Creative Industries
Debate between Nusrat Ghani and Chris Bryant(6 days, 21 hours ago)
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Chris Bryant
I have heard tell of a film studio in the hon. Member’s constituency, so I wondered whether he was going to refer to that. Obviously, the previous Government and this Government have been committed in different ways to ensuring that we expand the provision of film studio space in the country. We are almost up to the level of having more space than Hollywood, and we are keen to progress that. Again, if he wants to come into the Department and talk about the specifics of what we might be able to do in his constituency, I would be happy to do that. He is right that sometimes we have focused on the massive projects, but we cannot get many massive projects in the creative industries without starting with the small and medium-sized businesses, and that is where we need to go.
One thing that has stood in the way of film studios for quite some time is the re-evaluation of business rates. I am glad that we have got to a much more sensible position over the past 12 months on the matter. Likewise, planning applications have been phenomenally difficult in many cases. We were proud to put £25 million into the Crown Works studio in Gateshead, which I look forward to visiting soon.
One of the principal barriers to innovation in 2025 is that not enough investment is going into research and development in the creative industries, and I know the Select Committee has looked at that. It is why the Prime Minister’s Council for Science and Technology recommended that
“Public investment in R&D in the creative industries should reflect the size, economic contribution, and future growth potential of the sector.”
That is why we confirmed earlier this month that we will strengthen the investment from our national research funding agency—UK Research and Innovation—into creative research and development.
Another part of the equation is, of course, tax relief. One of the great catalysts for the strong growth of our creative industries has been targeted tax reliefs for different sectors, introduced by both the Conservative Government and this Labour Government. We built on those reliefs in our first 100 days in government, with an enhanced independent film tax credit to support home-grown talent and UK co-productions and an enhanced tax relief for visual effects from the start of this year. That tax relief sends a clear message to our directors, visual effect artists and actors: “Be courageous, take risks and reap the rewards. Your Government are behind you.” I hope to be able to say more on film and high-end television at the Select Committee tomorrow morning—I am sure the Committee has some difficult questions for me.
On skills, education and the workforce, we want to see more good-quality creative jobs and more creative businesses popping up across the country. But too often what I hear from young people is that they could no more dream of getting those jobs than going to the moon. That is not just a tragic waste of human potential; it is bad business. That is why Steven Knight, the creator of “Peaky Blinders”, who is working to bring a film school to Birmingham, is recruiting and training 20% of the workforce from local postcodes, and I applaud him. It is essential for investors to know that they do not have to incur the cost of shipping people in to work on a project when that talent exists everywhere, but the opportunity does not.
That is why we made it a core priority in our manifesto to improve access to the arts and music as part of our opportunity mission. We wasted no time in getting that work under way, with the Education Secretary launching an expert-led independent curriculum and assessment review within a month of the general election. On top of that, we provided a further £3 million to expand the creative careers programme, so that we can broaden and diversify the talent pipeline in the creative industries.
Only by restoring culture’s place in the classroom and beyond will we be able to get young people ready for the creative jobs of tomorrow. We set up Skills England to work with employers and to help give us a coherent national picture of where skills gaps exist and how they can be addressed through further qualifications and technical education. In its first report, Skills England highlighted the importance of the creative industries for both current and future opportunity and growth.
We also need to ensure that there are opportunities in the workplace. We know that apprenticeships can be incredible springboards into creative careers, but that relies on there being a levy that works in the interests of employers and apprentices. For years before the general election, I heard repeatedly from the creative industries how difficult it was to use the apprenticeship levy in their industry. If someone is making a film, it might be a six, seven or eight-month project, which was not enough to meet the previous criteria for the apprenticeship levy. That is why I am really proud that we are working with Skills England to transform the apprenticeship levy into a new growth and skills levy, to create opportunities and provide greater flexibility for employers and apprenticeships. We plan to bring forward changes so that shorter apprenticeships are available from August 2025, recognising the particular needs of the creative industries. A 12-month apprenticeship is no good for employers who need skills for projects that are shorter than that. We are knocking down that needless hurdle.
