PARLIAMENTARY DEBATE
Copyright and Artificial Intelligence - 18 December 2024 (Commons/Commons Chamber)

And now for something completely different! With permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I will make a statement regarding our launch of a public consultation on copyright and artificial intelligence.

The United Kingdom has a proud tradition of creativity and technical innovation. From our film and television sectors to video games, publishing, music, design and fashion, our creative industries are a cornerstone of our economy and our creative identity. They bring £125 billion to the economy and employ over 2.3 million people. James Bond, the Beatles, Vivienne Westwood, Adele, “Vera”, Bridget Riley, “Tomb Raider”, the Sugababes, “Football Manager”, Paddington and Paul Smith are all part of an immensely valuable British industry.

The creative industries are central to our economic future, and we are determined to help them flourish. The same is true of artificial intelligence—both as an enabler of other industries, including the creative industries, and as a sector in its own right. The Government are determined to capitalise on the UK’s position of strength in the global AI sector and will soon publish the AI opportunities action plan, which will set out an ambitious road map to unlock AI’s transformative potential across our economy and public services.

Both the creative industries and AI sectors are at the heart of our industrial strategy, and they are also increasingly interlinked. AI is already being used across the creative industries, from music and film production to publishing, architecture and design; it has transformed post-production, for instance. As of September 2024, more than 38% of creative industries businesses said that they have used AI technologies, with nearly 50% using AI to improve their business operations.

Strong copyright laws have been the bedrock of the creative industries, but as things stand, the application of UK copyright law to the training of AI models is fiercely disputed. Rights holders, including musicians, record labels, artists and news publishers, are finding it difficult to control the use of their works to train AI models, and they want and need a greater ability to manage such activity and to be paid for it. Likewise, AI developers, including UK-based start-ups, are finding it difficult to navigate copyright law and complain that the legal uncertainty means that they are unable to train leading models in the UK.

The status quo cannot continue. It risks limiting investment, innovation and growth in the creative industries, the AI sector and the wider economy. Neither side can afford to wait for expensive litigation—either here or in the US—to clarify the law, not least because courts in different jurisdictions may come to different conclusions and individual cases may not provide clarity across the sector. Nor can we simply rely on voluntary co-operation. That is why we think the Government must take proactive and thoughtful action that works for all parties.

The consultation published yesterday sets out clearly that the Government’s objectives on this issue are threefold: to enhance rights holders’ control of their material and their ability to be paid for its use, to support wide access to high-quality material to drive the development of leading AI models in the UK, and to secure greater transparency from AI developers in order to build trust with creators, creative industries and consumers. In short, we want to provide legal certainty for all and to secure enhanced licensing of content.

There are three key aspects to our consultation. The first is increased transparency from AI developers. That includes the content that they have used in training their large language models, how they acquire it, and any content generated by their models. In other words, consumers should know whether a book or song has been generated by a person or by artificial intelligence, and whose content helped generate it in the first place. The second aspect is a new system of rights reservation, whereby rights holders can withhold their content from being used unless and until it has been licensed. The third is an exception to copyright law for text and data mining where rights holders have licensed their content or otherwise chosen not to reserve their rights. That would improve access to content by AI developers, while allowing rights holders to control how their content is used for AI training.

Those measures are contingent upon each other. Progressed together, we believe this package of measures could enhance the ability of rights holders to protect their material and seek payment for its use through increased licensing, while also enabling AI developers to train leading models in the UK in full compliance with UK law. It will, however, only work if there is a proper system of rights reservation in place. I urge everyone to read and respond to the consultation document and to examine the safeguards we are proposing for rights holders. I would especially urge both AI developers and rights holders to work with us to identify a simple, practical, proportionate and effective technical system of rights reservation, without which the whole package will not work.

