative industries taskforce, which is led by Baroness Shriti Vadera and Sir Peter Bazalgette. Of course we will consult with everybody else in the sector about how we can make this work, but it could be an answer to ensuring more licensing of creative content by AI companies and, importantly, remuneration for the creative industries.

Data (Use and Access) Bill [Lords]

John Whittingdale Excerpts

Thursday 22nd May 2025 Commons Chamber

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Sir John Whittingdale (Maldon) (Con)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. The Secretary of State has spoken for 33 minutes in a debate that is due to last for an hour, and we have yet to hear from the Opposition Front-Bench spokesman. There will not be time to have a proper debate on this matter, which is of great importance to a number of people. Will the Government please make available more time beyond the 60-minute time limit?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his point of order, which was not in fact a point of order. He will be aware that the programme motion has already been agreed to by the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Pete Wishart]

The Secretary of State can check back in Hansard. That is exactly what he said, and that is where the concern and anxiety comes in. The Government might get a technical victory today because of the invocation of financial issues, but the Bill will come back again from the House of Lords. They are not going to give up.

Everybody is united with the House of Lords when it comes to these issues; everybody wants a solution now. Nobody agrees with the Government’s position—except the AI firms that seek to benefit from the unauthorised use of our cultural work—and the anger is growing. The more the public see of this, the more our constituents get increasingly concerned about how our artists are being treated. We only need to look at Sir Elton John’s reaction on Sunday—not just the choice of language about the Government Front Benchers, but that he feels so dismissed he is even threatening legal action.

Surely the way forward is compromise and the Government going some way toward giving the creative sector what they want. Lords amendment 49D presents that approach. It respects the financial prerogatives of this Government, and it has taken on board everything that the Front Benchers have said. I urge the Government to reconsider their position and to engage seriously on the substance of the amendment, which would address copyright holders’ calls for transparency without imposing immediate enforcement costs. It would require AI developers to provide copyright owners with clear, relevant, accurate and accessible information on how their works have been used and how they were accessed. Nothing could be fairer than that.

The Government use words like “may” rather than “must”, thereby avoiding direct spending obligations. We must surely work together on the basis of what has been agreed between both Houses, and try to ensure that we get something that meets everybody’s concerns. That has to start with this Lords amendment. I urge the Government to accept it at this really late stage, and I encourage Labour Back Benchers, who have made fantastic contributions today and who have stood up to this Government, to vote against them. That will show exactly how strongly they feel about this issue. I encourage Labour colleagues to back the amendment.

[Sir John Whittingdale]

I have to say that I am slightly surprised that no Labour Back Bencher is willing to speak in support of the Government’s position, but it means that I have more time to speak than I had initially thought would be the case. I will not repeat the arguments that we have had in the lengthy debates on these measures that have already taken place, but I want to make one or two points.

In his contribution, the Secretary of State said that he had never mentioned the word “uncertainty” and implied that he thought that copyright law is clear. I have to say that that contrasts with an awful lot of the debates we have had previously, in which his colleague, the Minister for the Creative Industries, has talked about there being uncertainty.

[Chris Bryant]

The right hon. Member must have missed several of the debates in which I expressly said that I did not think there was any uncertainty about the law as it presently stands.

[Sir John Whittingdale]

Well, the ministerial foreword to the consultation paper suggests there was uncertainty, and that has consistently been one of the reasons why the Government have said they need to carry out all these consultations. Even if the law is clear, as the Secretary of State suggests—personally, I believe it is clear—the important thing is that it can only be enforced if those who have their copyright breached are aware that that has taken place. That is why transparency is of critical importance, as I know the Government have acknowledged.

The Secretary of State has said this afternoon that he is going to set up more working parties. Our concern is that, as the Secretary of State has just said, a large amount of copyrighted material is already being scraped by generative AI. His working parties and further consultations—we wait to hear when legislation might arrive—mean that it will be another few years before we actually have this measure on the statute book. There is an opportunity to have something on the statute book now, and he will be aware that the existing provisions—the robots.txt provisions—are simply being ignored. They are not working, and it is important that we act immediately to send a very clear signal that we expect transparency to be in place and for generative AI companies to properly remunerate licence holders.

I want to mention some of the other provisions. On the Order Paper, the Government have said that Lords amendment 49D “engages financial privilege”.

[Peter Kyle]

The Chair says that—not us.

[Sir John Whittingdale]

Well, the Clerks may have advised—[Interruption.] I merely suggest that it is very unclear. As many in the House of Lords have suggested, it is very unclear how the amendment can engage financial privilege. The amendment use the word “may”, so it does not contain any requirement on the Government to indulge in financial expenditure. It is a worrying precedent if the Government are going to avoid debate on policy by suggesting that—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

Order. I think it would be helpful if I clarified that that is a matter for the Chair and not for the Government.

[Sir John Whittingdale]

I accept your ruling, Madam Deputy Speaker; it just looks very strange to see that the amendment “engages financial privilege” when there is no financial requirement in the amendment.

I will finish on one further point. I understand the Secretary of State’s keenness to attract investment from tech companies. When we have previously debated legislation affecting tech companies, on each occasion we have heard that it may result in their being unwilling to come and invest in this country, but that has never been the case. I hope the Secretary of State will not listen to those who say that if we proceeded to enforce copyright law, it may somehow result in tech companies finding this country unattractive. I do not believe that is the case and I do not believe that it would jeopardise the jobs that the Government are keen to create. But unless we proceed down the route of accepting the Lords amendment, we will jeopardise the jobs of the 2.4 million people in this country who are employed in the creative industries.