For sectors such as music, the grassroots is always where it all begins. We are therefore not only continuing to support Arts Council England’s supporting grassroots music fund, but working up a 12-point plan for music—it says 10-point plan here, but when I looked at it this morning, it was already a 12-point plan. The truth of the matter is that music is a vital part of our lives, whether it is classical music, opera, pop music or heavy metal, which some people like—I see the former Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Maldon (Sir John Whittingdale), nodding in a heavy metal sort of way; he has to be careful at his age, although I think he is younger than I am. The point is that we all have our different tastes in music, but we know how important it is to people’s enjoyment of life and to their being able to express themselves.
There is also nothing as important as being able to go to a live music event. One thing we are working very hard on—I made a statement about it earlier this year—is trying to make sure that the secondary ticket market, which has behaved in a frankly duplicitous and often parasitical way towards the music industry, is brought to heel and actually operates in the interests of fans.
I also want to talk about exports. We have some remarkable export strengths in the creative industries. Publishing achieved year-on-year growth and is now worth £11.6 billion to our economy, with export income accounting for almost 60% of its revenue. We are the largest book exporter in the world, and we should be proud of it. However, we need more success stories like publishing, and we need to make sure that the problems that publishing is having with exporting books—for instance, to the European Union—are overcome.
If we are to have such success stories, we need to fix some of the issues that the last Government unfortunately failed to address, such as touring. If we want the next generation of Ed Sheerans, Dua Lipas, Adeles and Stormzys to stand any chance of breaking into new markets, they must be able to perform overseas without having to navigate a maze of rules and regulations. That is why we are engaging with the EU and EU member states to find an answer that improves arrangements for touring across the European continent, without seeing a return to free movement.
That equally applies to the art market. Artworks are being brought to the UK to be sold in the UK art market, where they might command the highest price, but they are facing great difficulties entering the country. That is the kind of thing we also need to sort out.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
Order. The Minister is giving a very substantial speech, but he has been on his feet for 30 minutes. Hopefully he will be coming to a conclusion at some point.
Chris Bryant
I am afraid that I inherited this speech, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I will try to shut up as soon as I possibly can. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”] I think I have united the House there. That was very unkind—I feel a bit upset now.
It will not have escaped hon. Members that the challenges I have outlined today are all interconnected. As I have said, we cannot have thriving creative businesses without creative talent with the right skills. We will not see strong export growth numbers if businesses are unable to access the finance they need to expand. The independent film tax relief will be worth nothing if we do not have a curriculum that values culture and fosters, champions and promotes creativity. That is why we are focused on the whole creative ecosystem—from the first spark of inspiration in the classroom, through the first leap into the unknown at a theatre or grassroots music venue, to getting the first foot on the ladder to take a local business national or a national business global. This Government recognise that it all matters, and through the partnership I have spoken about today, we hope to make sure that growth in those industries continues for many decades to come.
Copyright and Artificial Intelligence
Debate between Nusrat Ghani and Chris Bryant(1 month, 2 weeks ago)
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The Minister for Creative Industries, Arts and Tourism (Chris Bryant)
And now for something completely different! With permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I will make a statement regarding our launch of a public consultation on copyright and artificial intelligence.
The United Kingdom has a proud tradition of creativity and technical innovation. From our film and television sectors to video games, publishing, music, design and fashion, our creative industries are a cornerstone of our economy and our creative identity. They bring £125 billion to the economy and employ over 2.3 million people. James Bond, the Beatles, Vivienne Westwood, Adele, “Vera”, Bridget Riley, “Tomb Raider”, the Sugababes, “Football Manager”, Paddington and Paul Smith are all part of an immensely valuable British industry.
The creative industries are central to our economic future, and we are determined to help them flourish. The same is true of artificial intelligence—both as an enabler of other industries, including the creative industries, and as a sector in its own right. The Government are determined to capitalise on the UK’s position of strength in the global AI sector and will soon publish the AI opportunities action plan, which will set out an ambitious road map to unlock AI’s transformative potential across our economy and public services.
