Chris Bryant MP: speeches

Speeches

• 14 May 2025 · Data (Use and Access) Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  Hang on! Madam Deputy Speaker, we will have to set up a queuing system.

• 14 May 2025 · Data (Use and Access) Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  Oh dear. I take very seriously the point that this is not just about people with deep pockets; it is also about individual artists. We want to ensure that they are protected. I give way to the hon. Gentleman.

• 14 May 2025 · Data (Use and Access) Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is jumping the gun slightly—I will come on to those issues. I want to praise Baroness Owen with regard to this part of the legislation. If it had not been for her, I do not think it would have ended up in the Bill. There was a bit of to-ing and fro-ing between her and the Ministry of Justice to ensure that we got the legislation in the right place. As I said in last week’s discussions, one of the issues was whether Baroness Owen’s original version of the second offence really worked in law; I think she agreed that our version, which we tabled in Committee, was better. We have been able to tidy up the question of the reasonable excuse. It is perfectly legitimate to ask how on earth there could be a legitimate or reasonable excuse for creating one of these images or asking for one to be created, and we went through those debates previously. I am glad that the Government have come to a settled position with Baroness Owen, and that is what I urge everybody to support here today. The Government made a manifesto commitment to ban sexually explicit deepfakes, and the Bill delivers on that promise. For the first time, there will be punishment for perpetrators who create or ask others to create intimate deepfakes of adults without consent. Secondly, I turn to the national underground asset register, which it does feel has been a long time coming. Of course, that is partly because the Bill is in its third iteration. Amendment 34 relates to the national underground asset register. An amendment was previously tabled in the House of Lords requiring the Secretary of State to provide guidance on cyber-security measures, which was rejected by this House. Last week, the Government tabled amendments 34B and 34C in lieu on this topic, which were drafted with the support of the security services. These amendments expand the scope from cyber-security only to general security measures, clarify the audience for the guidance and extend its reach to Northern Ireland, alongside England and Wales. On all the amendments I have spoken to thus far, I thank our noble colleagues in the other place for their work and support to reach agreement in these areas. I urge colleagues here today to support these amendments, too; otherwise, we are never going to get the Bill through.

• 14 May 2025 · Data (Use and Access) Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  I was anticipating more contributions from other Members, but it is a delight to see you in the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker, and to follow on from the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire (Pete Wishart). I will not speak at great length, Members will be delighted to hear. First, I want to refer to the matter of financial privilege, because the hon. Member referred to it just now. It is not the Government who decide whether financial privilege is engaged. It is a simple matter decided on advice from the Clerks to the Chair, which is determined from two motions, from 1671 and 1678. Where there is any financial implication of a Bill, or in this case an amendment that comes from the House of Lords, it is a simple matter as to whether or not the financial privilege of the House of Commons is engaged. Anything that obviously requires a system of enforcement is likely to require expenditure. That is why we would not choose to waive our financial privilege in relation to these amendments today.

• 14 May 2025 · Data (Use and Access) Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  I think it was my hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley (Anneliese Midgley) and then I will probably go over to my hon. Friend the Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Torcuil Crichton).

• 14 May 2025 · Data (Use and Access) Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  I will in a second. Then I probably ought to move on to the next subject, Madam Deputy Speaker.

• 14 May 2025 · Data (Use and Access) Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  I am honestly failing to understand the point the right hon. Gentleman is making. The Bill is not and has never been intended to deal with the kind of issue he is referring to. As I say, I think that if somebody were to table amendments to that effect, they would be ruled out of order. The Bill does not deal with copyright or artificial intelligence; the only measures in the Bill on AI and copyright are those introduced in the House of Lords, which I am about to speak to. Although I was not able to listen to the whole of the debate in the House of Lords the other day, the Secretary of State and I stood at the Bar of the House to listen carefully to considerable parts of the debate. I want to make two separate but interconnected points on AI and intellectual property in relation to the Bill. First, there is an urgent issue that must be addressed—namely, what is happening today, and, for that matter, one could argue what happened yesterday, last week, last year and two years ago. To be absolutely clear, I will reiterate that copyright law in the UK is unchanged. Works are protected unless one of the existing exceptions, which have existed for some time, such as exceptions for teaching and research, applies, or the rights holder has granted permission for their work to be used. That is the law. That is the law now, and it will be the law tomorrow if the House agrees with the Government and rejects the amendment tabled by Baroness Kidron and supported in the House of Lords. As I have said previously, I am glad that several creative industries have been able to secure licensing agreements with AI companies, including publishers, music labels and others, under the existing law. I want to see more of that—more licensing and more remuneration of creative rights holders.

