Data (Use and Access) Bill [Lords]

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Consideration of Lords message
Tuesday 3rd June 2025 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Data Protection and Telecoms (Chris Bryant)]

I beg to move, That this House disagrees with Lords amendment 49F.

I am tempted to start with a quote from “Macbeth”—

“When shall we three meet again?”—

because I notice there is a similar cast to our previous debates, but let me start by dispelling some misconceptions. We are not, contrary to what some have stated, changing UK copyright laws to the detriment of the creative industries. If the Government’s Bill is adopted, not a single word of copyright law will have changed in the United Kingdom. It will be as robust as it ever was. In fact, we have said repeatedly that creators should share in the value of this new technology, and we support artificial intelligence developers paying for the content that they use. We want to see more licensing of and proper remuneration for UK content.

We are not undermining copyright owners’ control over their work. We have said from the beginning that we want intellectual property owners to have more control over the use of their works. Some said in the House of Lords yesterday that we have not listened to them or to the creative industries, but that is simply not true. We have heard loud and clear the message from the creative industries and from others. That is why we put reporting commitments on the face of the Bill at a previous round, and we have committed to adding two further reporting requirements on approaches to models trained overseas and on enforcement. We have committed to delivering reports and impact assessments within nine rather than 12 months, and the Bill will require the Secretary of State to make a progress statement to Parliament about the impact assessment and reports within six months of Royal Assent.

It is also why the Secretary of State, who is sitting by me now, stated clearly that although we went into the consultation with a preferred option, we have heard the reaction to that. We want to consider the consultation responses in full, and—to quote him precisely—

“When we went into the consultation, I believed that opting out could have offered an opportunity to bring both sides together, but I now accept that that is not the case.”—[Official Report, 22 May 2025; Vol. 767, c. 1233.]

As I have said, the Government have listened at every stage.

As I have explained to the House previously, the Bill was never intended to be about artificial intelligence, intellectual property and copyright. What we have is a Bill that will harness data for economic growth, improve public services and support modern digital government. We want to get the legislation on the statute book as fast as we possibly can.

[Dame Caroline Dinenage (Gosport) (Con)]

Will the Minister give way?

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Bryant]

Of course, it would be a delight.

[Dame Caroline Dinenage]

If only I believed the Minister. I pick up the frustration in his tone, and I appreciate that this must be exhausting for him, because this is the fourth time that the Government have been defeated on this issue in the other place. I understand that he just wants to get this piece of legislation done, but this time it only requires the Government to come forward with a plan to implement transparency before it is too late. He says that our copyright law is robust and that he is not seeking to undermine it—it is robust, but it is being ignored. How long will it take before the Government hold the AI companies to account for what is effectively the biggest copyright heist in history? How long will it take before the Government clamp down on what is basically the whitewashing of the behaviour of big tech? Who is really pulling the strings here?

[Chris Bryant]

Well, nobody is pulling my strings. I do not know what that final reference was to. I pay tribute to the hon. Lady and the Select Committee, who have done important work in this field. Some of what we have committed to in previous rounds of ping-pong in this House has sprung directly from what her Select Committee asked us to do. We will continue to listen to that. As she knows, we have always said, right from the beginning, that a key aspect of any package we bring forward would be something around transparency.

I will come on to the precise matters in the new clause before us, and I hope that might explain why we are urging the House to reject the amendment today. It is a delight to hear from the hon. Lady, and she need not doubt me.

[Robin Swann (South Antrim) (UUP)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Chris Bryant]

Another delight.

[Robin Swann]

I know that the Minister does mean it in this case. He talks about the speed of moving this legislation on to the statute book. I note that legislative consent motions are in from the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly, but as yet there is not one from the Northern Ireland Assembly. Can he give me clarification as to what implication that legislative consent motion not being in place will have for those businesses and individuals in Northern Ireland who will be affected by this legislation?

