Copyright (Rights and Remuneration of Musicians, etc.) Bill

Angela Richardson Excerpts

Friday 3rd December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Dean Russell (Watford) (Con)]

I should declare an interest: I am the chair of the all-party film and production industry group, of which the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan), who has done a great job by bringing this Bill to the House, is also a member. The group’s work covers music and many other things referred to in my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

I also want to register my interest as a huge music fan. I always have been, not only in respect of listening to music, which I will talk about a little, but as a musician myself—albeit that I have never even contemplated reaching the heights reached by the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart), who escalated to the mountaintops when I was in the foothills of musical achievement.

I wish not only to give my view on why music is so important to this country’s culture and why digital innovation is an important part of where we are heading but to look at that in the context of what the Bill would mean and the potential risks of it coming into force as it is currently. Let me state clearly, though, that I am very supportive of the principles that have been put forward today. We must celebrate and support artists throughout the UK and enable them to have a platform so that they have a stage for the entire world. It is important that we have the opportunity to look ahead and learn from the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee’s output and report. I support all Members who say to the Minister that we should make sure we build on that work. I am confident that the Government will listen and that we can grow from that.

Let me go back to when I was a youngster. The very first record that was given to me when I was a child was by—we have had a lot of references to pigs in recent speeches—Pinky and Perky. It was volume 2 of their famous vinyl album, if I recall correctly. I was a very young kid but I remember being given a fantastic small portable turntable, which was quite unique back in those days. I remember that crystal moment, both audio and physical, of putting the needle on the record for the first time and hearing those little scratches of noise before—bang!—the music kicked in. I think in that instance it was “Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree”, so it was not quite the rock and roll that we may come to in the Chamber today, but that moment was so glorious.

With streaming now, we do not have those moments, although vinyl is making a comeback. For me, that memory marks the power and importance of music in our lives: it carries us on our journeys throughout life. It is the audio track to all our moments—and often is the moment. When I look back at the impact of that moment on me—I am sure I will be laughed at in the media for mentioning that as the first song I heard on vinyl as a child—it highlights the joy of not just the musicianship but the craftsmanship and science that went into that record. Many years later, I became a physicist and learned much more about wavelengths and technology. Vinyl was an enormous achievement for the world, getting music across barriers and creating conversation across cultures. Music has the power to do that—it has such an important role—so when we look at important Bills like this we have to make sure that we do not risk diminishing the UK’s ability to reach the world. I believe Pinky and Perky may have been American, but that is by the by.

Over the years, my joy in music and my love for music grew further, and by the time I was a teenager, CDs were the big thing. I remember getting my first CD—I cannot recall what song it was, if I am honest—and I was struck by the ease with which I could play it and use it, as well as by the technology. Of course, as a physicist, the idea of lasers being used to play music was quite an incredible thing. There was also the fact that all of a sudden I wanted to go out and collect music, physically going to places to find it. I remember regularly going to local small music shops and looking for indie music—independent music—which is often the lifeblood of much of what we do in our culture, especially for teenagers trying to find their way through society by making friends and going to concerts; of course, doing so was often one of the challenges during the pandemic last year.

What that meant at the time was that I started to get into much more serious music, such as Nirvana. I was a big Nirvana fan, and I always remember trying to work out the lyrics of “Smells Like Teen Spirit”. As hon. Members may know now, the main chorus includes “a mulatto” and “a mosquito”, but at the time I could not find the lyrics anywhere. We did not have an internet to quickly get the saccharine effect of being told the lyrics, who the artist is and all their back catalogue. I had to search it out, and if I recall rightly—I may be corrected—I think the lyrics of the “Nevermind” album appeared for the first time in the maxi-single CD of “Lithium”, which was one of the tracks. I recall being really excited in HMV in Birmingham New Street, where I was growing up at the time, flicking through and finding all the lyrics to the songs I thought I knew the words to, but realised I had got terribly wrong.

[Angela Richardson (Guildford) (Con)]

Our right hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale) talked about the blank tape levy, and as my hon. Friend is talking about lyrics, did he ever, like me, have blank tape recordings of songs from the radio and go back through them over and over again to try to find out the lyrics because they were not available?

--- Later in debate ---

[Angela Richardson (Guildford) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow so many fantastic and very knowledgeable speeches in the Chamber today. I congratulate the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) on bringing forward this incredibly important Bill and on his speech outlining the reasons why he thinks it matters.

Today has been a great opportunity to talk about music. After serving my constituents and the love I have for my family, music is the most important thing in my life. I am very lucky to have two very talented musical parents. My mother is a pianist and my father played the trumpet and the cornet, and also had a most marvellous tenor voice. It is probably not quite as marvellous these days, at 83, but he still likes to have a good sing.

I have put in in excess of 10,000 hours over my life as a singer. I spent my teenage years singing in a worship band in church—a rock band—several times a week, and I was in a covers band at the age of 15. My right hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale) talked about the soft power of UK music. Well, that came all the way to New Zealand, and it was great to be able to sing the likes of U2 as a 15-year-old. I have recorded lots of vocal tracks for a song-writing friend, who would send these over to Nashville, Tennessee—

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

It isn’t going to happen.

[Angela Richardson]

Well, just you wait!

My song-writing friend would send these songs over to music producers in Nashville, Tennessee to review them and see whether they could go forward. In the spirit of oversharing that my hon. Friend the Member for Watford (Dean Russell) regaled us with earlier, I may even have auditioned for the New Zealand version of the Spice Girls in 1998, and I was also in a queue at 3 am, in the ExCeL centre in London, to audition for “The X Factor” in 2010. I hope no recordings of any of these things are still available, but one never knows and, like another former Member of this place, I may be able to have a go in “The Masked Singer” in the future.

I was very lucky, before I was elected, to be able to sing for seven years in my village for the award-winning Ewhurst Players, as well as vocal coach them for their productions. These days, being a Member of this place, the only opportunity to sing is probably at the famous annual karaoke sessions of my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey). However, I am very lucky to have found many kindred spirits in this place, such as my hon. Friends the Members for Redcar (Jacob Young), for Bishop Auckland (Dehenna Davison), for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Miriam Cates), for Bolsover (Mark Fletcher)—he is here—and for South Ribble (Katherine Fletcher), and many more. If we need a new generation of MP4, many of us would quite like to step forward and do that. However, as I am only 15 years younger than the hon. Member for Cardiff West, I am not sure that would suffice for a generation, and we may share a lot of crossover in our taste in music.

It is important that we are here today to make sure that creatives and small producers are able to make a decent living from the joy that they give us with music. It matters to me to perform, but I also love to listen to other people. I have been contacted by a gentleman called Robert Piper, who runs Lockjaw Records in my constituency, and I want to put on record what he had to say to me. He has been involved with music for 20-plus years, and for the last 10 years he has run a label specialising in the punk genre, with over 25 bands from the UK and overseas on its roster. He was very concerned about what this Bill would mean for him. He says that his label’s role is to invest at the grassroots level in a diverse range of artists and support them to achieve as much success as possible. Although he supports the motivation behind the Bill to support artists, he does not believe its full impact is understood. If imposed, he feels that the Bill’s consequences would be felt across the whole industry, but it would particularly affect independent small and medium-sized businesses such as his. He felt it would undermine his ability to grow the next generation of talent and support local jobs. He was also concerned that it would dent the competitive—