Baroness Kidron (CB)

My Lords, I will speak to my Motion 49A and offer my support to Amendment 46A in the name of the noble Viscount, Lord Camrose. It is a sensible amendment and I hope that the Government find a way to accept it without challenge. I start by rebutting three assertions that have been circling over the past few weeks. First, I reject the notion that those of us who have raised our voices against government plans are against technology. I quote the Secretary of State, Peter Kyle, who I am delighted to see is below Bar this afternoon. He said to the FT that: “Just as in every other time there is change in society, there will be some people who will either resist change or try to make change too difficult to deliver”. Well, creative people are early adopters of technology. Their minds are curious and their practices innovative. In my former career as a film director, I watched the UK film industry transform from working on celluloid to being a world-leading centre of digital production. For the past five years at Oxford’s Institute for Ethics in AI, where I am an advisor, I have been delighted to watch the leaps and bounds of AI development. Those at the frontier of AI development are creative thinkers, and creative people are natural innovators. The Government’s attempt to divide us is wrong. The transformational impact of technology is something that all the signatories of this weekend’s letter to the Prime Minister understand. Creators do not deny the creative and economic value of AI, but we do deny the assertion that we should have to build AI for free with our work and then rent it back from those who stole it. Ours is not an argument about progress but about value. The AI companies fiercely defend their own IP but deny the value of our work. Not everything new is progress, not everything that already exists is without value, but we, the creative industries, embody both change and tradition, and we reject the assertion that we are standing in the way of change. We are merely asserting our right to continue to exist and play our part in the UK’s future growth. Secondly, there is no confusion about copyright law in relation to AI, nor does the phenomenal number of submissions to the consultation prove anything other than the widespread outrage of the creative industries that the Government sought to redefine theft rather than uphold their property rights. In our last debate, my noble and learned friend Lady Butler-Sloss made an unequivocal statement to that effect which has been widely supported by other legal opinion. The Government’s spokesman, who has greeted every press inquiry of the last few weeks by saying that the Government are consulting to sort out the confusion in copyright in relation to AI is, at best, misinformed. Let me be clear: the amendment would not change copyright. We do not need to change copyright law. We need transparency so that we can enforce copyright law, because what you cannot see you cannot enforce. Thirdly, I rebut the idea that this is the wrong Bill and the wrong time. AI did not exist in the public realm until the early 2020s. The speed and scale at which copyright works are being stolen is eye-watering. Property that people have invested in, have created, have traded and that they rely on for their livelihood is being stolen at all parts of the value chain. It is an assault on the British economy, happening at scale to a sector worth £120 billion to the UK, an industry that is central to the industrial strategy and of enormous cultural import. It is happening now, and we have not even begun to catch up with the devastating consequences. The Government have taken our amendments out of the Bill and replaced them with a couple of toothless reports. Whatever these reports bring forward and whatever the consultation offers, we need the amendment in front of us today now. If this Bill does not protect copyright then, by the time that the Government work out their policy, there will be little to save. The language of AI—scraping, training, data modules, LLMs—does not evoke the full picture of what is being done. AI corporations, many of which are seeking to entrench their existing information monopolies, are not stealing nameless data. They are stealing some of the UK’s most valuable cultural and economic assets—Harry Potter, the entire back catalogue of every music publisher in the UK, the voice of Hugh Grant, the design of an iconic handbag and the IP of our universities, great museums and library collections. Even the news is stolen in real time, all without payment, with economic benefits being taken offshore. It costs UK corporations and individuals their hard-earned wealth and the Treasury much needed revenue. It also denudes the opportunities of the next generation because, whether you are a corporation or an individual, if work is stolen at every turn, you cannot survive. The time is now, and this Bill is the vehicle. Motion 49A replaces the previous package of Lords amendments. I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, who wishes he could be with us; the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, and his colleagues, who have been uncompromising in their support; and my noble friend Lord Freyberg, who were all co-sponsors of the original amendment. Amendment 49B would simply provide that a copyright holder be able to see who took their work, what was taken, when and why, allowing them a reasonable route to assert their moral right to determine whether they wish to have their work used, and if so, on what terms. It is a slimmer version of the previous package of amendments, but it covers the same ground and, importantly, it puts a timeline of 12 months on bringing forward these provisions and makes specific provision for SMEs and micro-entities and for UK-headquartered AI companies.