Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what assessment he has made of the potential effect of the UK leaving the EU on the reciprocal relationships the UK has with the EU that enable UK authors to claim public lending right payments when their books are borrowed in other EU countries.

A number of EU Member States operate their own public lending rights schemes which enable payments to be made to eligible rights holders for the lending of their work. However, these are not directly reciprocal to the UK’s Public Lending Right (PLR) Scheme, and decisions on whether UK-resident authors qualify for these will be for each Member State to make.

The Authors' Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS), which represents UK authors in registering and claiming payments from lending rights schemes in Europe and elsewhere, has indicated that it supports the UK's PLR scheme remaining open to residents of EEA states. ALCS believes that this will help it to encourage relevant organisations responsible for lending rights schemes in EEA states to allow UK-resident authors to benefit from such schemes after the UK leaves the EU.