Data (Use and Access) Bill [Lords]

Victoria Collins Excerpts

Consideration of Lords message
Tuesday 3rd June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

[Victoria Collins (Harpenden and Berkhamsted) (LD)]

Here we are again. Once again, I would like to thank those in the other place who have worked so hard on these amendments, and indeed Members across the House who have stood up for creatives. We are back here again two weeks later to discuss and vote on Lords amendment 49F to secure the rights of creatives in the changing face of AI.

What has changed in those two weeks? An awful lot actually. Forty eight hours before we voted on the amendment on 20 May, the latest big AI tech launch occurred when Google launched Veo 3—literally an all-talking, all-singing, all-dancing AI video creator, the like of which we have never seen before. Seeing is believing, and even when you see it, you will not always be able to believe that what you are seeing is not real. The emotions of the characters created by binary code, a series of zeros and ones, have already had me laughing, feeling and thinking; their jokes like a stand-up comedian, the light of the sunset comparable to standing at the Ashridge beech woods as a perfect day’s golden hour arrives, the tangible fear of the binary character representing the actress, the director and the artist questioning what this means for them. The engineering, the development and, dare I say it, the creativity that has gone into developing such software is epic. There is no denying that, but I cannot help but wonder if all the value came from the engineering and the computing. What about the period dramas, the beauty of children’s illustration, the wit of the one-liner and the fast-paced thrillers that have helped to train this cinematic experience at the touch of a prompt?

As far as I can discover, Google representatives have previously mentioned that, as well as publicly available content, YouTube may have been used to train the model. I wonder how many must feel, seeing their creations replicated. Of course, this is just one example of the AI developments happening every minute. The alarm bell that creatives have been ringing has come to fruition a thousand times over. As much as I am sure that many creatives are excited about the possibilities, many will be questioning the implications for their industry, and this is just the tip of the iceberg. Just this afternoon, I spoke to creatives from the Creators’ Rights Alliance, who have proof of their works being essentially copied against their will. Artists, writers, photographers, filmmakers, singers and songwriters are watching their life’s work swallowed up.

I have not even spoken about Lyria, which writes music, or the thousands of other developments coming out of AI—incredible developments that we must celebrate, but we must also ensure that the creative work that has gone into it is also valued. While technology moves at pace, our frameworks for accountability have not kept up. In this moment, as artificial intelligence reshapes how creative works are used, adjusted and commercialised, the time for reflection is behind us. I appreciate the Government talking about protecting rights and the actions they are taking, but the time for real action is now. That is why I urge Members across the House to vote for Lords amendment 49F, to ensure transparency of business data is used in relation to AI models, a proportionate approach that calls to establish transparency. I urge the Government to also move at pace to protect creators’ rights with a plan and with everyone around the table, something we have heard across the House today.

As I walked around Little Gaddesden arts fair this weekend, I saw the bright colours and joy that had been created by Sally Bassett, Alison Bateson and Andrew Dixon. Right at the end of the road, Little Gaddesden village hall is where parts of “The Crown” were filmed. I thought of the legendary story about Picasso, which many Members may know. At a Parisian market, an admirer approached Picasso and asked if he could do a quick sketch on a napkin. He kindly obliged, creating art on the napkin. He handed it back to her, but not before asking for 1 million francs. “But it only took you five minutes,” barked the admirer. “No,” Picasso replied, “it took me 40 years to be able to draw this in five minutes.”

Given that prompts can create art, whether song, print, film or story, in seconds, who is being renumerated for the years of work that have gone into it? I urge Members across the House to vote for Lords amendment 49F. We must find a solution to ensure that human creativity is truly valued.

[Sir Julian Smith]

First, the Ministers, who I like personally and rate a lot, unfortunately do not control the timetable of Government business. Secondly, they do not have a Bill in the King’s Speech. Thirdly, my prediction is that they will be promoted before this new Bill comes to pass.

The speeches were honest, but what they exposed is that there is no time commitment whatever from those on the Government Benches to bring back a Bill to this House to address the current property theft raining down on the UK creative industries. That is why the creative industries and the debate in the other place, which we listened to yesterday, are so passionate. Theft of the property rights of composers, writers, filmmakers and other creatives have been happening for years. They continue to happen and will continue to happen until the new Bill comes forward; greater and greater volumes of intellectual property and hard-fought rights falling into the AI hopper never to be seen again, and no system of redress other than expensive legal action to get it back. How would we feel if it was our own property, business or land—if it was removed without us even being asked, with the gentle reassurance that we could take action retrospectively?

Creatives are desperate. Most do not have the workers’ rights the majority of us have, or things such as pensions or holiday pay; all they have is their intellectual property rights. Where will the incentive be now to toil for weeks, months and years creating a piece of music or writing a text, only to have it snatched away when success arrives? There is an irony, with the Government returning shortly with the Employment Rights Bill, that creative workers’ rights continue to be so eroded.

The transparency amendment in front of us today is a much diluted version of the previous Kidron amendments sent to us from the other place. It sets out a clear timeline for when the Government must return with a Bill, which is a modest request; the Government will still be able to delay the Bill, should they want to, and, to be honest, the creative industries will still not have the opportunity to protect their works in the meantime.

The amendment should be accepted because it will provide reassurance to a key UK sector. However, it should also be accepted as an example of our two Chambers respecting each other. No one in the debate yesterday, listening to the words of Baroness Kidron, Lord Forsyth or others, could feel they were trying to cause the Government problems. Each and every supporter of the amendment did so on the basis of support for the rights of those working in one of the UK’s leading economic sectors, who are pleading with us for their survival and to work positively with this new technological development.

Our politics is currently jam-packed with black and white positions and an instinct to jump to disagreement and polarisation. The Lords amendment before us today represents a modest proposal to disagree well, and the Government should accept it.