Question put, That this House disagrees with Lords amendment 49D.

Data (Use and Access) Bill [Lords]

John Whittingdale Excerpts

Wednesday 7th May 2025 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

Earlier I appeared as a Department for Culture, Media and Sport Minister, and now I appear as a Department for Science, Innovation and Technology Minister. I hate to embarrass Members, but they will get two bouts of me today. I will start with the Government amendments, and then once I have heard the arguments from Members advancing other amendments, I will speak to those later in the debate. If I do not cover subjects in this initial speech, I will get back to them later.

[Sir John Whittingdale (Maldon) (Con)]

rose—

[Chris Bryant]

The right hon. Gentleman is enticing me. I hope he will be nicer to me than the Chair of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, the hon. Member for Gosport (Dame Caroline Dinenage) was earlier.

[Sir John Whittingdale]

I am sure that the Chair of the Committee and I will always be nice to Minister. I was only going to say that I have experienced the slight schizophrenia he has referred to in holding roles in the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology and in DCMS at the same time. Although he is appearing as a DSIT Minister this afternoon, can he assure the House that he will not forget his responsibilities as a DCMS Minister for the creative industries?

[Chris Bryant]

I model myself in all things on the right hon. Gentleman, apart from the fact that I left the Tory party many years ago, and it is about time that he came over to the Labour Benches.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jonathan Davies (Mid Derbyshire) (Lab)]

I rise to speak to new clauses 4, 16 and 17, but first let me say that this is a very ambitious and weighty piece of legislation. Most of us can agree on sections or huge chunks of it, but there is anxiety in the creative industries and in the media—particularly the local media, which have had a very torrid time over the last few years through Brexit and the pandemic. I thank UK Music, the News Media Association and Directors UK for engaging with me on this issue and the Minister for his generosity in affording time to Back Benchers to discuss it.

AI offers massive opportunities to make public services and businesses more effective and efficient, and this will improve people’s lives. However, there is a fundamental difference between using AI to manage stock in retail or distribution, or for making scientific breakthroughs that will improve people’s health, and the generative AI that is used to produce literature, images or music. The latter affects the creative industries, which have consistently seen faster and more substantial growth than the overall economy. The creative industries’ gross value added grew by over 50% in real terms compared with the overall UK economy, which grew by around a fifth between 2010 and 2022. That is why the Government are right to have identified the creative industries as a central plank of their industrial strategy, and it is right to deliver an economic assessment within 12 months, as outlined in Government new clauses 16 and 17. I welcome all that.

I know it is not the Government’s intention to deal with copyright and licensing as part of the Bill, but because of the anxiety in the sector the issues have become conflated. Scraping is already happening, without transparency, permission or remuneration, in the absence of a current adequate framework. The pace of change in the sector, and the risk of tariffs from across the pond, mean it is imperative that we deal with the threat posed to the creative industries as soon as possible. We are now facing 100% tariffs on UK films going to the USA, which increases that imperative.

I welcome the Government’s commitment to engage with the creative industries and to implement a programme to protect them, following consultation. I would welcome an overview from the Minister in his summing up about progress in that regard. The more we delay, the worse the impact could be on our creative sector. I am also concerned that in the Government’s correct mission to deliver economic growth, they may inadvertently compromise the UK’s robust copyright laws. Instead, we should seek to introduce changes, so that creatives’ work cannot be scraped by big AI firms without providing transparency or remunerating the creatives behind it. Failure to protect copyright is not just bad for the sector as a whole, or the livelihoods of authors, photographers, musicians and others; it is bad for our self-expression, for how robust the sector can be, and for how it can bring communities together and invite us to ask the big questions about the human condition. Allowing creators to be uncredited and undercut, with their work stripped of attribution and their livelihoods diluted in a wave of synthetic imitation, will disrupt the creative market enormously. We are not talking about that enough.

It is tempting to lure the big US AI firms into the UK, giving the economy a sugar rush and attracting billions of pounds-worth of data centres, yet in the same breath we risk significantly draining economic value from our creative industries, which are one of the UK’s most storied pillars of our soft power. None of this is easy. The EU has grappled with creating a framework to deal with this issue for years without finding an equitable solution. I do not envy what the Government must navigate. However, I ask the Minister about the reports that emerged over the weekend, and whether the Government are moving away from an opt-out system for licensing, which creatives say will not work. Will that now be the Government’s position?

Harnessing the benefits of AI—economic, social and innovative—is not diametrically opposed to ensuring that the rights of creatives are protected. We must ensure transparency in AI, as covered in new clause 4, so that tech companies, some of which are in cahoots with some of the more troubling aspects of the US Administration, do not end up with the power to curate an understanding of the world that reflects their own peculiar priorities. Big AI says transparency will effectively reveal its trade secrets, but that need not necessarily be the case, as my hon. Friend the Member for South Derbyshire (Samantha Niblett) said. A simple mechanism to alert creators when their content is used is well within the abilities of these sophisticated companies. They just need the Government to prod them to do it.

The Government are working hard. I know that they care passionately about the sector, and the economic and social value it brings. I look forward to hearing how they will now move at pace to address the concerns I have outlined, even if they cannot do so through the Bill.

