Data (Use and Access) Bill [HL]

Lord Arbuthnot of Edrom Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 28th January 2025 Lords Chamber

There are many potential uses for generative AI—we are in a period of early exploration—but I ask the Minister to think long and hard before giving up the protection of creatives and innovators with respect to their ideas and their works in the service of the claims of need from generative AI manufacturers. We need to interrogate why they really need copyrighted works in their training sets, and what service they are really going to deliver as a result of having them. If it is a matter of technical difficulties around not being able to differentiate copyrighted works, that is a problem to be solved, not a reason for abandoning copyright protection. And the people who solve problems are the creatives—the people whose livelihoods are under threat.

[Lord Arbuthnot of Edrom (Con)]

My Lords, as a former Chief Whip, I am all too well aware of the dangers of listening to a debate. However, I have to tell my noble friend Lord Camrose that I have been persuaded by what I have heard so far, and I am afraid that he may have a great deal of work to do to persuade me not to vote for this amendment.

[Lord Cashman (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I have reluctantly stayed out of this debate precisely because I am a copyright holder with copyrights stretching back over several decades. But, having listened to the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, and others, it would be entirely wrong of me to remain silent.

I have to express deep concern and disbelief that the Labour Party of Jennie Lee and of Chris Smith is proposing such a way forward. You cannot on the one hand talk about the importance to every single member of our country—whether at school or going to the high arts of opera—of the importance of the creative industries, and then, with legislation, begin their demolition.

The Government’s approach is entirely wrong. Yes, they can strip away my rights. Indeed, only last week I received the huge sum of £1.76 for a performance. But that £1.76 represented a contract between an artist and someone who used the artist’s material. We are destroying that principle of contract.

These amendments seem sensible, rational and reasonable, and they open the door for the development of AI in exactly the same way as when, as one of the offices of the British Actors’ Equity Association in the early 1990s, we were tasked with negotiating with the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 on the brilliant and new innovation of cable and satellite. We negotiated in order to try to protect artists, some hugely successful and some not so successful. Those negotiations took two years—although we do not have two years now—and at the start of them we were told that we would never reach an agreement. We reached an agreement, which has been adapted and adopted for all other forms of the use of television and audio material.

Are the Government seriously telling us that we do not have the wit, intelligence or drive as a country to come to an adequate negotiation that protects copyright and advances AI? If they are seriously telling us that, I urge noble Lords to disregard it. I urge your Lordships most of all to vote not for the Elton Johns or the Paul McCartneys but for that one person who might be relying on that £1.76, and support these amendments.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 47, I shall speak also to Amendment 48.

Here we are again: the Computer Misuse Act 1990 is another year older. It was put into statute at a time when technology looked nothing like it did 10 or 20 years ago, never mind today. I will give some brief facts. We have a fantastic cyber sector in our country, which adds so much to our economy and safety. The Computer Misuse Act constrains the sector from keeping us as safe as it might and constrains businesses in terms of their growth and what they could be adding today to our economy in terms of—yes—growth.

There is no reason for us to continue with the Computer Misuse Act when we have the solution in our hands, set out, I suggest, in Amendments 47 and 48. Our cyber- security professionals, often working way out of sight, for obvious reasons, do such important work and professionally, diligently, keep us safe and keep our country, assets and economy secure.

When the Minister responds, will he say, even sotto voce, that a Division on these amendments might help him in his discussions within the department to get some movement on this issue? We heard in previous debates how doing this would be premature and how the time was not now. Well, for a statute that came into being at the beginning of the 1990s, I suggest that it is high time that we made these amendments for individuals, for businesses, for our economy and for our society, in an extraordinarily uncertain world and at a time when I imagine that every Minister should be looking to every potential source of economic growth. I look forward to the debate and to the Minister’s response. I beg to move.

[Lord Arbuthnot of Edrom (Con)]

My Lords, in Committee, the noble Baroness the Minister said there was no consensus on the best way forward to amend the law to provide protection for ethical hackers trying to work against cybercrime. All I ask is that noble Lords should read the amendment, which says:

“It is a defence to a charge … to prove that … the person’s actions were necessary for the detection or prevention of crime or … the person’s actions were justified as being in the public interest”.


What on earth could be wrong with that? I support my noble friend Lord Holmes of Richmond.