My Lords, I join the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, in everything that he said. It is important that the Government hold the ring on this. I take my views on copyright from Macaulay—it is a bargain between the producer and consumer. It is a bargain that needs to be kept balanced. A lot of good will flow from that balance. I would not have a director-general of copyright who looked after only the producers any more than I would have bank regulation that favoured only the banks. It is a matter of balance.
If we want to look at what goes wrong when the producers are in charge, we can look back at the history of the music industry and the way that it reacted to Napster. It made a mess of that. Rather than seizing on a new opportunity, it wanted to entrench its rights against the consumer. The industry was rolled over and a jolly good thing too.
Martin Mills is a hero of mine and I am delighted that he is defending copyright so strongly. I am sure that he is right in what he said, but it does not come
down to a case of a lack of balance. We as a Government should feel able to enforce copyright strongly because the copyright owners are giving our people what they want—not trying to withhold stuff from them, fail to give them what they want or hold them to ransom, as was the case in that phase of the music industry.
I am entirely in favour of the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones. What is being done on the copyright hub is of immense importance. I am a copyright producer and user. In both aspects I would be a keen user of the hub. It is a great chance for Britain to be at the start of this and to put ourselves at the centre. If there is anything that we as legislators can do on this to keep the Government’s foot on the gas pedal and pressed firmly pressed to the floor, we should take that opportunity.