Hospitality Sector

Debate between Chris Bryant and Julian Lewis

Wednesday 3rd September 2025 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

I will not give way again. That meant that mortgage rates rose faster than they have ever risen in our history, which made it almost impossible for people to survive economically.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

The Minister is an entirely charming chap and a great entertainer—I worry that his Equity card might be getting out of date. He praises the changes that have been made to the employment conditions of bar staff, for example, but does he really think that it is a good idea to have them policing the comments of people who use public houses, when it takes as many as five members of the constabulary to arrest a comedian over inappropriate tweets?

[Chris Bryant]

The right hon. Gentleman makes a perfectly legitimate point. No, of course I do not want that. I want the police officers in my constituency to be policing the streets, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care said this morning, not policing tweets or private conversations between individuals—[Interruption.] I have made my point. The police in my constituency, where, incidentally, we lost large numbers of police officers during the time that the Conservative Government were in office, are hard pressed enough to deal with the problems they have without trying to take on ludicrous and preposterous elements as well.

My biggest complaint about the speech made by the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs is that he is so determined to do down the Government that he ends up dragging down the sector as well. The honest truth is that the UK hospitality sector is absolutely amazing. Whether it is the Lake district, the night life in Manchester and London, the gastropubs in the Cotswolds, the movie locations up and down the land, the Royal Oaks, the White Harts, the Red Lions, the Prospect of Whitbys, the Moon Under Waters, the Eagle and Childs, Bamburgh castle, Chester zoo, which I loved visiting last week to feed the giraffes, the British Museum, all the V&As and the Tates, Windsor castle—the pub and the castle—Stratford-upon-Avon—

Music Streaming: Label-led Principles

Debate between Chris Bryant and Julian Lewis

Tuesday 22nd July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for what she said about Dickon. He was really very helpful at Universal in the process of getting us to this place, particularly on the issue of per diems—the £75 a day—which was one of the major asks of the Ivors Academy, and I am really pleased we were able to do that. She is right that we need to look at session musicians, and of one of the undertakings I have made is that I will be getting the BPI and the Musicians’ Union together to discuss that matter again this autumn. I hope that will be in the first couple of weeks of September.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Given the Minister’s helpful references of a sartorial nature to his opposite number, may I congratulate him on his carefully understated choice of necktie today? I shall certainly remember to bring my dark glasses next time he is on parade. Can he explain to me—as an ardent Swiftie myself—what protection performers, such as the son of the hon. Member for Rochdale (Paul Waugh), have against their tracks being uploaded by anyone to a service such as YouTube, whereby it is possible for people to enjoy their music without apparently paying them any royalties at all?

[Chris Bryant]

I am grateful for the comments about my tie. I would say that it is understated compared to some of the other ties I have worn, so I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his commendation on my sartorial elegance. But he is wrong about YouTube. YouTube is one of the streaming services and people are remunerated. One could argue that they should be remunerated more, but if people are breaching copyright, that is an offence and it needs to be pursued. Record labels are pretty keen on doing so on behalf of their artists, but, as I say, YouTube is one of the streaming outlets.

Live Events Ticketing: Resale and Pricing Practices

Debate between Chris Bryant and Julian Lewis

Monday 13th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend, and I commend him too, because he has been working on this issue for quite a long time—when he was shadow sports Minister, it was one of the things that he was keen for us to progress. I am joined by the sports Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley South (Stephanie Peacock), and of course one of the ironies is that in some sports, we already implement something remarkably similar, if not tougher. It is perfectly legitimate for us to be moving in a direction that puts those sectors on an equal footing.

I take my hon. Friend’s point about speed. I recognise that I did not respond to the question from the hon. Member for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire (Ian Sollom) about when we will get action. I very much hope that if we get a clear answer from the consultation, we will be able to come forward with plans as a matter of urgency. There must be a King’s Speech coming along some time soon.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Continuing the Cyndi Lauper theme, I am sure the Minister agrees that we have to see these touts in their true colours. The fact is that they will try to find ways around these eminently praiseworthy proposals. Let us imagine that the Minister gets his cap in place; what is to stop an undercover operation going ahead with a large number of individuals trying to make a small number of sales each on a website such as eBay? How would the Minister be able to enforce the cap in a situation like that?

[Chris Bryant]

It is not just about the cap—we are consulting on several elements, one of which is how many tickets an individual seller should be able to purchase. The shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Meriden and Solihull East, could have argued that some of this is already dealt with in the legislation, but I would argue that the legislation is not clear enough, which is one of the things we need to tackle. If we look at all the different bits of legislation we have accumulated over the years, every time there has been a Bill that my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Gateshead South has been able to table an amendment to, with support from some magnificent people in the House of Lords, it has been possible to get things through. That is why we may need to do quite a bit of rationalisation of the legislation in this field, but the right hon. Gentleman makes a good point: we will always have to keep ahead of the game.

Copyright and Artificial Intelligence

Debate between Chris Bryant and Julian Lewis

Wednesday 18th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

I think my hon. Friend, who is on the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, took advantage of the change in the Chair to get away with asking a question that has absolutely nothing to do with this consultation. On live ticketing, I am absolutely certain that the Government will have something to say soon—the word “soon” means precisely what I choose it to mean.

On publicity rights, my hon. Friend is quite right that that is a significant question that we will ask during the consultation. There is an argument for bringing in legislation in the UK. California, as I said, has a digital replicas law and Tennessee has the ELVIS Act, which stands for eliminating limits on the voice’s intrinsic sovereignty. I think that was an attempt to cram that into the word “Elvis”. She is right that the US Copyright Office is arguing for a federal digital replica law, and we might want to go down that route as well. I urge my hon. Friend and, perhaps, the Select Committee to consider that matter. They might like to provide some advice in response to the consultation as well.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

I am tempted to invite the Minister to consult the magnificent Taylor Swift who, apart from all her many other talents, has shown herself pretty shrewd when it comes to preserving the copyright of her material. He puts his finger on the key weakness in all this: no matter what sort of regime we set up, and no matter how many countries we try to get involved in this, surely it will only take one rogue jurisdiction to allow a machine to scrape from everybody else’s material? Then, the internet’s ability for everyone to access it will undermine the regime and, in that way, we face the danger that “Shake It Off” becomes “Rip It Off”.

[Chris Bryant]

I disagree. I saw the right hon. Gentleman nodding earlier when I was talking about not wanting to pull the rug from under the feet of UK AI adopters. The UK is in a very specific position. We have probably the best copyright laws of any country because of the specific way in which they developed. It is partly thanks to Hogarth, Dickens and many others over the years that we have ended up with strong copyright legislation. We also have a strong body of intellectual property in this country, which is enormously valuable, potentially, to AI operators. We stand in a very specific position. There is an argument that AI can be trained elsewhere, in another jurisdiction, but the moment it is brought into the UK, it still falls under UK legislation.

The right hon. Gentleman is also right about this. I did not consult Taylor Swift, but I did ask an AI company to come up with a song in the manner of Adele.

“Oh, I still feel you deep in my soul,

Even though you left me out here on my own.

The love we had it’s slipping through my hands,

But I can’t forget, I still don’t understand.

You’re gone, but your memory’s all I see,

And in the silence, it’s you haunting me”—

Madam Deputy Speaker. [Laughter.] It is sort of Adele, but it is not Adele. Does Adele know that her material has been used? Does her record label know that her lyrics have been used to create that? It is sort of in the territory, but it is not right. I think we can get this right in the UK and provide leadership to the world. That is what we should strive for.