[Chris Bryant]

I have spoken to Ministers in Northern Ireland, and they have already laid that legislative consent motion. My understanding is that that process will be fully done in time for Royal Assent, so he need not worry. We have sorted that one out, too.

I promised the Chair of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Gosport (Dame Caroline Dinenage), that I was about to come on to the precise details of the amendment, so I will address that. First, as Baroness Jones of Whitchurch, my noble colleague, said in the Lords yesterday,

“the Government’s report on the use of copyright work in the development of AI systems will address two additional areas, specifically highlighted by the noble Baroness’s original amendment”—

the one that we are now considering—

“how to deal with models trained overseas; and how rules should be enforced and by whom.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 2 June 2025; Vol. 846, c. 481.]

We will do subsection (1) of the new clause as part of our report and economic impact assessment. In other words, we have already committed to do half of what is in the amendment, and I would therefore argue that that half is unnecessary.

The second part of the new clause is problematic, and I think it would be problematic for any Government. It requires the Government to produce a draft Bill on copyright and AI according to a specific timetable. It lays out elements that that Bill must include and determines how it should be considered by this House. I cannot think of any Bill in our history that has included such a clause, for very good reason. A central plank of parliamentary sovereignty is that no Parliament can bind its successor. That does not just mean from one Parliament to another; it means that one Session of Parliament cannot bind a future Session. However, the Kidron amendment says that, for instance, the draft Bill

“must make provision for enforcement”.

What happens if it does not do so, or if the measures it includes for enforcement are not sufficient in some people’s minds? Where would that be adjudicated? How would it be decided?

[Dame Caroline Dinenage]

Will the Minister give way?

[Chris Bryant]

I will just finish this point, if the hon. Lady will allow me. In addition, we are still working through a huge number of consultation responses. To prescribe a draft Bill in detail at this point would completely undermine that process and the policy work that is taking place. I would argue that not only is that bad policymaking, but it would completely disregard the input that so many respondents to the consultation have exhausted so much effort in providing.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Chris Bryant]

I will give way first to the hon. Member for Gosport, and then to the right hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon (Sir Julian Smith).

[Dame Caroline Dinenage]

I think the Minister for giving way, but I think he is dancing on the head of a pin. The fact is that all legislation somehow binds those who are coming down the track, and others have spoken on many occasions about the urgency of bringing forward measures to provide transparency about what of people’s intellectual property is being scraped right now. I cannot understand why the Government are taking this position. This amendment is not asking for much; it is just asking for the Government to have a plan to sort this out in short order.

[Chris Bryant]

Of course, I understand the demand for us to act as swiftly as we possibly can, and that is our intention. One could argue that introducing a draft Bill, which would then be considered in various different places and presumably would be followed by a Bill, would delay things rather than speed them up. In addition—this is a really important constitutional point—as I said earlier, I am not aware of a single Bill in the past that has required a future Bill to be produced and specified things that must be in it.

[Ms Polly Billington (East Thanet) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Bryant]

I have got to give way to the right hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon first, but then of course I will come back to my hon. Friend.

[Sir Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)]

I thank the Minister for giving way. The essential point is that the creative industry is desperate to get a hook within this Bill to reassure it that this vacuuming up of its intellectual property will be controlled. The problem with all the commitments, the working groups and all the words that the Minister is saying is that they do not give the creative industry that reassurance. Yesterday’s debate was passionate about the need—somehow, in whatever way the Government want—to give the creative industry reassurance that this issue will be dealt with within a set timeframe.

[Chris Bryant]

I understand the concern of the creative industries—they have expressed it to me in no uncertain terms on many occasions, both individually and in larger groups. We have heard the message loud and clear. I think some people have been labouring under the misconception that this Bill is doing something to undermine copyright. I know that the right hon. Gentleman listened to the debate in the House of Lords yesterday, because I was standing next to him, listening to the fullness of the debate as a courtesy to the House of Lords.