[Sir John Whittingdale]

The Minister referred, in his opening remarks, to the fact that the Bill has been a long time in its gestation. It is very nearly two years since the first meeting of the Bill Committee, which I attended, to take through what was pretty much an identical Bill. At that time, it was uncontroversial and the Opposition supported it—indeed, I support it today. There are a lot of measures we have not discussed because they are universally accepted, such as the national underground asset register, smart data provisions and the relief on some of the burden of GDPR.

I congratulate Baroness Kidron, who very successfully attached to the Bill amendments to address a different, but vital issue: protection of the creative industries with respect to copyright. Therefore, I support new clauses 2 to 6, which are essentially Baroness Kidron’s amendments that were passed in the House of Lords. The Minister said that it was not the intention to legislate at this time, that the Government want to wait and are consulting, and that they have tabled two amendments. However, one of the measures is to conduct an economic impact assessment, which the Government would always have had to do anyway, and the other is to commission a report into such things as technical standards and transparency. As the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire (Pete Wishart) has pointed out, that will simply delay things even longer, and this is an issue that must be addressed now, because generative AI models are currently scraping and using material.

In our view, the law is clear. The Minister asks why we need new clause 2 if all it says is that people should obey the law, and if we also believe the law is clear. One of the reasons it is so important is that we can enforce the law only if we know that it is being broken. That is why transparency is absolutely vital; it is only with transparency that rights owners can discover the extent to which their content is being used by generative AI, and then know how to take action against it.

I absolutely agree that it is not that the creative industries are against artificial intelligence. Indeed, a lot of creatives are using it; a lot of them are developing licensing models. However, for some, it is an existential question.

[Iqbal Mohamed (Dewsbury and Batley) (Ind)]

On the point about transparency, the law is the law—it already exists. However, the law can be enforced, and people can be punished, only if actions that break our current laws come to light. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that this is another reason that new clause 2 is essential?

[Sir John Whittingdale]

I completely agree. The hon. Gentleman has stated the case: in order to enforce the law, we have to know who is breaking it.

There are all sorts of legal actions already under way, but this issue is about the extent to which scraping is going on. I agree with the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) on the importance of newspapers and the press. The press face the particular problem of retrieval-augmented generation—a phrase I did not think I would necessarily be introducing—which is the use of live data, rather than historic data; if historic data is used, it often produces the wrong results. The big tech companies therefore rely on retrieval-augmented generation, which means using current live data—that which is the livelihood of the press. It is absolutely essential for publishers that they should know when their material is being used and that they should have the ability to license it or not, as they choose.

[John McDonnell]

The issue the right hon. Gentleman is addressing is the immediacy of the threat within the journalistic sector at the moment. I missed the opening remarks by both Front Benchers because I was in the debate on the personal independence payment, but I am sure my hon. Friend the Minister was as eloquent as ever in advocating for the Government amendments; he is a very persuasive fellow. However, those amendments are merely about publishing a report in 12 months’ time—that is all. There will be parts of the journalistic sector that will no longer exist in 12 months’ time as a result of this legislation.

[Sir John Whittingdale]

I completely agree. I do not doubt the Minister’s sincerity in wanting proper close examination, but this matter is urgent. New clause 2 and the associated measures simply state the law as it currently stands and give rights owners the essential ability to know when their material is being used, so that they can choose whether they wish to license it, and, if they do not, to take action against its use.

There is only one other point I want to raise today, as a number of speeches have been made in this debate that have very eloquently set out the case for each of the new clauses, including by the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for Harpenden and Berkhamsted (Victoria Collins), and indeed by the Chair of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Dame Caroline Dinenage). For the other concern that I want to raise, the Minister will need to put his other hat back on for a moment. Earlier in the day, he was speaking as the Minister for Creative Industries, Arts and Tourism about the threat from the possibility of tariffs on the film industry. Obviously, we are concerned about the general question of US tariffs, and there is talk about trying to achieve a trade deal—in the President’s words, a “beautiful trade deal”—which would mean that the UK was protected. However, we are told that one of the prices that could be attached to such a deal could be relieving the burden of regulation on tech companies.

I am afraid that we know how the tech companies define burdensome regulation. In their view, copyright is a burdensome regulation, not a legal obligation or moral right of rightsholders. I hope the Minister will make it clear that we will not sacrifice the rights of creative industries and copyright owners in order to obtain a trade agreement and that, at the same time, we will not dilute other, very important digital legislation, such as the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, which I understand is also potentially on the table.

I will not speak any longer, because the case has already been made. I will say only to the Minister that although it is clear that new clauses 2 to 6 command quite a lot of support on both sides of the House, I have no doubt that the Government will defeat them if they choose to do so tonight. However, he will be aware that they were originally made in the House of Lords, and he may find it harder if that House chooses to push the amendments through. I would not like to be back here next year once again trying to put through a data Bill because this one has failed.

[Jen Craft (Thurrock) (Lab)]

I rise to support the Government’s amendments and new clauses, particularly new clause 16, which addresses the relationship between artificial intelligence and copyright and which I strongly welcome. By slightly broadening the scope of the Bill, the amendments demonstrate Ministers’ attention to this pressing detail and reflect some of the comments by colleagues and the creative sector.

The existing legal framework with regard to copyright is not fit for purpose in the face of new and developing AI technologies. Colleagues who have much greater expertise and knowledge than me have contributed to this debate, but I want to offer a reflection and draw attention to the experience of an individual—one of my constituents—as I believe it highlights the real human impact that big tech companies can have in running rampant over copyright laws.