• 14 May 2025 · Data (Use and Access) Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  I will say two things. First, we have always said that we were consulting on a package, and part of that package was a technical solution so that rights holders would be able to protect their rights better, in a way that—

• 14 May 2025 · Data (Use and Access) Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  Of course, I would like to be able to move faster, but as the hon. Gentleman said to me last week in Committee and in various different places, this is not an easy knot to untie. It will require a great deal of goodwill from a large number of people to secure a settled outcome that works for everybody. I still believe that there could be a win-win situation, but that will happen only if we can gather everybody around the same table in order to deliver it. I am perfectly happy to provide leadership, and to be punched in the nose for providing that leadership if people think that I have got it wrong, but I do not think that is the problem at this particular moment. Let me give the hon. Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare) one reason why I think Lords amendment 49B does not really work. Yes, we all agree that we should introduce transparency measures—although it is difficult to work out precisely how they would be proportionate and effective and work equally for big and small companies—but there is no point in having transparency measures unless we have an enforcement measure. An element of the proposed new clause refers to enforcement, but it basically asks the Secretary of State to draw up that enforcement. One would not expect to be able to do that in any other area without a full Bill devoted solely to that purpose. I wish that I could move faster, but I do not want to move faster than is required to secure an outcome.

• 14 May 2025 · Data (Use and Access) Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  On the subject of never getting the Bill through, I will, of course, give way to the right hon. Gentleman.

• 14 May 2025 · Data (Use and Access) Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  I completely agree with everything my hon. Friend said, and I can give that guarantee. Interestingly, when we started this process after the general election, the first consultation meetings that the Under-Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield North (Feryal Clark), and I had were with the creative industries in one room and the AI companies in another. Perhaps it would have been better to mix them up in the way my hon. Friend has suggested, and that is precisely the job of work that I want to get on with. We are determined that wherever we can, we will take creative industries with us, and we will be transparent about the work that we do. I want to lay to rest the idea that there are two Departments at war with one another. That simply is not the case. The two Departments are trying to work together to achieve good outcomes for everybody.

• 14 May 2025 · Data (Use and Access) Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  Well, it is because the Bill was never intended to deal with copyright and artificial intelligence at all. The Government have not introduced any provision relating to AI or copyright, and I think that specific issue would probably be ruled out of scope if it were to be tabled. There are very serious issues in relation to AI and copyright, which I am about to come on to, and I know the point the right hon. Gentleman is making on technical standards. [ Interruption. ] He keeps on talking at me—I am happy to give way to him again if he wants, but I cannot hear what he is saying.

• 14 May 2025 · Data (Use and Access) Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  I am being very badly behaved. I did not want to take up more time, but I will respond at the end. I think my hon. Friend will be happy.

• 14 May 2025 · Data (Use and Access) Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  Let me finish my point and then I will give way first to the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire (Pete Wishart), who gets very cross if people queue-barge. I am aware that there are quite a lot of publishing houses in the UK that are determined to secure licensing deals with AI companies, both in the UK and overseas. First, they want to ensure that those AI companies remunerate them and, secondly, they want to ensure that they have very high-quality, up-to-date information and data going into them, so that if somebody searches for immunotherapy, for instance, they will have the latest information on immunotherapy, not stuff that is five, six or seven years out of date, or that may have come from a dodgy source. The second point I want to make is this. The right hon. Lady said that this amendment would sort the problem today, but it would not. It would do nothing today, or indeed for a considerable number of months. Therefore, there is an issue about what we do today—what we as a Government do, and what we as the creative industries and everybody working together do, to ensure that we protect copyright under the existing law as it is today.

• 14 May 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is absolutely right. There are older people, and others for that matter, who either have no online access or do not have a smartphone, who would not be able to access things in a digital world. That is why we introduced a digital inclusion plan, and that is one of the key differences between a Labour Government and a Tory Government: they did not have any interest in digital inclusion and they did not have a plan for 10 years, and we brought one in.