We are conscious that the UK does not operate in a hermetically sealed bubble, and this provides its own challenges. If we were to adopt a too tight regime based on proactive explicit permission, the danger is that international developers would continue to train their models using UK content accessed overseas but may not be able to deploy them in the UK. As AI becomes increasingly powerful and widely adopted globally, this could significantly disadvantage sectors across our economy, including the creative industries, and sweep the rug from underneath British AI developers. That is why, as well taking this approach in the UK, we are committed to international engagement and recognise the importance of international alignment.

This consultation is a joint effort between the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and the Intellectual Property Office, and between the Under-Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, my wonderful hon. Friend the Member for Enfield North (Feryal Clark), who has responsibility for AI, and me, with responsibility for the creative industries.

This is not an academic exercise. The consultation is absolutely clear that we will not implement these changes unless and until we are confident that we have a practical, practicable and effective plan that meets our objectives of enhancing rights holder control, providing legal certainty around AI firms’ access to content, and providing transparency for rights holders and AI developers of all sizes. My fellow Minister and I will be engaging directly with a wide range of people in an attempt to find practical and technical solutions to this question.

Many people have called this an existential question for our creative industries. They are right. We therefore see this consultation as a pivotal opportunity to ensure that sustained growth and innovation for the UK’s AI sector continues to benefit creators, businesses and consumers alike while preserving the values and principles that make our creative industries so unique. We believe that there is a potential win-win solution, and that the UK, with its strong traditions of copyright and technological innovation, is in a unique place to deliver it. I commend this statement to the House.

I call the shadow Minister, Dr Ben Spencer.

I thank the Minister for advance sight of the statement.

Britain is a world leader in the creative industries, from music to art to literature to our free and independent media. I say as a shadow Science, Innovation and Technology Minister that, while we need science to live, the arts make life worth living. The UK also has a world leading tech sector. The invention of generative artificial intelligence provides many opportunities, but particularly for the creative industries the data mining behind AI models can breach copyright. That presents challenges around authenticity when they are used to mimic artists and creative works, and there is a lack of legal clarity around the status of computer-generated work. We must tackle and respond to those issues.

Britain’s creative industries employ nearly 2.4 million people and contribute £125 billion to our economy, but we must also recognise that we are part of a global technological ecosystem and if we fall behind in supporting our artificial intelligence industry it will move elsewhere. Let us be clear: the genie is out of the bottle and the world is scrabbling to respond to it. As always there is a balance to be struck to ensure we take the opportunity on offer to revolutionise working practices and to deliver productivity through technological innovation, so we welcome work and investigation in this area on both the role of regulation and the options available.

Given the delays in the Minister bringing this work forward, he must recognise that this is a complex area to regulate, especially given the international and domestic interconnectivities. Sadly, rather than taking an open position as an honest broker, it is clear today that the Government have already picked one side in this debate. The Minister’s preference for a data mining opt-out for the creative industries will place extra burdens on creators to protect their intellectual property. Given the magnitude of the impact of his proposals, why has he released this consultation now, just before the Christmas break, and why is it limited to only 10 weeks? So when I am benefiting from UK creative talent over the Christmas period, whether listening to the Sugababes or watching Daniel Craig as James Bond—Bond was blond—the creative sector will be responding to a consultation that the livelihoods of those who work in the sector depend on. Will the Minister extend the consultation? Can the Minister explain how the opt-out will ensure protection to creators? And in forming this position, how many times has he already met representatives from the technology and creative sectors both domestically and internationally?

The Minister should be well aware, following five months of falling business confidence, that one thing that businesses dislike is uncertainty, but this announcement of an opt-out represents nothing but uncertainty for the creative industries. Rather than prioritising their need to be seen to be doing something, the Government need to start learning to do things right.

I call our very own James Bond, Minister Chris Bryant.

Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker.

Fortunately, I asked ChatGPT what the shadow Minister would ask me and it was pretty much right—although some of the questions from ChatGPT were rather more to the point. I will deal with the serious points he made.

