My Lords, I associate myself with what my noble friend Lord Howarth has just said. He put it concisely and succinctly, and I entirely endorse everything that he has just put forward. I shall not repeat what he has already said.
I do not believe that Clause 68 goes quite far enough, and I should like it to have gone further. I certainly do not want to see it restricted in the way that the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, suggests. My noble friend is absolutely right when he points to the undesirability of polarising this debate between the needs of cultural institutions, scholars and researchers and the requirement in the 21st century that we should
be able to digitise material en masse, which should include orphan works. Until now, it has required huge amounts of time and effort—pointless time and effort—to try to establish who the authors of these so-called orphan works are, usually with absolutely no useful result. Therefore, I very much hope that the Committee will reject these amendments and support Clause 68 as it stands. I hope that when the regulations are formulated, they will be able to maximise the extent to which it is possible for orphan works to be accessed and digitised in the interests of the wider public and of research and scholarship.