• 14 May 2025 · Future of Public Libraries · Hansard source

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  It is a delight, as ever, to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd. I will not comment on how well dressed you are today. It is a great delight to take part in this debate, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire (Jonathan Davies) on securing it. He talked a bit about the history of libraries. I absolutely adore a library. I have used the British Library many times, when it was in its old place in the British Museum and in the new building—still new to me, that is; younger people here will not remember its old place. I have used the London Library and libraries in Worcester, Stoke, Manchester, Birmingham, Southwark, Newcastle, Oxford and Cambridge. I have used Lambeth Palace library, as well as libraries in Cardiff, Treorchy and Porth. I absolutely adore using libraries. Many hon. Members mentioned their constituencies, but I agree with the Argentinian writer, Jorge Luis Borges, who said, “I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.” My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire made several points about titles. Being in two Departments, I have many bits in my title,. Sometimes people say we should have a tourism Minister, a this Minister or a that Minister. The real question is whether we engage sufficiently with the sector and get the work done. I know that Baroness Twycross, who took over these responsibilities from me relatively recently, is very engaged in this work. I want to give her space to lay out what she will be able to achieve and the work she is engaged in, before we start talking about titles and reassignment. Responding to the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) puts me in a slight difficulty. Quite a few hon. Members referred to things that are extremely devolved. Libraries are fundamentally devolved responsibilities. The hon. Member made extremely good points about how libraries can help with mental health and health generally and issues such as loneliness, but I am not going to tell people in Northern Ireland how to run the library service. If I did, I would suddenly get an email and a demand for a meeting, so I will be careful. That also applies to my hon. Friend the Member for Stirling and Strathallan (Chris Kane). There is a competition in size of constituencies going on today. I know areas of my hon. Friend’s constituency well because I was—arguably—educated partly in Stirling. I note that Bannockburn library is closed today. When libraries are closed or open is a financial issue, which is tough for many local authorities. I was a councillor in Hackney a long time ago and know how difficult it is for local councillors making tough financial decisions, desperate to keep libraries open every day if possible, but struggling to do so. My hon. Friend and the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) referred to Andrew Carnegie, who was an extraordinary donor and investor in libraries. As the MP for a former mining constituency, I am aware that mining communities often had to do for themselves. The miners’ unions and trade unions played an important part in ensuring that their members learned how to read. It was not just about being able to read “Alton Locke” by Charles Kingsley, one of the early Christian socialists, or “The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists” and other socialist tomes that were so important to the trade union movement. Libraries were a vital part of enabling the working classes to get on in life, so for Labour MPs, this debate has a particular piquancy. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Tony Vaughan) wants to reopen the library alongside the creative campus in Folkestone. When I visited on a day that was gorgeous sunny, though slightly windy, I was impressed by Tracey Emin’s discarded sock sculpture on the floor and other brilliant artworks around the town. I tried to pick up the sock, of course, because I thought it was litter, which was the whole point. Integration of all creative industries working together with the library service is a potent thing. The library building my hon. Friend referred to is beautiful. Had it been better looked after by Kent County Council in recent years, it would be more readily accessible and better preserved for the future. Like my hon. Friend, I hope very much that the library will reopen. I am not sure about the statistic, mentioned by the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross, that there are more busts of Rabbie Burns than of anybody else. I am very happy if there are, but I suspect that there are more of Gladstone—there may even be more of Winston Churchill. None the less, he made the point about Carnegie. Of course, philanthropy is an important reason why we ended up with so many libraries around the UK. I want philanthropy to play an increasing part in the future. That is not because I want local authorities to walk away from their responsibilities, but simply because I applaud those philanthropists who gave away every single penny of the vast wealth that they made in their lifetimes. The more we can do to enable that, the better—not only for our libraries, but for our creative sector, museums and galleries, many of which, especially those associated with local authorities, are struggling in exactly the same way. My hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South (Jas Athwal) is a former councillor who has experienced some of the difficulties of trying to keep local authority libraries going. Incidentally, those difficulties affect not just local authority libraries, but libraries in universities and in so many other public institutions. They have struggled to survive. Some of them are independent libraries. He made a good point about how important it is to diversify, and mentioned that one library in his patch has a gym. A few weeks ago, I was in Ogmore Vale, in my patch, where the library, gym and community function are all part of the same service; they are very much thought of in an integrated way. That is the pattern adopted by lots of local authorities, which sometimes still run the libraries in house, and sometimes decide to hand them over to a third party to allow for further financial investment. The hon. Member for South West Hertfordshire (Mr Mohindra) referred to the specialised advice that libraries may provide. Advice to businesses has not particularly featured in our debate, but it is an important part of what the British Library and many local libraries often provide. If someone wants to set up a business in a local area, they will need to understand that local area, and one of the most important facilities for that is the local library, which will have statistical advice. The library will want to help them in whatever way it can—with planning law or whatever it may be. Losing that aspect of what