First, the shadow Minister raised the point about mimicking artists. That is one of the things we are consulting on. There is a legitimate question about whether we should take further action in this country. Tennessee has acted: it has got its ELVIS Act—the Ensuring Likeness Voice and Image Security Act. California and a couple of other states in the United States of America have acted on this already, and whether we should move in that direction is a perfectly legitimate question.

Likewise, the shadow Minister referred to computer-generated works. He will probably know that under section 9(3) of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 there is provision that seems to guarantee the right for computer-generated art to be copyright-protected. That is not the case in most other countries, and it could be argued that developments in recent copyright law on the nature of originality would suggest that, unless a human being is directly involved in the creation of the work, there should not be copyright protection. We have suggested a direction of travel to get rid of section 9(3) of the Act.

The shadow Minister said that we have delayed bringing this forward, but I merely point out that for quite a long time the previous Government said that they would bring forward a voluntary system, bringing the two sides together. Nothing whatsoever came from that, so I am afraid that feels a bit of a cheat.

What I want to contest is the idea that we have sided with one or the other. There is a legitimate problem, which is that AI companies and the creative industries are at loggerheads in the courts in several different jurisdictions on several different points which are moot at the moment. We do not think that simply standing by the present situation will suffice because the danger is that in two or three years’ time all UK content will have been scraped by one or other AI developing company somewhere else in the world if there is no legal clarity in the UK. I would like to be able to bring all that home so that AI operators can work in this country with security under the law, using UK copyright that has been licensed and paid for, because that is another potential revenue stream for creators in this country.

The shadow Minister asks about extending the consultation. I am not going to extend the consultation. We want to crack on with this piece of work. Only two minutes earlier in his speech he said that we were delaying bringing it forward and then he said we should delay further. It is time that we seize hold of this. I certainly will meet with a large number of people. My fellow Minister my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield North and I have met many different organisations and we will be providing a list because it will be in our transparency returns published soon, and the number must run to dozens if not hundreds. Of course, there are differing views, but I make it absolutely clear that the three measures we are talking about—the transparency on inputs and outputs that AI developers will have to provide, the provisions for creators to reserve their rights, and the exemption for data mining for commercial purposes—are contingent upon each other. We will not move forward with such a package unless there is a technical solution to the question of how people can reserve their rights.

At the weekend, I looked online to see what it would be like to try to reserve rights, by pretending to be various musicians and artists. At present, it is phenomenally difficult and complicated—other Members may have questions about this—and that must change. There must be a proper rights reservation system that is easy to use, practicable and enables creators, either individually or collectively, to assert and maintain control of their rights.

I call the Chair of the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee.

The UK is in a unique position—second in the world in the creative industries, and in the top three for AI innovation—so getting the right solution to protect and support our intellectual property, while supporting and incentivising AI innovation, is uniquely important to our cultural and economic life.

I am a former regulator and chartered engineer, so I welcome the Minister’s decision to go with regulatory technology as the solution, and to challenge the tech sector to come up with technology to ensure we can have both the reservation of rights and the transparency of inputs to large language models, both of which are critical.

The tech sector too often spends less time protecting people and property than maximising profit, but the language of the consultation is a bit vague. The Minister talked about arriving at a plan rather than a solution, so will he make it absolutely clear that any text and data mining exemption is contingent on the technology being deliverable, implementable and workable, and that if the technology fails, the exemption fails?

I welcome the Chair of the Select Committee to her place. She is 100% right that we cannot have the text and data mining exemption for commercial purposes unless there is a proper rights reservation system in place. I do not know whether she has looked at rights reservation, but it is terribly complicated. People can use the robots exclusion protocol, but it is rather out of date and is avoided by many players in the market. It is very complicated and applies only to a person’s own website, whereas their creative input might not be on their personal website—it might be on somebody else’s.