Both the creative industries and AI sectors are at the heart of our industrial strategy, and they are also increasingly interlinked. AI is already being used across the creative industries, from music and film production to publishing, architecture and design; it has transformed post-production, for instance. As of September 2024, more than 38% of creative industries businesses said that they have used AI technologies, with nearly 50% using AI to improve their business operations.
Strong copyright laws have been the bedrock of the creative industries, but as things stand, the application of UK copyright law to the training of AI models is fiercely disputed. Rights holders, including musicians, record labels, artists and news publishers, are finding it difficult to control the use of their works to train AI models, and they want and need a greater ability to manage such activity and to be paid for it. Likewise, AI developers, including UK-based start-ups, are finding it difficult to navigate copyright law and complain that the legal uncertainty means that they are unable to train leading models in the UK.
The status quo cannot continue. It risks limiting investment, innovation and growth in the creative industries, the AI sector and the wider economy. Neither side can afford to wait for expensive litigation—either here or in the US—to clarify the law, not least because courts in different jurisdictions may come to different conclusions and individual cases may not provide clarity across the sector. Nor can we simply rely on voluntary co-operation. That is why we think the Government must take proactive and thoughtful action that works for all parties.
The consultation published yesterday sets out clearly that the Government’s objectives on this issue are threefold: to enhance rights holders’ control of their material and their ability to be paid for its use, to support wide access to high-quality material to drive the development of leading AI models in the UK, and to secure greater transparency from AI developers in order to build trust with creators, creative industries and consumers. In short, we want to provide legal certainty for all and to secure enhanced licensing of content.
There are three key aspects to our consultation. The first is increased transparency from AI developers. That includes the content that they have used in training their large language models, how they acquire it, and any content generated by their models. In other words, consumers should know whether a book or song has been generated by a person or by artificial intelligence, and whose content helped generate it in the first place. The second aspect is a new system of rights reservation, whereby rights holders can withhold their content from being used unless and until it has been licensed. The third is an exception to copyright law for text and data mining where rights holders have licensed their content or otherwise chosen not to reserve their rights. That would improve access to content by AI developers, while allowing rights holders to control how their content is used for AI training.
Those measures are contingent upon each other. Progressed together, we believe this package of measures could enhance the ability of rights holders to protect their material and seek payment for its use through increased licensing, while also enabling AI developers to train leading models in the UK in full compliance with UK law. It will, however, only work if there is a proper system of rights reservation in place. I urge everyone to read and respond to the consultation document and to examine the safeguards we are proposing for rights holders. I would especially urge both AI developers and rights holders to work with us to identify a simple, practical, proportionate and effective technical system of rights reservation, without which the whole package will not work.
We are conscious that the UK does not operate in a hermetically sealed bubble, and this provides its own challenges. If we were to adopt a too tight regime based on proactive explicit permission, the danger is that international developers would continue to train their models using UK content accessed overseas but may not be able to deploy them in the UK. As AI becomes increasingly powerful and widely adopted globally, this could significantly disadvantage sectors across our economy, including the creative industries, and sweep the rug from underneath British AI developers. That is why, as well taking this approach in the UK, we are committed to international engagement and recognise the importance of international alignment.
This consultation is a joint effort between the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and the Intellectual Property Office, and between the Under-Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, my wonderful hon. Friend the Member for Enfield North (Feryal Clark), who has responsibility for AI, and me, with responsibility for the creative industries.
This is not an academic exercise. The consultation is absolutely clear that we will not implement these changes unless and until we are confident that we have a practical, practicable and effective plan that meets our objectives of enhancing rights holder control, providing legal certainty around AI firms’ access to content, and providing transparency for rights holders and AI developers of all sizes. My fellow Minister and I will be engaging directly with a wide range of people in an attempt to find practical and technical solutions to this question.
Many people have called this an existential question for our creative industries. They are right. We therefore see this consultation as a pivotal opportunity to ensure that sustained growth and innovation for the UK’s AI sector continues to benefit creators, businesses and consumers alike while preserving the values and principles that make our creative industries so unique. We believe that there is a potential win-win solution, and that the UK, with its strong traditions of copyright and technological innovation, is in a unique place to deliver it. I commend this statement to the House.
Chris Bryant
Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker.