As I have said before, I worry that to legislate on a part of this issue, rather than the whole of it, is a mistake. For the sake of argument, let us say that we only legislated in relation to what transparency should be required and did not come up with an enforcement measure. What would happen if the companies simply refused to provide that information? Would we have to introduce a new offence of not providing such information? What would we have to do? That is my argument for why I think—notwithstanding the clamour for us to go as fast as we possibly can, which I fully understand—we need to get it right and to legislate in the round, rather than just piecemeal on the back of a Bill that is not meant to deal with these matters at all.

I heard my hon. Friend the Member for East Thanet (Ms Billington) attempt to intervene earlier.

[Ms Billington]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way, and I understand that he is being extremely patient in these circumstances. May I draw his attention to something that happened before 2010? I know that that was a long time ago, but both he and I are old enough—and, indeed, ugly enough—to remember those times.

When Lord Mandelson was Secretary of State at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, what was then known as the Napster clause was included in the then Digital Economy Bill. That was done precisely to give reassurance to the music industry that if, later on, downloading became so problematic that the music industry was going to be hollowed out, the Government would give themselves the power to act. If my hon. Friend is giving the Government the power to report, surely it would be right for the Government to give themselves the power to act once they have received evidence that something is going wrong, enabling them to enforce the copyright law that we all now agree is clear and should therefore be enforced.

[Chris Bryant]

I will start with my hon. Friend’s very last point, which is that we all agree that copyright law is clear—we do. I hope people understand that the Government’s position is clear that copyright law is clear. I do not think that is in doubt.

Secondly, of course, we always have the power to introduce legislation. However, certainly if I were sitting on the Opposition Benches, I would doubt whether it would be right to introduce transparency requirements solely on the basis of secondary legislation, which—as I say—would probably have to contain some sort of enforcement mechanism and potentially a new offence. I would say, “Secondary legislation is unamendable—it is take it or leave it. That would be problematic.”

While again I understand the desire for us to move as swiftly as possible, I reiterate that I think it is better for us to legislate in the round, taking all of the subject matter into consideration. Some matters have not even been mentioned in this debate, such as what we do about the copyright that pertains to AI-created material. Should that material have any protection, or no protection? Should it follow the person who created the AI large language model, or should it stick with the person who asked the AI large language model the question?

[Pete Wishart (Perth and Kinross-shire) (SNP)]

The hon. Member for East Thanet (Ms Billington) is quite right: back in 2010, the Napster provision was first enacted through the Digital Economy Act. Such provision is possible, and I just do not understand the Minister’s reticence about this amendment. It seems an entirely reasonable amendment to bring forward—it does everything that everybody wants to achieve when it comes to this Bill. Even if the Minister is not prepared to accept the amendment, could he at least say that he accepts the principles of it and what it requires, and that he will do all he can to bring forward all the provisions it asks for?

[Chris Bryant]

I am trying to be tidy in the way I respond to people, so first, I note that I did not respond to the Napster point. Quite a lot of people have made the point to me that we got from Napster to Spotify. There are many problems with Spotify that many musicians, record labels and so on have raised with me, but at least it is better than people taking stuff for nothing. There is an argument—a strong argument, I would say—that in this debate, we want to move from Napster to Spotify, or to something even better than Spotify. I am not sure precisely how we get there, but I am absolutely certain that we need to legislate in the round for all of these issues.

The hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire (Pete Wishart) asked me about the principles of the noble Baroness Kidron’s amendment. Of course we believe in transparency—we are fully subscribed to wanting to provide that. That has always been part of the package that we have wanted to present. There is still the question of what enforcement would look like, and many other issues that any Bill that comes forward would need to address. I am hesitant about introducing a draft Bill, because a draft Bill would take longer to go through.

We want to be able to legislate in this area as soon as we possibly can, but we also want to have listened to and borne in mind the full panoply of the responses. People may presume that they know what the 11,500 responses will say, but actually, they are much more diverse. I am not saying that everybody is clamouring for what the Government have laid out; I am just saying that those responses address a diversity of issues, all of which we need to address.