libraries provide would be bad for economic growth—our ability to grow not just in some parts of the UK but everywhere. From the day I started as MP for the Rhondda in 2001, one of my strategies was to look at how many local businesses I had. People often think that the way to get more local jobs is to get one big business that will employ 1,000 or 2,000 people. Actually, in most constituencies, it is more effective to enable lots of small businesses to grow—to go from employing two people to employing five or 10 people. There are few areas where we can do that without libraries having a role to play. My hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Joe Morris) rightly referred to VE Day celebrations, in which libraries up and down the country played an important part, because of their important role in enabling and helping the community. Our libraries are sometimes associated with an archive facility, which has a particular value. British people, like people all around the world, love to explore their genealogy, so it is really important to make those archive facilities available to people. In a library, someone can investigate what their grandad or auntie did in the war, or where they lived, for free—something that they otherwise might have to pay for. I note that Hexham library has “Rhymetime” tomorrow morning at 10 am; on Saturday at 4 o’clock in the afternoon, it has “Ukrainian Stories”, which I think is a book launch. My hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Tom Hayes) admitted to reading Nancy Drew mysteries, which I think were marketed primarily at girls. I read several, but I had a cover to hide the fact that it was Nancy Drew. Modern books for young adults and kids are very different and not specifically targeted at boys and girls. There has been a complete transformation in that market, and hurrah for that. I think it was Alexander Pope who said: “A little learning is a dangerous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring”. This is one of the great things about libraries. Not only do they enable us to take our first step into reading, but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East said, they enable us to move on from Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys to Dickens, Shakespeare and many others. I am sure that none of us—I think we can say this of every single Member—would have arrived here if we had never used a library, and none of us would have ended up as a Member of Parliament. My hon. Friend was right, as others were, to pay tribute to the House of Commons Library. It has a slightly different role because it provides so much advice for us to inform our contributions to debates. It also has an awful lot of books, including some of mine. My hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Alison Hume) referred to the Data (Use and Access) Bill debate later, so I will leave the bit about copyright and AI for this afternoon’s debate when I will appear in a different capacity. She is absolutely right about volunteers. So many libraries either rely entirely, as community libraries, on volunteers to run them and keep them open, or have volunteers as part of a team. I pay tribute to all the people who have managed to keep libraries open. My father, who is no longer with us, lived in Alderney in his latter years. He and his wife loved spending a day as volunteers at the library. I think he quite liked the business of issuing fines—one of his favourite moments was when he found out that his next-door neighbour had not returned his book for 17 years or whatever. My hon. Friend is also right that libraries are a vital part of the social infrastructure. The hon. Member for North Devon (Ian Roome) was also a councillor. I think councillors have a particular interest, as I have mentioned, and insights to bring to this debate. He referred to Braunton library and the 300 community events. That is mirrored in every single library up and down the land. No library is characterised by Ali MacGraw stuffiness. It is a place entirely open to the public. People have referred to the role of libraries during covid. They have also referred to them as non-judgmental spaces where people can simply just be, including in the winter. Sometimes it is a place to feel warmth, which is really important. One of my favourite moments in a library was a few years ago when I persuaded the British Museum to lend one of its articulated Japanese dragons to my library in Treorchy. I do not know whether we Welsh are just obsessed with dragons, but I remember seeing kids looking at that Japanese dragon and they were absolutely fascinated and loved it. That sense of enticing people into being curious is another aspect of why libraries can be so important. The hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr French) referred warmly to his experience in his constituency. I am going to bridle slightly because he referred to our Budget decisions. If we refer to the 14 years of Budget decisions that caused the difficulties facing the library service across the whole United Kingdom, we could be here a lot longer. The truth is that many local authorities have had a really tough time with their budgets cut year after year, and one of my anxieties was always that. One of the dangers for national Government is saying, “Right, we are going to tell local authorities to do more while giving them less money, because we—national Government—will not then have to make the cuts; somebody else has to.” That is a thing that happened to the library service over all those years. I hate all the gloom about libraries. I hate it when people keep banging on about how all the libraries have closed and all the rest of it. The truth is that, as people have referred to, roughly a third of people in the UK have used a library at least once. I do not think that is an annual pilgrimage. Many of them will have used it repeatedly and there are people who go to the library every single day of the week, or every week. Libraries are all about promoting and enabling reading. Sometimes we forget that role—if I could get every child in the country to read one extra book a year, would that not be a success in the end for them individually and for the economy? We have not referred to the publishing business in the UK, which is an important part of our creative industries. We export more books than any other country in the world, and I want to keep it like that. We have referred to libraries as community spaces. I have also referred to their archive responsibilities and how important those are for many people. Libraries are constantly evolving: 47 libraries in Norfolk provide a service to weigh babies and, as I understand it, in Devon they provide 3D printers. I and many other Members have referred to libraries that are doing innovative and fascinating new things all the time. Last year, upper-tier local authorities spent £694 million on libraries in England.

