Meta: AI Development

Baroness Stowell of Beeston Excerpts

Tuesday 27th October 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Ramsey of Wall Heath (Lab)]

I assure my noble friend that the Government recognise the concerns raised about Meta’s updated commercial terms and are committed to ensuring that creators can control the use of their work. UK copyright continues to apply to the use of protected works in AI development and training. Where an activity requires permission under copyright law, that permission must be obtained unless an exception applies.

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston (Con)]

My Lords, as the Minister is aware, the UK’s Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act is superior to the EU’s digital Act because it encourages the big tech firms to come forward with proposals to address the unfair competition issues that it creates, as we saw recently in the case of Microsoft and AWS in CloudSearch. The CMA is then able to convert those proposals into binding commitments without issuing strategic market status on those firms. Does the Minister agree that the same so-called participative approach would be relevant now in asking Meta to come forward with public commitments that the CMA could then create into something binding, so that we could all be clear that Meta will not continue to scrape publishers’ websites? Would the Minister back the CMA if that is what it does?

[Baroness Ramsey of Wall Heath (Lab)]

As far as the EU is concerned, noble Lords may wish to know that on 22 October the European Commission received a formal competition complaint about Meta’s revised commercial terms. It confirmed that it would assess the complaint under its established procedures, and welcomed Meta’s subsequent decision to delay implementation until 20 November. No formal decision or enforcement action has been announced. In respect of the CMA’s powers more generally, it already has powers under existing competition law to intervene where and when appropriate and is engaging urgently with Meta to consider its next steps. I remind noble Lords that the CMA is independent of government.