Deregulation Bill

Lord Black of Brentwood Excerpts

Thursday 5th February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Black of Brentwood (Con)]

My Lords, I support the amendment, and in doing so I draw attention to my various media interests as listed in the register. Like my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones, I believe that Section 73 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 is an outdated piece of legislation that was designed in a bygone age. As I said when we discussed this in Committee, we should always look very warily at legislation that binds the media that is 27 years old. When this legislation was put on to the statute book, we were all still having difficulty getting photocopiers to work—mind you, I still have that sometimes—and the fax machine was something of a novelty. The world and technology have moved on, and above all the broadcasting industry has moved on, yet this legislation has not. It should. As the noble Lord said, it seems to be quite wrong that at a time when the commercial public sector broadcasters are under real pressure, as indeed is the newspaper industry, it is the cable platforms that are getting content for free and receiving huge benefits from retransmitting content without payment or licence.

Something is very wrong, which I suspect is why, as the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, said, there was near unanimity of support and a clear cross-party consensus in Committee on this issue among Back-Bench Peers, many of whom are experts in the industry. I am rather used to being a lone voice when it comes to some media issues in this House, but on this occasion I am delighted that all of us agree that repealing Section 73 would help protect our commercial public service broadcasting industry and its investment in brilliant and original UK content and, indeed, in regional news. The creative industries across the UK would get a huge boost as a result.