[Anneliese Midgley (Knowsley) (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for giving way again, as he has on so many occasions during these debates, and for his ongoing engagement in these matters, but does he agree that if the Government do not act now to enforce the law, we will basically be allowing what everyone already sees as theft to continue? Would he accept that in any other industry, such as retail or farming?

[Chris Bryant]

My hon. Friend is entirely right about the issue of enforcement, although traditionally it is not for Governments to enforce the law. It is for the courts to do that, although in certain circumstances when there has been a breach of the criminal law, it will be for the prosecuting authorities to consider. In a way this makes my point, which is that it is all very well to legislate on transparency requirements, but if there are no enforcement measures it will not make the blindest bit of difference. All this has to be done in the round.

We have already said that we want to engage with the creative sector and, of course, the technology sector as much as we can. We believe that such engagement will help to chart the way forward on both transparency and technical standards, and possibly on technical solutions to the problem. It may be that the working groups bring other benefits, such as interim voluntary arrangements, until longer-term solutions can be agreed on and implemented. However, we must see what comes of the process rather than imposing preconditions at this early stage.

For all those reasons, I urge Members to vote against the Lords amendment. The first part of the proposed new clause is a helpful addition to the work that we will do and are now committed to doing, but the lion’s share of it would lead to what I believe is confusing law and constitutionally uncertain.

[Mr James Frith (Bury North) (Lab)]

I echo the comments of my hon. Friends about how open and engaging both the Minister and the Secretary of State have been on this issue. As for the consideration of working groups, can the Minister confirm that the Government’s policy is to ensure that both sides are in the room at the same time, with the Minister and the Secretary of State? This has been rehearsed before; the last Government failed, and talks broke down. May I urge this Government please to ensure that both voices hear each other? Their job is to manage that process, as well as leading it.

[Chris Bryant]

I agree 100%. There would be absolutely no point in not having both sides—indeed, I would say several sides—of the argument in the room at the same time. Yesterday morning I had an interesting conversation with someone who is very prominent on the music scene. He told me, in granular detail, what we would need to do for transparency in the music sector, but added that obviously it would be completely different for the publishing sector. That is the kind of detail we will have to go into. If we are to bring about a licensing regime that really works, it will have to work differently for sound, music, words and images, which means that we will have to have all those people around the table, as well as AI—not just “big tech”, a phrase that was used frequently in their lordships’ House yesterday, but tech from the UK. That is a very important part of what we need to be promoting. So yes, I can guarantee to my hon. Friend that we will have everyone in the room, and also that we want to get on with it as soon as we possibly can—

[Mike Martin (Tunbridge Wells) (LD)]

rose—

[Chris Bryant]

And I want to be able to sit down as soon as I possibly can, but I am being prevented from doing so.

[Mike Martin]

The Minister is being extremely generous, as he always is. I pressed him on this point on the last occasion when we met across the Chamber, but some time has passed since then. He speaks of dealing with the issue “in the round”, which is a sentiment that I understand, but when? Can he give a timetable?

[Chris Bryant]

“As soon as possible”, I am afraid. I know that there are lots of parliamentary terms for these matters, such as “imminently” and “soon” and so on. The difficulty is that there are plenty of other priorities for legislation at the same time. I am not the Leader of the House, so I fear that I cannot give a guarantee about a timeline, but we have given some guarantees about when the Secretary of State will report back to the House—within six months of Royal Assent, and I hope that that is within six months of “soon”—and we have given guarantees about our other reports back, which will be within nine months, shortened from 12 months.

[Dame Caroline Dinenage]

rose—

[Chris Bryant]

I will give way to the hon. Lady, and then I will try to crack on.