I tried to create a Bridget Riley using an AI bot over the weekend. The bot had obviously trained itself on some Bridget Riley works, but it was a shockingly bad Bridget Riley—it was nowhere near. I wanted to ask whether it had used Bridget Riley’s work to learn how to make a Bridget Riley-like picture and, if so, whether Bridget Riley received any compensation. Bridget Riley could use another website, haveibeentrained.com, if she wanted, but it is phenomenally complicated. That is precisely what must change. The AI companies must come up with a technical solution, whether they produce music, text or whatever. Without that, we will not be able to progress.

It is always easier if the Minister looks at the Chair, so we can ensure that we are sticking to time limits.

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

The UK can and should be a global leader in AI innovation, and I welcome this consultation. Investment and support for technological innovation will be a crucial pillar of growing our economy and solving the problems of today and tomorrow. Likewise, our world-leading creative industries must remain a growth priority.

In my constituency, I see the invaluable contribution that the film industry makes to the local and national economy, driving growth while producing top-quality content. We might not have James Bond, but we have had “Robin Hood” and “Deadpool”, and “Wicked” was recently filmed just over the border.

The creative industries have been clear that failure to apply existing copyright laws to AI model training presents an existential threat. They are being asked to allow their output to be used to train models that could be in direct competition with them. We must get this balance right.

There is no uncertainty in existing law. UK law is totally clear that commercial organisations must license the data they use to train their large language models. The announcement that the Government favour a text and data mining exemption will be deeply concerning to the creative industries. The issue was thought to be settled under the previous Government, so what assessment have the Government made of the likely impact of their favoured option on the creative industries? The expectation seems to be that small businesses in the creative industry should welcome an opt-out system in exchange for vague commitments to transparency, so will the Minister lay out what successful, workable examples of an opt-out system he has looked at? Can he give us examples of where this approach has successfully protected creatives? Why has the option of an opt-in not been included in the consultation?

As has been said previously, the creative industry adds £125 billion a year in gross value to the economy and goes hand in hand with our digital economy. It is essential that the Government support AI innovation, but that cannot come at the cost of our world-leading creative industry.

Madam Deputy Speaker, I will look at you to make sure that I do not go over time, but I would point out that “Wicked” is far too long a movie.

I make it clear that I do not think there is a complete separation between AI and the creative industries. AI is a creative industry in many regards. There is an important collaboration between the two, and even Sir Paul McCartney has said that he has used AI to help him write some of his most recent work.

The hon. Lady says this was all settled under the previous Government, but nothing in this territory was settled under the previous Government. It was simply left hanging in the air, which is why we are trying to take action. She asks whether there are any successful examples of opt-outs. No, there are not. Precisely the point I am trying to make is that, at the moment, it is remarkably difficult for individuals and organisations—whether a record label, an individual artist or photographer, or whoever—to protect their rights. That is what needs to change.

There has been some licensing. Some newspapers have licensed content with OpenAI. Sony Music has written to all the different AI operators to say that all the work that it protects is copyrighted and not to be used. But I am not sure that such piecemeal processes are enough to build the control we want for rights holders, while enabling AI to develop fruitfully in the UK.

I welcome this consultation and my hon. Friend’s recognition that neither we nor this stuff exists in a bubble. What does he make of the NO FAKES—Nurture Originals, Foster Art, and Keep Entertainment Safe—Bill, currently in the US House of Representatives, which protects personality and likeness of human writers and artists against misappropriation?

The Minister says he is in meetings mode. Does he know what is happening with the consultation on live event ticketing? It would be great to meet him to discuss my private Member’s Bill—the anti-Oasis-style scam, rip-off ticketing Bill—which is being squashed by Friday filibustering.

I think my hon. Friend, who is on the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, took advantage of the change in the Chair to get away with asking a question that has absolutely nothing to do with this consultation. On live ticketing, I am absolutely certain that the Government will have something to say soon—the word “soon” means precisely what I choose it to mean.