Fortunately, I asked ChatGPT what the shadow Minister would ask me and it was pretty much right—although some of the questions from ChatGPT were rather more to the point. I will deal with the serious points he made.
First, the shadow Minister raised the point about mimicking artists. That is one of the things we are consulting on. There is a legitimate question about whether we should take further action in this country. Tennessee has acted: it has got its ELVIS Act—the Ensuring Likeness Voice and Image Security Act. California and a couple of other states in the United States of America have acted on this already, and whether we should move in that direction is a perfectly legitimate question.
Likewise, the shadow Minister referred to computer-generated works. He will probably know that under section 9(3) of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 there is provision that seems to guarantee the right for computer-generated art to be copyright-protected. That is not the case in most other countries, and it could be argued that developments in recent copyright law on the nature of originality would suggest that, unless a human being is directly involved in the creation of the work, there should not be copyright protection. We have suggested a direction of travel to get rid of section 9(3) of the Act.
The shadow Minister said that we have delayed bringing this forward, but I merely point out that for quite a long time the previous Government said that they would bring forward a voluntary system, bringing the two sides together. Nothing whatsoever came from that, so I am afraid that feels a bit of a cheat.
What I want to contest is the idea that we have sided with one or the other. There is a legitimate problem, which is that AI companies and the creative industries are at loggerheads in the courts in several different jurisdictions on several different points which are moot at the moment. We do not think that simply standing by the present situation will suffice because the danger is that in two or three years’ time all UK content will have been scraped by one or other AI developing company somewhere else in the world if there is no legal clarity in the UK. I would like to be able to bring all that home so that AI operators can work in this country with security under the law, using UK copyright that has been licensed and paid for, because that is another potential revenue stream for creators in this country.
The shadow Minister asks about extending the consultation. I am not going to extend the consultation. We want to crack on with this piece of work. Only two minutes earlier in his speech he said that we were delaying bringing it forward and then he said we should delay further. It is time that we seize hold of this. I certainly will meet with a large number of people. My fellow Minister my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield North and I have met many different organisations and we will be providing a list because it will be in our transparency returns published soon, and the number must run to dozens if not hundreds. Of course, there are differing views, but I make it absolutely clear that the three measures we are talking about—the transparency on inputs and outputs that AI developers will have to provide, the provisions for creators to reserve their rights, and the exemption for data mining for commercial purposes—are contingent upon each other. We will not move forward with such a package unless there is a technical solution to the question of how people can reserve their rights.
At the weekend, I looked online to see what it would be like to try to reserve rights, by pretending to be various musicians and artists. At present, it is phenomenally difficult and complicated—other Members may have questions about this—and that must change. There must be a proper rights reservation system that is easy to use, practicable and enables creators, either individually or collectively, to assert and maintain control of their rights.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
I call the Chair of the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee.
Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West) (Lab)
The UK is in a unique position—second in the world in the creative industries, and in the top three for AI innovation—so getting the right solution to protect and support our intellectual property, while supporting and incentivising AI innovation, is uniquely important to our cultural and economic life.
I am a former regulator and chartered engineer, so I welcome the Minister’s decision to go with regulatory technology as the solution, and to challenge the tech sector to come up with technology to ensure we can have both the reservation of rights and the transparency of inputs to large language models, both of which are critical.
The tech sector too often spends less time protecting people and property than maximising profit, but the language of the consultation is a bit vague. The Minister talked about arriving at a plan rather than a solution, so will he make it absolutely clear that any text and data mining exemption is contingent on the technology being deliverable, implementable and workable, and that if the technology fails, the exemption fails?
Chris Bryant
I welcome the Chair of the Select Committee to her place. She is 100% right that we cannot have the text and data mining exemption for commercial purposes unless there is a proper rights reservation system in place. I do not know whether she has looked at rights reservation, but it is terribly complicated. People can use the robots exclusion protocol, but it is rather out of date and is avoided by many players in the market. It is very complicated and applies only to a person’s own website, whereas their creative input might not be on their personal website—it might be on somebody else’s.