My constituent, Susan, is an author. She has had 32 of her books and, she calculates, more than 1 million published words used by Meta without her consent. The pirating of material has serious human impacts on those in the creative industries. Susan’s life work and source of income was downgraded and devalued almost instantaneously. Her intellectual property was accessed without her permission and used to inform an AI system designed to mimic her work. Susan described that to me and said that she felt violated, as if someone had come into her house and stolen her things, and she is not alone.

I have been contacted by other professionals in the creative industries in my constituency who have also had published material used without their consent by AI. A local author has had their works harnessed through an online library of pirated books, and a local illustrator said that her work was scraped to train an AI model with images and videos taken from websites and social media without her permission. That practice is widespread and plainly wrong, even to a lay observer who is not versed in technical expertise, yet rightsholders are often impotent against big tech companies and their sizeable financial and legal assets.

Data (Use and Access) Bill [Lords]

John Whittingdale Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 12th February 2025 Commons Chamber

[The Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology (Peter Kyle)]

I beg to move. That the Bill be now read a Second time.

The Government are using technology to grow the economy and create new jobs in order to empower citizens and deliver a smaller, smarter state, but none of that is possible without data. Successive Governments failed to set out the extraordinary opportunity that data presents. Our citizens have counted the cost in slower growth, fewer jobs and flatlining productivity; in communities that feel less safe because police officers are spending more time filling in forms and less time out on the streets, where we need them; in hospitals, where patients are left waiting longer for the care that they so desperately need; and when people queue up to register the death of a loved one, or struggle to rent new homes without the decades-old documents that they need to prove their identity. An outdated approach to data is holding Britain’s economy back. This Bill will take the brakes off, unleashing a new era of wealth and opportunity for all.

[Sir John Whittingdale (Maldon) (Con)]

The Secretary of State says that successive Governments failed to act, but is it not the case that this Bill is almost identical to the one that the last Conservative Government introduced, which very nearly made it on to the statute book?

[Peter Kyle]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for pointing that out. Indeed, a lot of this Bill is based on the one that his Government introduced. They called a general election, which halted it in its tracks. We offered to get that Bill through in wash-up, but that was turned down by the Government. We are here today to discuss a Bill that his Government could well have got through; of course, they had 14 years to do so. I am grateful to him for pointing that out, and for no doubt supporting a Bill for which he claims so much credit.

The smart data measures in the Bill could make switching energy suppliers as quick and easy as switching bank accounts. Consumers will be able to compare utility prices and find better deals, putting money in their pockets. Businesses will be forced to innovate and improve their services, too. Fast-growing firms will also benefit from the digital verification services that this Bill enables. Today, people spend months waiting to get paperwork sorted for a new job. By helping people to prove who they are without physical documents, we will cut the time it takes to get on the payroll, and give businesses the freedom to get on with growth.

One of the biggest barriers to growth is the appalling state of Britain’s crumbling infrastructure. Today, streets are being endlessly dug up and re-dug up by different firms repairing gas one year and water the next. At the same time, bigger infrastructure projects have stalled and fallen silent for years. By offering a complete and accurate picture of the underground infrastructure, the national underground asset register will strengthen Britain’s building bureaucracy. It will cut the time it takes for workers on site to get the data they need from six days to six seconds. That means that they will be able to get on with building the roads, railways and homes that Britain so desperately needs.

Today, a siloed approach to data is slowing the state down. Patients are put through the same tests again and again, and prescription errors mean that they get the wrong medication. This is simply unacceptable. The NHS has one of the deepest, most diverse datasets in the world, but the people who need that data cannot access it. By introducing mandatory information standards for all information technology suppliers, this Bill will ensure that information can flow safely, securely and seamlessly through the healthcare system.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir John Whittingdale (Maldon) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Alison Hume), whose speech was absolutely spot on—I agreed with it completely.

It will not surprise the Government Front Benchers that I welcome the Bill. There are very few parts of it, if any, with which I disagree—perhaps because it bears an extraordinary similarity to the Data Protection and Digital Information Bill introduced by the previous Government, which I spent many happy hours taking through Committee and Report. As the Secretary of State pointed out, unfortunately that Bill fell as a result of the calling of the general election, and I share his regret that it was not possible to get it on to the statute book. That is another reason among many why I regret the calling of the general election at the time chosen by the previous Prime Minister.

[Chris Bryant]

The right hon. Gentleman refers to all the happy days he had, but I do not think that he really enjoyed the Report stage of the previous Bill. I think—nobody else will notice if he admits it here now—that he did not really like everything that was in the previous Government’s version of the Bill, and that he rather prefers our version.

[Sir John Whittingdale]

Although the hon. Gentleman and I had a robust but nevertheless amicable exchange on Report, it was in fact his colleague, the hon. Member for Barnsley South (Stephanie Peacock), who took that Bill through Committee. It was not until Report that the Conservative Government decided to add measures to the Bill—measures that I fully supported, of course, but which nevertheless made the task a little more difficult, as they resulted in a lack of agreement across the Chamber, which had previously pertained throughout the passage of the Bill. It is a pleasure to debate these matters again, and, indeed, to see not just the hon. Gentleman but some of the officials who laboured to take that Bill through Committee with me, and are now tasked with doing it all over again.