On publicity rights, my hon. Friend is quite right that that is a significant question that we will ask during the consultation. There is an argument for bringing in legislation in the UK. California, as I said, has a digital replicas law and Tennessee has the ELVIS Act, which stands for eliminating limits on the voice’s intrinsic sovereignty. I think that was an attempt to cram that into the word “Elvis”. She is right that the US Copyright Office is arguing for a federal digital replica law, and we might want to go down that route as well. I urge my hon. Friend and, perhaps, the Select Committee to consider that matter. They might like to provide some advice in response to the consultation as well.

I am tempted to invite the Minister to consult the magnificent Taylor Swift who, apart from all her many other talents, has shown herself pretty shrewd when it comes to preserving the copyright of her material. He puts his finger on the key weakness in all this: no matter what sort of regime we set up, and no matter how many countries we try to get involved in this, surely it will only take one rogue jurisdiction to allow a machine to scrape from everybody else’s material? Then, the internet’s ability for everyone to access it will undermine the regime and, in that way, we face the danger that “Shake It Off” becomes “Rip It Off”.

I disagree. I saw the right hon. Gentleman nodding earlier when I was talking about not wanting to pull the rug from under the feet of UK AI adopters. The UK is in a very specific position. We have probably the best copyright laws of any country because of the specific way in which they developed. It is partly thanks to Hogarth, Dickens and many others over the years that we have ended up with strong copyright legislation. We also have a strong body of intellectual property in this country, which is enormously valuable, potentially, to AI operators. We stand in a very specific position. There is an argument that AI can be trained elsewhere, in another jurisdiction, but the moment it is brought into the UK, it still falls under UK legislation.

The right hon. Gentleman is also right about this. I did not consult Taylor Swift, but I did ask an AI company to come up with a song in the manner of Adele.

“Oh, I still feel you deep in my soul,

Even though you left me out here on my own.

The love we had it’s slipping through my hands,

But I can’t forget, I still don’t understand.

You’re gone, but your memory’s all I see,

And in the silence, it’s you haunting me”—

Madam Deputy Speaker. [Laughter.] It is sort of Adele, but it is not Adele. Does Adele know that her material has been used? Does her record label know that her lyrics have been used to create that? It is sort of in the territory, but it is not right. I think we can get this right in the UK and provide leadership to the world. That is what we should strive for.

I will just make the point that I can see that this is very technical and complicated. It might require long answers, but I am not sure it required that level of input from not-Adele.

Can the Minister clarify the difference between his term “rights reservation” and previous reports of the Government’s preference for an opt-out system? Those systems have already been called out and considered unjust by our creators. There are AI leaders who recognise the need for fair licensing. What assurances can the Government provide to support both human and AI innovation? Does the Minister, with his creative industries hat on, agree that respecting copyright would see the introduction of an opt-in system as essential?

Again, this is another false dichotomy being presented to us between opt in and opt out. That is why we have landed on the term “rights reservation”. A lot of the material out there is not copyright. That is either because it is long out of copyright—the law for most works lasts for 70 years after the death of the author or the first publication of the work—or because some artists have categorically decided not to retain their copyright. Tom Lehrer, the author of many satirical songs from the 1980s and 1990s, such as “The Vatican Rag” and “The Masochism Tango”, has deliberately surrendered his copyright.

This is a world where we want to make sure that the vast majority of rights holders, whether they be the record label, the individual photographer, the artist or whatever, have the right of control over their copyright—over whether it is used and how it is used—and if it is going to be used, they should be remunerated. I urge my hon. Friend, who I know has a great interest in this subject in his role on the Select Committee, to make sure that that false dichotomy between opt in and opt out is abandoned. We talk about rights reservation, because then, opt out might look remarkably like opt in.

In July of this year, it was revealed that 173,000 YouTube videos, including material created by globally recognised British musicians, news channels and artists, had been scraped into a dataset used to train AI models. Content from over 40,000 creatives has been found in this dataset, yet I do not believe that consent was sought from a single impacted creator to use their copyrighted works. It is clear that AI offers a fantastic opportunity for our economy, but it must supplement and grow industries rather than replace them wholesale. Creatives deserve to be compensated for their work. AI companies will happily pay the electricity bill for their data centres and wages for their staff, so why should they not also pay to access the creative content on which their models depend?

