EU: Digital Single Market

Lord Aberdare Excerpts

Tuesday 20th October 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

My Lords, I entirely share the noble Lord’s concern about territorial licensing. Reforms will need to be very carefully assessed to ensure that they do not undermine incentives to invest in the production of content, particularly by our European and British creative industries that contributed £77 billion to UK GVA in 2013.

[Lord Aberdare (CB)]

My Lords, the EU digital single market programme includes 16 separate initiatives covering issues ranging from parcel delivery to a European cloud. Can the Minister tell us which of these the UK Government see as having the highest priority and what specific results they would like to see emerge within the next couple of years?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

My Lords, we see the 16 headings as a good menu from which to choose. What we are hoping to see is some progress quarter by quarter. As I have already said, we see the priorities for the next few months to be copyright and consumer protection, but the other headings are also important because of the huge potential of digital to fuel innovation and growth across Europe and to help our competitive position.