One point about the Bill that the Secretary of State did not refer to is that a lot of it seeks to improve the working of data protection law in this country and make data more accessible while safeguarding important privacy rights. However, the fact that we are able to make changes to improve our data protection laws is a consequence of Britain no longer being a member of the European Union—otherwise, we were trapped by the GDPR requirements. This is an example of where we can draft legislation to benefit people in this country and not have to accept top-down imposed legislation from Brussels—another reason why I was an enthusiastic supporter of the previous Bill.

One issue that featured a lot during the previous debate, and which I am slightly surprised has not been mentioned so far, is whether the changes made in the Bill would in any way jeopardise data adequacy recognition by the EU. [Interruption.] I am sorry; the hon. Member for Harpenden and Berkhamsted (Victoria Collins) did mention it, but the Secretary of State did not. Data adequacy is an important issue, and concern has been expressed outside the House that the Bill might put it at risk. We were very keen to ensure that that was not the case, and we worked closely—as I am sure the Minister continues to do—with the Information Commissioner, John Edwards, who has a lot of experience in this field, having previously overseen the data protection regime in New Zealand, which enjoys data adequacy but is not identical to GDPR. I am sure, given that this Bill is so similar, that there is no risk to data adequacy, which is of importance to many large firms.

The Bill covers a lot of other areas that we regarded as important and which have remained largely unchanged, such as the operation of the Information Commissioner’s Office, digital identification, the national underground asset register, the electronic use of the register of births and marriages, the extension of smart data use, automated decision making, and the retention of information where required by coroners after child deaths. All those areas were included in the previous Bill, and I am delighted that they are still there in this one.

[Joe Robertson (Isle of Wight East) (Con)]

If I may, I will take this opportunity to explore some of my right hon. Friend’s knowledge and expertise in this area. Will he comment on the balance in this Bill between safeguards on the one hand and freedom on the other? I would be interested in his thoughts.

[Sir John Whittingdale]

If my hon. Friend is referring to data protection, it is a careful balance. People are rightly concerned that their data is protected and that they should have privacy rights, and there are campaigning organisations out there that have examined the Bill and expressed concern. We were careful to ensure that the standards of data protection required were maintained, and I am sure this Government take the same view.

At the same time—this is where there are small differences between the previous Bill and this Government’s Bill—we were keen to ensure that data protection did not impose unnecessary burdens, particularly on small businesses. There were one or two areas where we were able to slightly relax the definitions and to reduce the burden on business, but this Government have taken a different view. They are relatively minor and relatively technical areas, but there are things such as the definition of “vexatious and excessive”, which was an issue that occupied a lot of discussion. The Government have now removed that and reverted to the previous definition, which we felt was unnecessarily burdensome. There is also the whole area of subject access requests that would occupy a huge amount of firms’ time in trying to respond to them. We felt there needed to be at least some safeguard to prevent those becoming, as we defined it, vexatious, so I regret the fact that the Government have not proceeded with that element.

However, those are relatively minor areas, and in large part the Bill is one that previously enjoyed cross-party consensus when it went through this Chamber in the last Parliament and that I suspect will continue to enjoy cross-party consensus as it moves into Committee in this Parliament. The Secretary of State is no longer with us, but I hasten to add that I am not volunteering to serve on the Public Bill Committee. Having previously endured many hours doing so, I do not particularly want to repeat that experience.

Perhaps in part because the Bill enjoys a lot of support across the House, there is inevitably a particular element about which there is real concern, and that is the area of copyright protection and artificial intelligence. It is worth saying that that was not originally in the Bill at all, and I congratulate Baroness Kidron, who managed to persuade the Clerks in the other place to allow her to move the amendments to insert it into the Bill, and it is now part of the Bill. I think those amendments are very important, and I very much welcome them.

The hon. Member for Bury North (Mr Frith) referred to the fact that the previous Government had not acted in this area, and he is right. The Conservatives did not act because we felt, and continue to feel, that the law on copyright is clear and does not need changing. This Government have proposed to change the law to bring in the text and data mining exception. That will create the opportunity for AI to take, scrape and ingest creative content, of the kind the hon. Member for Scarborough and Whitby mentioned, using an exception that the Government are bringing in. It was proposed under the last Government, but I can tell the House that the last Government rejected it precisely because we felt it would drive a coach and horses through copyright law and do real damage to the creative industries.

[Sam Carling (North West Cambridgeshire) (Lab)]

The right hon. Gentleman’s speech is very helpful, and he is making some useful points. The shadow Minister would not give us any clarity about his party’s position on the opt-out mechanism, so could he help: what is the Opposition’s position on that? Do they support it—yes or no?

[Sir John Whittingdale]

I am very happy to address that. I am not on the Front Bench, but I will tell the hon. Member my view, which is very clear: I have profound reservations about the opt-out, which reverses the whole principle of copyright law. The owners of rights will have to go and say that they do not want to have their rights taken away from them, otherwise there is a right for others to use their content. I would prefer to see an opt-in or, in actual fact, a licensing method whereby rights holders could agree, if they wished to do so, that their content could be used.

[Pete Wishart]

If only the right hon. Gentleman were on the Conservative Front Bench on these issues, we would have a little bit of clarity, but he is absolutely spot on. There is no issue with copyright at the moment and no confusion about what is required in the law. All the Government are doing is trying to create some sort of smokescreen so that they can start to dismantle and water down our copyright regime. What does he think about those attempts, and will he join the rest of us in standing up for the copyright regime as it stands, where there is no question about its legality?

