Data (Use and Access) Bill [HL]

Commons Amendments

My Lords, before we consider the Commons message on the data Bill, I again remind the House of the importance of applying greater discipline to ping-pong. We have now spent nearly 44 hours debating this Bill as a whole, including nine and a half hours on the last four rounds of ping-pong. This means that over 20% of the total time spent on the Bill has been on ping-pong alone. The remaining issue is entirely known to Peers and the arguments have been rehearsed at length. I ask noble Lords to minimise contributions and keep any interventions brief and to the point. I have asked the Whip to continue to monitor the House and keep it on track. Thank you.

Motion A

That this House do not insist on its Amendment 49F and do agree with the Commons in their Amendments 49P, 49Q, 49R, 49S and 49T in lieu.

49P: Line 3, leave out “12” and insert “9”

49Q: Line 3, leave out “12” and insert “9”

49R: Line 31, at end insert— “(e) ways of enforcing requirements and restrictions relating to— (i) the use of copyright works to develop AI systems, and (ii) the accessing of copyright works for that purpose (for example, by web crawlers), including enforcement by a regulator.”

49S: Line 31, at end insert— “(3A) The consideration and proposals under each of paragraphs (a) to (e) of subsection (3) must include consideration of, and proposals relating to, AI systems developed outside the United Kingdom.”

49T: After Clause 134, insert the following new Clause— “Progress statement (1) The Secretary of State must, before the end of the period of 6 months beginning with the day on which this Act is passed, lay before Parliament a statement setting out what progress has been made towards the publication of— (a) the economic impact assessment required by section (Economic impact assessment), and (b) the report required by section (Report on the use of copyright works in the development of AI systems). (2) The duty in subsection (1) does not apply where the economic impact assessment and the report have been published before the end of the period described in that subsection.”

My Lords, in moving Motion A, I will also speak to Motion A1. I will keep my opening remarks brief. The Government have been clear throughout the Bill’s passage that we need to properly analyse the 11,500 consultation responses before we consider bringing forward legislative change relating to AI and copyright. For that reason, the amendments in lieu, passed by the other place, are the same as the government amendments previously tabled in this House. I understand that this is a source of disappointment to some noble Lords, but it is not fair to say—as some have outside of your Lordships’ House—that the Government have in any way been unclear about their intentions, or misled or disrespected noble Lords.

I turn to the new Motion from the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley of Knighton. I understand and share his desire for a quick and effective solution. I thank him for the productive and helpful meeting we had ahead of this debate. I recognise that people have not been reassured entirely so far, which is unfortunate. I want to give the House the same undertaking I gave the noble Lord: we will work as hard as possible on this issue. I can reassure him, and your Lordships, that our plan will give copyright holders as much protection and support as possible, including via transparency, enforcement and renumeration, while not pre-empting the outcomes of the important and necessary processes that we have set out and without pre-judging any future legislation. We want to ensure that we uphold our gold standard copyright regime while also adapting to the new challenges. I look forward to working with the noble Lord as part of the parliamentary working group on this issue.

In the meantime, I urge noble Lords to accept the Government’s Motion and the amendments in lieu. That is the best way to finally pass the data Bill, with the compromises the Government have made to address this issue as quickly as possible. This will speed up our work, make it more comprehensive and provide Parliament with a meaningful update within six months —a clock that only starts ticking once this Bill has passed. These steps increase engagement and accountability, but without pre-judging or pre-empting the consultation to which so many took the time to respond.

Moved by

Leave out from “49F” to end and insert “, do disagree with the Commons in their Amendments 49P, 49Q, 49R, 49S and 49T and do propose Amendment 49U as an amendment in lieu of Commons Amendments 49P, 49Q, 49R, 49S and 49T—

49U: Before Clause 138, insert the following new Clause— “Disclosure of use and accessing of copyright works in AI training After section 21 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (infringement by making adaptation or act done in relation to adaptation) insert— “21A Disclosure of use and accessing of copyright works in AI training (1) A person who uses copyright works in the training of an artificial intelligence (AI) model for the purposes of a service with links to the United Kingdom within the meaning of subsection (2) shall make publicly available a statement identifying the copyright works used, and the means by which those works were accessed. (2) The service has links with the United Kingdom if— (a) it has a significant number of UK users, or (b) United Kingdom users form one of the target markets for the service (or the only target market). (3) The requirement in subsection (1) shall not apply where the rights holder has granted a licence to the person using the copyright works. (4) In this section, “training” means the pre-training, training, fine-tuning and retrieval-augmented generation of an AI model, or any other point at which a data input is made to an AI model.”””

My Lords, my noble friend Lady Kidron has been inspiring during the passage of the Bill. She has inspired me to take up the cudgels on behalf of our creative industries: writers, painters, filmmakers, newspapers and composers. Indeed, almost every aspect of life today is underwritten by somebody’s good idea. I believe all sides of the House agree that they should benefit from, and own, that creativity. Noble Lords who have written a novel or an article, created a picture or produced a film will know what it is like to feel ownership of their ideas, and how they would feel if they were purloined. I declare my interest as a composer.

I do not want to divide the House, but if there is no meaningful response from the Government I will have no choice. Both the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, and I told your Lordships’ House last week that we did not want to collapse—to use the Minister’s phrase—the data Bill. Indeed, we are not playing ping-pong with Amendment 49.

Rather, and in return, we are seeking a beneficial relationship with the Government. After all, many of the ideas going into AI were initially developed by the creative industries, which, like the Government, want to be at the forefront of what is to come in AI: things that are impossible to imagine and that will, I have no doubt, take our breath away.

Peter Kyle in the other place said that he did not want to deal with these issues piecemeal, but we know from experience that not putting in protection at an early stage can lead to the tail wagging the dog. Streaming would be a perfect example. In enacting new law, surely there is a duty to build in transparency in order that we can safeguard the copyright that the Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, has promised will remain in place.

However, for the creatives themselves to be able to enforce that copyright, they need to know who is using—and possibly stealing—their work. If you do not know that theft is occurring, you cannot do much about it. So, I am going to take a slightly different tack today. My amendment amends the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, making copyright law enforceable by requiring AI firms to make a public statement about their use of copyright works and the means by which they access those works. However, AI firms would not be required to disclose the use of copyright works if they have agreed a licence with the rights holder—which seems only fair. This removes burdens for ethical AI firms while also acting as a strong incentive to abide by copyright law.

My Lords, I will speak to the Government’s Motion A. The timing of this debate and the pretence that these are in any meaningful sense amendments in lieu are more process and nonsense. I will leave other noble Lords to reflect on the Government’s stunning rebuke of your Lordships’ House, but to the Minister I say that it is disrespectful to millions of people to bring back amendments as if they had not been resoundingly rejected already.

I explicitly left the protection of the property and livelihood of millions of British workers, the UK AI industry and the UK’s creative and IP-rich companies in the Government’s hands. Despite actively acknowledging that creative work is being stolen at scale, the Government chose once again to remove transparency provisions your Lordships provided, allowing the tech sector to continue to rob the creative industries blind. It is as cynical as it is bewildering.

The Government have squandered their credibility by using assurances and warm words, while refusing every attempt of your Lordships’ House to provide emergency amendments, in favour of their so-called “comprehensive solution” that will take years to deliver. The Lords amendments were interim measures for an industry crying out for immediate help, but the Government have aggressively removed any and all protections. I say to the Government, “Actions speak louder than words and we have heard you”.

We heard the Secretary of State on Sunday talk about analogue copyright for the digital age, we heard him say copyright was “unfit for purpose”, and yesterday we heard Minister Bryant say the

“single most important compromise”

was going to be