Motion to Disagree with the Lords in their Amendment 49F (Data Use and Access Bill)

Proposed by The Minister for Data Protection and Telecoms

I beg to move, That this House disagrees with Lords amendment 49F. I am tempted to start with a quote from “Macbeth”— “When shall we three meet again?”— because I notice there is a similar cast to our previous debates, but let me start by dispelling some misconceptions. We are not, contrary to what… I beg to move, That this House disagrees with Lords amendment 49F. I am tempted to start with a quote from “Macbeth”— “When shall we three meet again?”— because I notice there is a similar cast to our previous debates, but let me start by dispelling some misconceptions. We are not, contrary to what some have stated, changing UK copyright laws to the detriment of the creative industries. If the Government’s Bill is adopted, not a single word of copyright law will have changed in the United Kingdom. It will be as robust as it ever was. In fact, we have said repeatedly that creators should share in the value of this new technology, and we support artificial intelligence developers paying for the content that they use. We want to see more licensing of and proper remuneration for UK content. We are not undermining copyright owners’ control over their work. We have said from the beginning that we want intellectual property owners to have more control over the use of their works. Some said in the House of Lords yesterday that we have not listened to them or to the creative industries, but that is simply not true. We have heard loud and clear the message from the creative industries and from others. That is why we put reporting commitments on the face of the Bill at a previous round, and we have committed to adding two further reporting requirements on approaches to models trained overseas and on enforcement. We have committed to delivering reports and impact assessments within nine rather than 12 months, and the Bill will require the Secretary of State to make a progress statement to Parliament about the impact assessment and reports within six months of Royal Assent. It is also why the Secretary of State, who is sitting by me now, stated clearly that although we went into the consultation with a preferred option, we have heard the reaction to that. We want to consider the consultation responses in full, and—to quote him precisely— “When we went into the consultation, I believed that opting out could have offered an opportunity to bring both sides together, but I now accept that that is not the case.” —[ Official Report , 22 May 2025; Vol. 767, c. 1233.] As I have said, the Government have listened at every stage. As I have explained to the House previously, the Bill was never intended to be about artificial intelligence, intellectual property and copyright. What we have is a Bill that will harness data for economic growth, improve public services and support modern digital government. We want to get the legislation on the statute book as fast as we possibly can.

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