[Sir John Whittingdale]

I assure the hon. Gentleman that I have no wish to replace my hon. Friend the Member for Havant (Alan Mak), who is doing an excellent job. Nevertheless, the hon. Gentleman and I have been involved in discussions on copyright for many years, and I share his view. Indeed, I welcomed the debate that we had in this place just a couple of weeks ago on the creative industries, where a lot of these arguments were rehearsed, and the Minister helpfully agreed that there is no workable opt-out technology available.

The existing opt-out, which the European Union has suggested, simply does not work. On top of that, it is unenforceable. The Minister and the Secretary of State have suggested that they would not proceed unless a workable opt-out could be developed. It would be a first if it were. In any case, I am opposed to opt-out in principle, but it is at present practically impossible to introduce. I hear the Secretary of State talking about the technology companies working to bring a workable solution forward, but I hope that the Minister will again make clear that the Government will not proceed unless there is a viable, workable technological solution that allows rights holders to make clear that they do not wish to have their works used by artificial intelligence training models, and have that enforced.

[Chris Bryant]

I think it might be easier if I respond to that now. Yes, I completely and utterly agree with the right hon. Gentleman. That is our settled view. We want to get to a process where there is more licensing of content, and we have said that repeatedly. It is one of the aims of our consultation. He says that copyright does not need changing, but the amendments tabled by Baroness Kidron in the Lords do change copyright law. We will somehow have to square that circle at some point during the Bill’s progress.

[Sir John Whittingdale]

The amendments that Baroness Kidron tabled put in clear terms what we believe the law is already. A number of cases are going through, and the hon. Member for Scarborough and Whitby referred to one in America. That important judgment said that AI training did not constitute fair use. That was an American court, but previously we had been told that America was ahead in encouraging and promoting the use of this technology. It is reassuring that even in America, they recognise the importance of protecting creative works. A news publisher brought forward that case.

It is important that we recognise that creative industries in their broadest definition are affected by this issue, and the newspaper publishers are particularly anxious about the consequences. One of Baroness Kidron’s amendments, which is now in the Bill, emphasises the importance of transparency, and I know the Minister agrees with that, but it also requires companies to make clear, in meeting the transparency requirements, exactly what kind of activity the web crawlers are involved in.

Newspaper publishers depend upon search, and it is important that the search engines can find and flag up their content, because without that they will not get the audiences they need. That is a different exercise from training for ingestion and AI-created content. If the Bill is about requiring transparency, the amendments passed in the Lords seek to achieve that, and I hope they will be preserved, because it is important that we have that transparency, not just as a general principle but in detail in that way.

Two weeks ago, the Minister gave some welcome assurances, and he has done so again this afternoon. We need to continue the debate. As he said, if the Government proceed, legislation will be required in due course, which we will obviously want to examine carefully.

A view has been expressed on behalf of the creative industries and publishers that while the Minister and other members of the Government have been open to discussions, the Secretary of State has not met them, so I was pleased to hear him earlier give the assurance that he would meet them, because this is of such vital importance to them.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Havant said, there is a lack of any economic impact assessment on the proposals in the consultation paper. I hope that the Government will produce such an economic impact assessment.

This is a subject that was not intended to be included in the Bill—I welcome the fact that it is—but it is obviously one that we will debate again many times.

[Chris Bryant]

In Committee.

[Sir John Whittingdale]

Perhaps outside Committee as well. I will rely on my colleagues who serve on the Committee to carry out the work at that point as well. I thank the Minister for his willingness to engage and assure him that we will continue to do so.

--- Later in debate ---

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

It is an absolute pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Stirling and Strathallan (Chris Kane). He was spot on in reminding us that data has always existed in various forms throughout the centuries, whether in volumes or in little things that we can plug into a computer. The only difference now is that all that data is scraped and ingested into huge machines, which regurgitate it into some form that only they will decide. The hon. Gentleman was also spot on in reminding us about his work at Central FM, a very fine radio station. This hon. Member is always available for interviews at any time that Central FM comes a-calling.

This is an alright Bill. It is good. It is quite fine. It is reasonable in its approach and intent. It is a good shot at trying to redefine our data regulation laws. It will do a good job of ensuring that our public services are more aligned and mainstream, and that access is available to all our constituents. However, it is a much better Bill because of some of the amendments made in the House of Lords. The amendments that were added at the later stages went further on child protection in online data and looked into deepfakes, which was particularly helpful, and I congratulate our colleagues down the corridor on bringing them forward. It is a much better Bill because of the amendments that were delivered by Baroness Kidron on copyright and transparency. They significantly improved the Bill to make it something worth defending and protecting. I hope that that will be the main mission as it continues to go through this House.

You will know, Madam Deputy Speaker, that it is unusual for me to congratulate our be-ermined unelected friends down the corridor, but this oiky Nat will doff his cap to their lords, their ladies, their barons and their earls, because they have done a good job at shaping the Bill. It is certainly a much better Bill than it was on Second Reading down the corridor.

I have a few issues with the Bill. There are concerns about the security of some of this data. I am particularly worried about some of the relationships within the EU-UK partnership, and I just hope that whatever is proposed in the Bill does not drag us further away from the mainstream when it comes to the European Union. The right hon. Member for Maldon (Sir John Whittingdale) and I agree about most things when it comes to the creative sector, but we do not agree about the European Union and the benefits of this country leaving it. I am a passionate remainer, and I hope that at some point I will be able to take our country back into the European Union, as a proud member of the Scottish National party; my intention and ambition is that we go back into that fantastic union of nations that has done so much to enrich our culture and our lives.