I tried to create a Bridget Riley using an AI bot over the weekend. The bot had obviously trained itself on some Bridget Riley works, but it was a shockingly bad Bridget Riley—it was nowhere near. I wanted to ask whether it had used Bridget Riley’s work to learn how to make a Bridget Riley-like picture and, if so, whether Bridget Riley received any compensation. Bridget Riley could use another website, haveibeentrained.com, if she wanted, but it is phenomenally complicated. That is precisely what must change. The AI companies must come up with a technical solution, whether they produce music, text or whatever. Without that, we will not be able to progress.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
It is always easier if the Minister looks at the Chair, so we can ensure that we are sticking to time limits.
I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.
Dynamic Ticket Pricing
Debate between Nusrat Ghani and Chris Bryant(4 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Chris Bryant
We would not want half-empty venues—despite looking around the Chamber—due to tickets being priced too high, nor venues and festivals that are not economically sustainable. What we should not accept, however—I am very clear about this, as are the Government —are practices that see fans of live events blindsided by price hikes, either because they were not provided with the right information up front or because that information was not provided clearly enough. Doing so might be in breach of existing consumer law, which requires businesses to be fair and transparent in their dealings with consumers. It is the responsibility of the CMA to investigate potential breaches of consumer law arising from or involving the use of dynamic pricing methods, and to take enforcement action where appropriate. I have already referred to its investigation in this case.
It is the responsibility of Government, however, to confront the wider policy questions around the use of dynamic pricing for tickets to live events. We have already said that we will look at this issue further to establish whether consumers are adequately protected under existing law, or whether more needs to be done. The hon. Member for Gosport asked whether this means that we are going to take our eye off the ball on the secondary ticketing market—it does not. We are very clear: we have a set of manifesto commitments, and we will bring out our consultation this autumn. Once we have completed that consultation, we expect to take the necessary action that we committed to in our general election manifesto. Since most of that action is in line with what the Select Committee was advocating before the general election, I hope we might still enjoy the Committee’s support for it.
The hon. Lady is right that we will also be looking at websites: that is part of the whole panoply of action. She also effectively referred to vertical integration within the ticketing system. Of course, that has to be part of our considerations, because it is another part of making sure that the market works for humanity—for fans, artists and the creative industries—rather than all of us having to operate as slaves of the market.
The Prime Minister has said that we are committed to putting fans at the heart of music and ending extortionate resales. As I have said, we will launch a consultation this autumn to work out how best we can do that. That consultation will look at tickets for live events, and a call for evidence on the topic of price transparency, including dynamic pricing, will be sent out. That will help us understand the needs of fans and the live events industry. To be absolutely clear with the House and the hon. Lady, that will be about tickets for live events, not the whole of dynamic pricing across all industries in the UK.
The hon. Lady asked when we will respond to the grassroots venues report from May. We have been getting our feet under the table as fast as we possibly can, and I am very eager to respond to that report in swift order. I take the responsibilities of Select Committees very seriously—I sat on the Culture, Media and Sport Committee from 2001 to 2005; it is one of the most important things I have done as a Member of Parliament—so we will respond as soon as we can. It will certainly be in the autumn, and I would like it to be as soon as possible after the Committee is fully formed.
In conclusion, I would like to thank the hon. Lady for securing this debate. I am not allowed to refer to what she tried to get as urgent questions, but I have now. We have a world-class live events sector in the UK, and I am absolutely determined that fans have every opportunity to experience it at first hand.
There is nothing better than someone standing in an audience—in a crowd, along with hundreds of other people—either experiencing an artist they have never seen before and suddenly realising, “My God, that’s just pierced right through to my heart”, or going to see somebody they have seen 50 times before, having listened to the album 75 times in the past week, and having that joyful moment. They will be different artists for every single one of us, but I want far more people in this country to be able to enjoy that opportunity. I want every child to have a creative education, and I want them to have the opportunities that so many others enjoy in my constituency and every other.
I acknowledge that dynamic pricing can help match supply with demand, resulting in both higher and lower prices, but when it is used as a business model it needs to be transparent and fair, and that is what we want to ensure.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
It was wonderful to hear from two musicians, and Sir Chris Bryant has given away his true old age.
Question put and agreed to.