Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Wednesday 14th November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I am very comforted that the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, feels comfortable about her bits of the Bill, given what a superb job her organisation has done on Wrest Park in Bedfordshire, in which I have a strong interest, and the good work it is doing generally. It is on song at the moment. I very much hope the Minister will pay attention to its views.

I welcome this Bill. I do not share the view that it is a pity that it is such a miscellaneous Bill. It is great that we are not making any radical changes but are instead making much needed changes in small ways. Change works better in that fashion.

I will be concerned with only two parts of the Bill. The first is copyright. I thoroughly approve of what the Government are doing. They have got the balance pretty well right. However, there are arguments against, and I will listen to them carefully. I look forward to enjoying the Committee stage and to seeing if there is anything that needs to be done to improve the Bill. Doubtless we will find the opportunity to discuss things such as fair use and other aspects of copyright that do not appear in this Bill but might perhaps appear in a future Bill.

The other aspect is going to be competition. I want to be sure that the new arrangements have sharp enough teeth and enough ability to act on their own decision to deal with that tax-avoiding, morality-free monopsony that is Amazon. It is a very good place to shop, but it is a very oppressive business. It has extraordinary contracts with its suppliers. Its arrangements with its Marketplace sellers must breach something, but I have, in the past six months, been unable to find a single major UK publisher who was willing to have tea in the Lords to tell me what they think of Amazon. It has got the whole business frightened. I want the organisation we create to have enough confidence and oomph to tackle things such as this on its accord rather than waiting for some frightened Penguin to complain.