[Sir John Whittingdale]

The hon. Gentleman is right that we do not agree on this particular issue. Of course, were we to rejoin the EU, we would then be bound by its legislation on this very issue, which includes the opt-out.

[Pete Wishart]

This is where the right hon. Gentleman and I do profoundly disagree. I look at this arrangement and the partnership across the European Union as a positive—it is a good thing. We were major contributors to some of the EU directives put forward on copyright and artificial intelligence. They miss us, and we miss them; we were just so much better when we were in partnership. I think we will just have to respectfully agree to disagree as we go forward on this particular issue.

Creative Industries

John Whittingdale Excerpts

Monday 27th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Sir John Whittingdale (Maldon) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to take part in this debate and indeed to echo what has been said by many Members on both sides of the House. I think this debate will produce pretty much unanimity on the importance of our creative industries. It is a particular pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Dame Caroline Dinenage)—my successor but three, I believe, as Chairman of the Select Committee—and I am going to concentrate on one or two of the things she said.

It is happily now recognised how important the creative industries are to the UK’s economy. There has been a growing awareness of this over a long period, ever since a separate Department was founded in the form of the Department of National Heritage, which became the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. The creative industries are something that the UK is extraordinarily good at. It is still the case that the best-selling music artists of all time, the Beatles, are British, as is the best-selling author of all time, Agatha Christie. And now, today, when we go to a Hollywood movie, the chances are that it will have been made in Pinewood, even though that is not immediately obvious from what we see on the screen. Advertisements also originate in this country, as does publishing, as the Minister and many other Members have highlighted.

As the Minister said, there is an ecosystem whereby our most successful commercial creative enterprises rely on the subsidised sector, and vice versa. Let us take David Tennant as an example. He started life in “Hamlet” with the Royal Shakespeare Company, went on to “Doctor Who” and ended up in “Rivals”. I have seen all three, and they were all highly enjoyable. The subsidised sector has also benefited over the years from a Conservative invention, the national lottery. It has produced an enormous amount of money, which the taxpayer probably could not have afforded to invest, and many enterprises have benefited from that.

I echo what has been said about the importance of education and the need to ensure that arts are at the core of our curriculum, and also about the importance of grassroots music venues. I went to a Music Venue Trust reception last week, as a number of Members did. I was really interested to hear the remarks of the hon. Member for Wimbledon (Mr Kohler). I did not quite get to the Roxy, but I did go regularly to the Marquee club in Wardour Street, with its sweaty atmosphere, where I heard people such as Buzzcocks and the Clash, and great bands such as Iron Maiden, who started off life in those small venues. It is a shame that the Marquee club is no longer with us and that so many venues still struggle, but I must say that had it not been for the culture recovery fund, which my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport oversaw as Minister in the Department during the covid pandemic, there would be virtually no small venues, or indeed large venues, left in this country. The culture recovery fund kept venues from the Hot Box in Chelmsford all the way up to the Royal Albert Hall going. They were looking over the precipice until the Government stepped in.

The creative industries also bring enormous benefits to this country internationally. I, too, welcome the Government’s creation of the Soft Power Council. Having served as Chairman of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, I now sit on the Foreign Affairs Committee, and we continue to collaborate between Committees in looking at the importance of soft power. About two weeks ago, we heard from the British Council, which was mentioned earlier in the debate. The British Council does an extremely important job, and it is ridiculous that it has to go to the Government every year and ask to have the loan rolled over, and that it is staring at insolvency until an agreement is reached. I hope that is something that the Government will now address.

The British Council does many worthy things, but I have a soft spot for one thing in particular that it administers—I hope that both Ministers on the Front Bench share this—and that is the cultural protection fund. That is another initiative from this country in which we use our world-beating expertise from places such as the British Museum to help to ensure that some of the world’s greatest heritage is preserved, particularly when it is at risk from conflict.

We need to recognise that there is an increasingly competitive environment across the creative industries. British music is still extraordinarily successful, but 2023 was the first year when there was no British artist among the top 10 best-selling artists across the world. Four of the best-selling artists in the world in 2023 were Korean. That shows where the markets are developing. They are developing in south America, too. It is important that we continue to support creative industries such as the music industry through, for instance, the music export growth scheme, which was set up by the last Government and which I know this Government are continuing. I welcome that and hope that it will be maintained.

I also want to say a word about copyright, as almost every other speaker in this debate has done. I chair the all-party parliamentary group on intellectual property, and we recently had a meeting with the chairs of all the APPGs representing music, publishing, the visual arts and the media, who came together to listen to representatives of those creative industries express their deep concern about the Government’s suggestion that they might introduce an exception to the copyright protection, which would benefit AI.

There are good things about AI. It is not a threat to be beaten off; it can be of real value to the creative industries. Companies such as Universal Music are using AI, and it is a new technology that consumers and those industries will benefit from. At the same time, protection is needed to ensure that intellectual property rights are not abused. The Minister says that there is legal uncertainty, but the fact that intellectual property rights owners are defending their rights by going to court does not mean that the law is wrong. They are using the law, but that does not necessarily mean that the law is not perfectly clear.

We welcome elements of the Government’s proposals, and transparency is vital. If rights owners are to be able to protect their property, they first need to know where their property is being used. Transparency is the first essential requirement for that to happen, so I very much welcome the Government’s proposal to ensure transparency where AI large language models use content from across the internet to generate their own content.