[Dame Caroline Dinenage]

I thank the Minister for giving way again: he is being very generous. He has spoken about trying to bring the AI sector together with the creative industries. The last Government tried that in response to the text and data mining exception. They formed an AI working group, which, as the Minister knows, fell into abeyance because the AI companies did not engage. Does he think that that could be a problem this time, and has he heard any signals from the big tech companies that they would be more forthcoming with their engagement in response to this attempt?

[Chris Bryant]

We will make sure that they engage. In a strange way, I think that the campaign that has been led by the hon. Lady and others, in the House of Lords and elsewhere, will help to make people engage in what will not necessarily be an easy process, but one that I think could deliver a win-win for us in the UK and could potentially enable us to lead for other countries in the world. Every indication that we have had thus far suggests that everyone wants to sit in the room together, and, of course, we will have to provide significant leadership in those meetings to be able to drive them forward. As I said on the last occasion when I was talking about these matters at the Dispatch Box, I should like to be able to get on with that as soon as possible, but we have a duty to get the Bill out of the way first.

Let me now say a few words about ping-pong. As Members will know, this is in large measure the same Bill that was presented, twice, by the previous Government. The second Bill fell at the general election, but both major parties committed themselves to reintroducing it, in a broadly similar form, in the new Parliament. None of the parties intended to introduce any matters relating to copyright into the Bill when they discussed it in the run-up to, and during, the general election.

I warmly commend those who are fighting the corner of the creative industries—of course I do; I am the creative industries Minister—but there comes a point at which the Lords is barring the Commons from fulfilling a pledge made by both major parties. We shall now be entering the fourth round of ping-pong. Few Bills in our history have gone this many rounds. In the cases of the Prevention of Terrorism Bill of 2004-05 and the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill 2006-07, at issue was what the Government had put in rather than what it had not included. Neither of those Bills had been openly advocated by both main parties at a general election. By tradition, the House of Lords does not interfere with Bills to which Governments have committed themselves at the time of a general election. Everyone agrees that this Bill is a valuable piece of legislation, and for that reason I urge their lordships to let it pass into law.

[Sir Julian Smith]

Will the Minister give way?

[Chris Bryant]

Oh, all right.

[Sir Julian Smith]

The Minister was present at yesterday’s debate. Their lordships were acutely aware of not wanting to fetter the House of Commons, but at the same time they are trying to represent thousands of people who are desperate about their incomes. I think it worth putting on the record here that all those who spoke were very aware of what they were doing, but on balance felt that fighting for the underdog was the best thing to do.

[Chris Bryant]

I am not making an criticism of any individual Member of the House of Lords. I listened to the debate, and it was clear that people felt passionately and were arguing entirely in good faith. I fully understand that. As I have said, however, this a Bill that was not intended to include elements relating to AI and copyright. In the last Parliament it was supported by the Conservative party and by us on the Opposition Benches, and was referred to by both sides during our general election campaigns. Neither of us said that we were going to include anything about copyright in the Bill, but that is what is now holding up Royal Assent. There are economic benefits that would flow from the Bill, but they will of course be delayed if we further delay Royal Assent.

Let me end by saying that, as I think I have said several times, I fully understand the concerns expressed by people in the creative industries about artificial intelligence. Many use it already, but they are understandably concerned about where it will go, and they fear for their jobs. It is true that, for many, the strikes in the US had an even more cataclysmic effect on their careers, but I would just add one corrective to those fears. There is a moment at the end of “The Winter’s Tale” when Paulina takes Leontes to see a statue of his wife, who he thinks died of grief when he falsely accused of her adultery many years earlier. We all know when we watch it in the theatre that the statue is actually the actress playing Hermione; it is not a statue at all. Yet the moment when Leontes touches the statue and says, “O, she’s warm!”, still shocks us and brings tears to our eyes. Why? Because it is human to human. Yes, of course it is artifice laid upon artifice, but it is humanity face to face that really moves us. The Government have heard the concerns expressed by this House and the other place, and we have set out our plans to address them. I believe the Bill must be allowed to run its course.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

I call the shadow Minister.