Chris Bryant

I know, but she is wonderful, so we will let her—or you will let her, Madam Deputy Speaker. This is a really important point. Surely it cannot be impossible for us to find a technical solution. People who can develop AI—and they are now developing AI on their laptops, especially following DeepSeek; they do not need massive computers—should be able to develop a very simple system, as I have said before, whereby all creatives who are copyright owners are able to assert their rights, very simply, across all platforms, without any great exertion. That is what I want to achieve. The hon. Lady was quite right to raise that question, so what are we going to do next? We say in new clause 17 that we will report in 12 months’ time. If we were to report in 12 months’ time that we had done absolutely nothing, I think that everyone would rightly rant and rave at us. It is our intention that the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology and the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport will together co-ordinate a special taskforce specifically to consider how we can facilitate, incentivise and enable the development of these technical solutions. I suspect that, if we can get there, opt-out will look remarkably like opt-in. The second matter on which new clause 17 requires us to report is access to data for AI developers to train AI systems in the UK, the third is transparency, and the fourth relates to measures to facilitate the licensing of copyright works for AI training. The publication will be required within 12 months of Royal Assent, and will of course be laid before Parliament. New clause 16 supplements these reports with a full economic impact assessment that will go further than previous assessments, and will present an analysis of the economic impact of a range of policy options available in this context, supported by the additional evidence that the Government have received in response to their consultation. The reporting requirements are important: they mean that we will have to engage with each of these issues apace and in depth, and we will do that. We are determined to find and incentivise technical solutions that support our objectives, and I believe that if we do that we can be a world leader. As I said earlier, the two Secretaries of State will convene working groups to tackle each of these issues. I have heard people say that we are legislating to water down copyright, but that is simply not true. If Members support the Government’s position today, the UK’s copyright law will remain precisely as robust tomorrow as it is today. For activities in the UK, people will, in law, only be able to use copyright material if they are permitted and licensed to do so or if a copyright exception allows it, such as the existing copyright exceptions for education, public libraries and non-commercial work.