The consultation highlights the alarm about a text and data mining exception. On one hand, the Government say they are consulting on that, but on the other hand, when the Secretary of State made his statement in the House just a couple of weeks ago, he said that the Government were accepting all of Matt Clifford’s recommendations. One of those recommendations is to introduce a text and data mining exception, so I hope the Minister can say something about that.

[Chris Bryant]

Matt Clifford made that recommendation —recommendation 24—and, in response, we have said that we are consulting. We have not decided; we are consulting. It is a consultation, not the Second Reading of a Bill.

[Sir John Whittingdale]

I am extremely grateful to the Minister, and it is of some reassurance that the Government’s mind is still open. I hope they will listen to the voices across the Chamber expressing concern.

There is an objection in principle to option 3, which is the idea that rights holders have to opt out. It reverses what has long been the case—that people can rely on the protection of their rights unless they choose to give them up. They should not have to ask for their rights to be protected, and that is what an opt-out system entails. There would no longer be automatic protection under an opt-out system, and it would put a huge burden on many small rights holders. There is a suggestion that photographers might have to seek an opt-out for every picture they have ever taken. Now, I hope that is not the case, but a lot of uncertainty has been created.

Each creative industry is different. As the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society told us last week, writers may want their works to be used for some purposes but not for others, but it appears that this will be a binary system in which they either opt in or opt out.

This is also incredibly difficult to enforce. If somebody takes a picture of a painting on their phone and puts it on social media, how can the rights owner prevent it from being used by a large language model that goes out and absorbs all this content? As has already been said, there is no workable system in existence that allows for opting out. The EU has tried to introduce one and, as I am sure the Minister is fully aware, the robots.txt standard is supposed to identify—

[Chris Bryant]

It’s useless.

[Sir John Whittingdale]

The Minister is entirely right—it is useless.

The problem, therefore, is that there is no workable solution at the moment. The Minister and the Government have said that they will not introduce this option until there is a workable system in existence. That is reassuring, but how will the Minister decide whether a proposed system is indeed workable? If it is workable, how will it be enforced? Will individual rights holders have to go to court if they believe they have opted out but find that their works are still being used? There is a whole host of questions.

I recognise the Minister’s commitment and wish to find a way to protect rights, but there are an awful lot of questions at the moment, and there do not appear to be any answers. I hope he can address some of those questions.

Artificial Intelligence Opportunities Action Plan

John Whittingdale Excerpts

Monday 13th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Peter Kyle]

The people and businesses of High Peak have a great champion in my hon. Friend, and as such they will be able to reap the rewards. We need all parts of the economy to embrace digital technology fully in a digital future, and to do so with confidence. The Office for Budget Responsibility said some time ago that if businesses across Britain did do so equally it would add 0.5% to productivity, which would mean £27 billion of fiscal headroom for the Exchequer. We have set about doing so because that is how we can break out of the inheritance from the Conservative Government of high tax and low growth. We want to invest in that future, and small businesses will be at the forefront. The great thing about AI and digital technology is that it puts into the hands of small businesses the kind of power that to date has only been within the reach of large businesses. This is a huge opportunity, and I hope that people running small and medium-sized enterprises across the country will grab it with both hands.

[Sir John Whittingdale (Maldon) (Con)]

This morning the Prime Minister spoke about the Government’s wish to develop a clear and trusted copyright regime, which is, I believe, what many in the creative industries thought we already had. When the Secretary of State comes to consider Matt Clifford’s recommendation for reform of the text and data mining regime, will the consultation include consideration of potentially strengthening intellectual property protection rather than weakening it?

[Peter Kyle]

The right hon. Gentleman is a persistent advocate of the issue that he has raised, but let me gently say to him that if the current legal regime were so satisfactory, there would not be so many outstanding court cases concerning that precise issue; it is clearly struggling to keep up with the time in which we are living. We want to ensure that, yes, we do strengthen the rights of the people who use the creative industries and all the great potential that that has for individual copyrighted material, and we want to strengthen that into the future, but also to get it right for the future. That is why we are thinking about the needs, demands and opportunities of the future, and making sure that the settlement for those creating digital, AI and creative industry products and services benefits them equally as we go forward, and that they have the assertion of the law.

Oral Answers to Questions

John Whittingdale Excerpts

Wednesday 8th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. She could big up her own constituency a little more, because Margate is probably one of the greatest centres of artists in this country. It is where Turner was trained and went to school, and where we have Turner Contemporary. It is also where Tracey Emin is doing so much work and many other artists as well. It is a brilliant hub.

We want to make sure—as we did in the last Labour Government, when we introduced the artist’s resale right—that artists can earn a living from their art. That is what we are determined to do. Just as last year New Zealand and Australia entered into the same agreement for an artist’s resale right, we want to make sure that there is a future revenue stream for every single artist in this country.

[Sir John Whittingdale (Maldon) (Con)]

Does the Minister agree that transparency is crucial if creators are to understand where their works are being used by AI developers? Can he therefore assure me that the Government will legislate on transparency whatever the outcome of the consultation on copyright reform?

[Chris Bryant]

The right hon. Gentleman makes a good point about transparency, which is a key element of our consultation. We have presented a package because we want to ensure there is a win-win here. We want AI developers to have the legal certainty that they need to develop their products in the UK as UK producers, and for creative industries to know when their works are being used, so that if they want to say no they can say no, and if they want to say yes they will be properly remunerated for it.