Chris Bryant

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 “must make provision for enforcement”. What happens if it does not do so, or if the measures it includes for enforcement are not sufficient in some people’s minds? Where would that be adjudicated? How would it be decided?