I completely agree with the hon. Lady. Of course those companies should pay for the content that they are using. I think she is referring to LAION-5B, which is the dataset that was produced in Germany. Interestingly, a court in Hamburg has decided that this is already covered by the exemption for data and text mining for non-commercial purposes for research. Subsequently, though, this has been used not just for research, but for other purposes, which is precisely the kind of area where there is a legal dispute. That is why we are trying to provide legal certainty in the UK as to what can and cannot be used, when it can be used, and how we can make sure that people’s creative rights are protected.

This is an important issue everywhere in the world, but it is particularly important here in the UK because our economy has, as the Minister has said, incredible strengths both in the creative industries and, more recently, in AI development. It is important to note that a lot of the technology that powers these models was pioneered by DeepMind here in London. Does the Minister agree that getting the balance right on this is critical to the Government’s mission of delivering economic growth?

Both sectors are part of our industrial strategy, and we must make sure that both are able to flourish. I fully understand that there will be people in the creative industries who will be worried about what we are saying, but I want them to understand that this package comes as a whole. Ed Newton-Rex, who was formerly of Stability AI, wrote in his Substack today that he was concerned that this Government would proceed without actually checking whether a system of rights reservation worked. We will not. We will proceed only if there is a proper system of rights reservation. But there are an awful lot of very clever people who work in AI in this country. I would like somebody to set a bunch of them on working out a simple, practicable, technical solution to the question of rights reservation. Then, I think, everybody has a chance of prospering in the UK.

As a former journalist, I am intimately familiar with the gold standard copyright laws that we have in this country. Does the Minister agree with the News Media Association, which is very concerned about the current situation faced by its members, where things are already being scraped and taken into these AI machines? To quote the fabulous Sugababes, those members would like the Minister to “Push the Button” on the existing laws and protect their copyright now. Can we have action now, rather than this rather vague and woolly consultation?

Well, no. This is a genuinely thorny question that needs a technical solution. The Government are not going to write the technical solution. That has to come from the two sides working out together how we can get to a situation that benefits everybody. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right about the newspapers. Some newspapers have already licensed material, including Associated Newspapers, The Washington Post and several others. It would be interesting to see whether the income that those companies are receiving is flowing through to the journalists who produce the copyright material in the first place, but perhaps that is part of the rights reservation system that we need to look at as well.

The commitment of the Secretaries of State for Culture, Media and Sport and for Science, Innovation and Technology to ensuring that creators can control how their content is used and be paid for it is very welcome, but some creators are concerned that the rights reservation framework proposed by the Government will not allow them to assert control. What steps is the Minister taking to ensure that a new framework takes account of those concerns?

I have been trying—perhaps I have not yet succeeded—to make it absolutely clear that I, the Secretaries of State for Culture, Media and Sport and for Science, Innovation and Technology and the Under-Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield North (Feryal Clark), who is sitting next to me, would not bring forward for legislation something that undermined the copyright rights of rights holders in the creative industries. We simply would not do so.

What we are trying to do is push both sides to a place where we can create a new system—it will probably be new to the United Kingdom, and might be one of our gifts to the world—of rights reservation that is simple, practical and practicable. This is not a Second Reading debate; it is simply a statement on a consultation. I urge all who have concerns to voice them in that consultation.

This is a timely statement, because I have been conversing with Anne, one of my constituents. Anne is a visual artist and dress designer, and she has exactly the concerns that you set out.

Order. It is the Minister who is setting out concerns, not me.

I beg your pardon, Madam Deputy Speaker.

I will recommend to Anne that she contributes to the consultation. However, the Minister hits on the nub of the problem, which is the international element. For me, the key example is China, a country that has a history of stealing IP and is a key player in the international AI competition. I wish the Minister well in this work, but how can we thread the needle so that, if the consultation leads to a Bill that gets implemented, we avoid not only the copyright of our creatives being stolen by Chinese AI firms but handing the AI advantage to China?