• 14 May 2025 · Future of Public Libraries · Hansard source

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  The hon. Gentleman is such an impatient man—it is not as if his party did not have 14 years to produce a national strategy, or anything like that. One of the asks was about titles, and one of the others was about whether there should be a national strategy. As I said earlier, I am keen to allow Baroness Twycross, who has only recently taken on responsibilities in that area, to go where she wants to on this. One of the difficulties with a national strategy is that so much is devolved. Of course, we try to foster good relations with our Scottish, Welsh and Northern Ireland counterparts, and there is a regular get-together with the devolved Administrations to promote that, but a lot of these decisions are made by local authorities and in other Departments. When local authorities and Departments get only an annual settlement, rather than a three-year settlement, it makes it much more difficult for them to make coherent, long-term decisions. I hope that we will change that in the spending review—that is one of the things I hope will help with funding. However, I have no idea what budget allocations there will be for independent Departments. So I am somewhat resisting the idea of a national strategy. At the moment, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport is already producing three or four national strategies on different subjects, so I am hesitant to advance down that route. The Sanderson report made key recommendations, many of them not for Government at all, but for the sector. We are keen to see those play out and be adopted wherever possible. We are working with the sector and with Arts Council England, which has a specific responsibility in relation to libraries in England. Several hon. Members have referred to the amount of money—£5.5 million—that we have set aside this year for improving libraries. We also have a superintending role. The 1964 legislation was deliberately drafted in a rather ambiguous way, which is one of the issues we always face. In ’24-25 we engaged with 53 local authorities in a superintending role, and we have engaged with seven since April this year. As Members have said, 276 libraries closed between 2010 and 2023. We do want to make that closure process stop because we believe passionately in libraries.

• 14 May 2025 · Future of Public Libraries · Hansard source

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  Oh, all right.

• 14 May 2025 · Broadband: Rural Communities · Hansard source

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  Everybody tells me that Balquhidder is very beautiful—in fact, my hon. Friend told me earlier this morning. I would be interested in a visit if it were also possible to visit the new film studio that I think might be coming to his constituency. Stirling is one matter, but Strathallan and the very wide rural areas in his constituency are different. I would be very happy to try to sort out the specific issues that he has in Balquhidder.

• 14 May 2025 · Broadband: Rural Communities · Hansard source

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  The largest chunk of broadband delivery will be done on a commercial basis by the private sector. We do not want to do with taxpayers’ money what could probably be done by the commercial sector. I did not catch the name of the village that the hon. Member referred to. I am not sure whether he has been to one of my Building Digital UK drop-in sessions, but if he needs further information for that particular village, I would be very happy to try to sort it.

• 14 May 2025 · Broadband: Rural Communities · Hansard source

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  Rural broadband coverage simply is not good enough.

• 14 May 2025 · Digital Landlines: Rural Communities · Hansard source

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  One of the things that keeps me awake at night is how we ensure that people are protected—the most vulnerable and rural communities in particular—as we transition from the copper network to fibre. That is why I was glad that, in November last year, I was able to get all the network operators to sign up to a new code of conduct that will, I think, provide precisely that protection.

• 14 May 2025 · Digital Landlines: Rural Communities · Hansard source

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  I certainly can. I send my best wishes to my hon. Friend’s constituent. He said that it is a stone-built house; he is absolutely right that there are particular difficulties with mobile signal in stone-built houses—I live in one myself, in Porth in the Rhondda. One thing that we have done recently, as a result of the pressure that I have put on people, is to ensure that the battery back-up power is not just the Ofcom-guaranteed one-hour minimum, but considerably longer, and that is what lots of the operators are now providing.

• 14 May 2025 · Digital Landlines: Rural Communities · Hansard source

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  I welcome the right hon. Gentleman’s comments—I am glad that he is expressing an interest in this issue. He took part in a Westminster Hall debate on it only a few weeks ago, when I was a bit grumpy with him, for which I apologise. He makes some good points. He may not be aware of the campaign, which is already up and running, so obviously the awareness campaign needs to do a bit more work to make him aware of the awareness.

• 14 May 2025 · Digital Inclusion · Hansard source

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  I have long thought that digital connectivity is now akin to a connection to electricity, water or any other public utility. That is how we should treat the law, and I think that would assist the hon. Gentleman’s constituents.