Pete Wishart

Absolutely—the hon. Lady is spot on. I know that several Members across the House are looking just now at some of those who took part in the debates we had on the European copyright directive and what it was doing; again, there were disagreements about its value. The hon. Lady is right; we can keep ourselves alive. That is my hope. I just hope that the provisions of the Bill do not do anything to further alienate us from our European colleagues, because it is very important that we keep that alignment. This Bill is also important because it removes a number of the unnecessary and harmful clauses in the previous Conservative Government’s Bill. We will just have to take with a pinch of salt the ambitions of this Bill, such as the £10 billion in growth anticipated from it. All I will say is that I have heard that all before. I know this is a Government desperate to find growth anywhere—they have made such a mess of the economy since coming to power that everywhere they see the green shoots of growth. We will wait and see whether we will get this £10 billion of growth. The Government have a first test, which comes with clauses 135 to 139. We do not know if we will get growth from the Bill when it comes to data, but we do know that we get growth from the creative industries in this country, which in 2022 contributed £125 billion to the economy and provided 2.4 million jobs. That is real growth. We should not mess with that and undermine it in the way the Government might be doing with the watering down of the copyright provisions and giving generative AI access to our nation’s creative treasures—I will just say that gently to the Government. However, I do very much welcome the inclusion of clauses 135 to 139.