Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what assessment his Department has made of the potential effect of the introduction of an international copyright regime on UK (a) authors and (b) publishers.

The Government is currently considering all options for the UK’s future exhaustion of intellectual property rights regime. The Government is aware of many of the arguments in favour and against an international exhaustion of IP rights regime, but will be consulting on the potential impact of different exhaustion of rights regimes in early 2021. Information from that consultation will be taken into account before the Government makes any decisions on a future regime.