I think that China is the problem in lots of different cases; I am not sure that it is in this case. It is more difficult for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for me to get a practicable solution, but that is what we are determined to achieve. When the hon. Gentleman referred to Anne, I thought for one moment that she was his AI assistant. The truth is that we will all have AI assistants very soon. Most of the time, when we google anything these days, the first result comes up because of AI. It is part of our lives, and we cannot pretend that away. What I would like is for UK companies and start-ups to develop AI in a way that accepts that the content that many of them are desperate to use needs to be paid for.

May I convey to the Minister my disappointment that his ChatGPT prompt yielded the Sugababes and “Football Manager” but not the enduring institution of “Gavin and Stacey” from the Vale of Glamorgan? I know that that is an omission that ChatGPT will correct. This is a critical debate, because the path to prosperity for nations has to be a path through technology. In that context, the primary question on my mind is whether the Minister can set out plans for how data accuracy and completeness in the creative sector can underpin the Government’s wider AI action plan, and ultimately drive national growth.

My hon. Friend makes a very good point about “Gavin and Stacey”, and I look forward to the Christmas special. I would merely point out that, since H from Steps is from the Rhondda, Steps has a lot more to offer.

He lives in the Vale of Glamorgan.

Well, some people have greatness thrust upon them.

My hon. Friend makes an important point about data, which will become an increasing part of our economic resilience and strength in this country. That is another part of my responsibility, if I have my DSIT hat on. I very much look forward to the Data (Use and Access) Bill coming to the Commons in the new year, once it has finished in the other place, because it is an opportunity for us to create smart data, which will release a great deal more economic potential and productivity in the UK.

UK Music describes copyright as the foundation of the music industry, providing a means for creators to monetise their work, an incentive for investment in talent, and an opportunity for us, the public, to enjoy the fruits of creativity. It is important that we get this right, so will the Minister set out how the Government will work with both developers and rights holders to make the most of this groundbreaking technology while still protecting artists’ work?

No. 1: I will have endless meetings with an awful lot of people from the creative industries to ensure that all their concerns are recognised. I pay tribute to UK Music, which has already been in touch several times in the past 24 hours to express its views on the subject. Quite interestingly, copyright works differently in different media—in music, publishing, newspapers and so on—and that is one of the things we need to take clear hold of when we take anything further forward.

I also had a successful meeting this afternoon with people talking about introducing a voluntary levy on tickets and arena gigs to ensure that we have money to support grassroots music in this country, and I very much hope that we will be able to make a significant announcement on that in the new year.

I welcome the statement. The Minister refers to Ed Newton-Rex, who recently gave evidence to our Select Committee on this very subject. It is clear that creatives are deeply worried about any suggestion of an opt-out when it comes to the solution. That is why I welcome my hon. Friend’s commitment at the Dispatch Box to make any progress contingent on a technological solution on rights reservation because, ultimately, is that not the way to square the circle that this Government are always trying to square, which is of economic growth and innovation, while protecting workers’ rights?

My hon. Friend is 100% right. Squaring the circle is what we are in the business of doing, and sometimes that is not an easy thing for Government, because not all the levers lie with Government and with legislation. To be absolutely clear, though, we know we need to provide legal certainty in this space. That almost certainly means that we will want to introduce legislation. We will not introduce legislation until such time as all the different aspects that I have already referred to—namely, transparency on inputs and outputs, control of rights reservation for rights holders, and the text and data mining exemption for commercial work—in that sphere hang together, as all of them are contingent on one another.

I think that was the last question, Madam Deputy Speaker, so have yourself a very merry Christmas.

You are supposed to sing it!

I don’t think I am allowed to sing at the Dispatch Box.

The Minister would be well advised not to sing at the Dispatch Box, but I thank him for his comprehensive responses this afternoon.