Data (Use and Access) Bill [Lords]

Before Clause 138

Statement and bringing forward of a draft Bill: copyright infringement, AI models, and transparency over inputs

I beg to move, That this House disagrees with Lords amendment 49F.

I am tempted to start with a quote from “Macbeth”—

“When shall we three meet again?”—

because I notice there is a similar cast to our previous debates, but let me start by dispelling some misconceptions. We are not, contrary to what some have stated, changing UK copyright laws to the detriment of the creative industries. If the Government’s Bill is adopted, not a single word of copyright law will have changed in the United Kingdom. It will be as robust as it ever was. In fact, we have said repeatedly that creators should share in the value of this new technology, and we support artificial intelligence developers paying for the content that they use. We want to see more licensing of and proper remuneration for UK content.

We are not undermining copyright owners’ control over their work. We have said from the beginning that we want intellectual property owners to have more control over the use of their works. Some said in the House of Lords yesterday that we have not listened to them or to the creative industries, but that is simply not true. We have heard loud and clear the message from the creative industries and from others. That is why we put reporting commitments on the face of the Bill at a previous round, and we have committed to adding two further reporting requirements on approaches to models trained overseas and on enforcement. We have committed to delivering reports and impact assessments within nine rather than 12 months, and the Bill will require the Secretary of State to make a progress statement to Parliament about the impact assessment and reports within six months of Royal Assent.

It is also why the Secretary of State, who is sitting by me now, stated clearly that although we went into the consultation with a preferred option, we have heard the reaction to that. We want to consider the consultation responses in full, and—to quote him precisely—

“When we went into the consultation, I believed that opting out could have offered an opportunity to bring both sides together, but I now accept that that is not the case.”—[Official Report, 22 May 2025; Vol. 767, c. 1233.]

As I have said, the Government have listened at every stage.

As I have explained to the House previously, the Bill was never intended to be about artificial intelligence, intellectual property and copyright. What we have is a Bill that will harness data for economic growth, improve public services and support modern digital government. We want to get the legislation on the statute book as fast as we possibly can.

Will the Minister give way?

Of course, it would be a delight.

If only I believed the Minister. I pick up the frustration in his tone, and I appreciate that this must be exhausting for him, because this is the fourth time that the Government have been defeated on this issue in the other place. I understand that he just wants to get this piece of legislation done, but this time it only requires the Government to come forward with a plan to implement transparency before it is too late. He says that our copyright law is robust and that he is not seeking to undermine it—it is robust, but it is being ignored. How long will it take before the Government hold the AI companies to account for what is effectively the biggest copyright heist in history? How long will it take before the Government clamp down on what is basically the whitewashing of the behaviour of big tech? Who is really pulling the strings here?

Well, nobody is pulling my strings. I do not know what that final reference was to. I pay tribute to the hon. Lady and the Select Committee, who have done important work in this field. Some of what we have committed to in previous rounds of ping-pong in this House has sprung directly from what her Select Committee asked us to do. We will continue to listen to that. As she knows, we have always said, right from the beginning, that a key aspect of any package we bring forward would be something around transparency.

I will come on to the precise matters in the new clause before us, and I hope that might explain why we are urging the House to reject the amendment today. It is a delight to hear from the hon. Lady, and she need not doubt me.

Will the Minister give way?

Another delight.

I know that the Minister does mean it in this case. He talks about the speed of moving this legislation on to the statute book. I note that legislative consent motions are in from the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly, but as yet there is not one from the Northern Ireland Assembly. Can he give me clarification as to what implication that legislative consent motion not being in place will have for those businesses and individuals in Northern Ireland who will be affected by this legislation?

I have spoken to Ministers in Northern Ireland, and they have already laid that legislative consent motion. My understanding is that that process will be fully done in time for Royal Assent, so he need not worry. We have sorted that one out, too.

I promised the Chair of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Gosport (Dame Caroline Dinenage), that I was about to come on to the precise details of the amendment, so I will address that. First, as Baroness Jones of Whitchurch, my noble colleague, said in the Lords yesterday,

“the Government’s report on the use of copyright work in the development of AI systems will address two additional areas, specifically highlighted by the noble Baroness’s original amendment”—

the one that we are now considering—

“how to deal with models trained overseas; and how rules should be enforced and by whom.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 2 June 2025; Vol. 846, c. 481.]

We will do subsection (1) of the new clause as part of our report and economic impact assessment. In other words, we have already committed to do half of what is in the amendment, and I would therefore argue that that half is unnecessary.

The second part of the new clause is problematic, and I think it would be problematic for any Government. It requires the Government to produce a draft Bill on copyright and AI according to a specific timetable. It lays out elements that that Bill must include and determines how it should be considered by this House. I cannot think of any Bill in our history that has included such a clause, for very good reason. A central plank of parliamentary sovereignty is that no Parliament can bind its successor. That does not just mean from one Parliament to another; it means that one Session of Parliament cannot bind a future Session. However, the Kidron amendment says that, for instance, the draft Bill

Will the Minister give way?

I will just finish this point, if the hon. Lady will allow me. In addition, we are still working through a huge number of consultation responses. To prescribe a draft Bill in detail at this point would completely undermine that process and the policy work that is taking place. I would argue that not only is that bad policymaking, but it would completely disregard the input that so many respondents to the consultation have exhausted so much effort in providing.

I will give way first to the hon. Member for Gosport, and then to the right hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon (Sir Julian Smith).

I think the Minister for giving way, but I think he is dancing on the head of a pin. The fact is that all legislation somehow binds those who are coming down the track, and others have spoken on many occasions about the urgency of bringing forward measures to provide transparency about what of people’s intellectual property is being scraped right now. I cannot understand why the Government are taking this position. This amendment is not asking for much; it is just asking for the Government to have a plan to sort this out in short order.