Lord Baker of Dorking (Con)

My Lords, I warmly congratulate the noble Baroness on her determination and consistency in promoting this cause. It is very worth while, and, as she said, she is the spokesperson for at least 2.5 million people who constitute the cultural history of our country. What I find rather extraordinary about this Government is that, within a period of a year, they have sought to turn huge numbers of people sharply against them. First, they turned the pensioners against them, then they turned on the farmers, and now they are turning on the creators of our culture, which are very much larger than the farmers. If this is passed tonight, I am sure it will go to the Cabinet and the Prime Minister, who must begin to wonder, if he is managing to turn all these groups into enemies, how many will support them in 2029 This has political implications. There is no doubt that the whole cultural world of our country—not just the writers but the composers and painters as well—feels that it would have its livelihood severely limited, if not almost eliminated. Not only does that go for the famous writers such as Ishiguro but last Thursday, Antony Gormley, our leading sculptor —some would say he is a genius—said that it was our duty to defend the moral integrity of creators. I hope that the Minister also believes in what he said about defending the moral integrity of creators. That is what this Bill is about. Once we remove the protection of royalty, we make copying very easy and very quick. If the Bill stands on the statute book like this, it will also enhance criminality, because not only the big four but anybody in their garage in Wolverhampton could ask ChatGPT, or AI, or Microsoft to create a picture by a great painter, and then they could sell it. Only if the painter were alive and said, “Well, I never painted it” would they be able to stop it. When they are dead, anybody can do it. In fact, I think some would do it. I know the Minister is under pressure from the big American companies, but I draw her attention to comments in the Financial Times this week by someone who is described normally as the godfather of AI, a Canadian called Yoshua Bengio. He says that, at this moment, all sorts of people are experimenting in AI and trying to find a way to accommodate it and protect themselves from it but also benefit from it. He said very clearly that he was scared by recent events, “because we don’t want to create a competitor to human beings on this planet, especially if they’re smarter than us”. That is of course the danger of AI, particularly in the creative world. Once the creators have lost control of their royalties, what will they depend on? There is absolutely no doubt that many of them will suffer financially because of this Bill. Last week, as I already mentioned, Antony Gormley—our famous sculptor; some would say he is a genius—said on the “Today” programme that there is a duty to defend the moral dignity of our creators. That is at the heart of the amendments the noble Baroness has tabled. I hope the Government will therefore consider not only that this is a bad Bill but that it has been done far too quickly. Normally in our legislation, we have consultation before we get to Report, but the Minister says that they are now consulting everywhere on the impacts of this measure. That is entirely the wrong way to behave, and I hope we will send the Bill back to the Commons later tonight.