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

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what progress his Department has made in extending the Public Lending Right scheme to e-lending (a) in local libraries and (b) at home.

The Public Lending Right legislation was revised to extend the PLR scheme to include on-site lending of audio and e-books on 1 July 2014. My Department and the Libraries Taskforce are working closely with the Public Lending Right office and representative groups for libraries, publishers and authors to improve the availability of remote e-lending and to consider options to appropriately remunerate authors and other rights holders. These have been productive discussions and I look forward to progress continuing.