My Lords, I shall begin with Amendment 49. I can confirm that it would not be possible to make unconnected changes to the jurisdiction of the Copyright Tribunal under the power in Schedule 21.
Turning to Amendments 56A and 56B, I can assure the Committee that the proposed schemes already take account of the range of interested parties affected by them. Let me explain how. First, on extended collective licensing, the Government intend that the regulations will allow any affected party the chance to comment on a collecting society’s application before a final decision is reached. A collecting society authorised to grant licences must take into account the interests of affected parties including its members, its licensees and non-member rights holders. These obligations are required to be in the collecting society’s code of practice. An independent code reviewer will measure performance against these obligations. Where there has been an alleged breach of a code, rights holders and licensees will have recourse to an independent ombudsman.
Turning to orphan works, the orphan works authorising body is independent and will not be able to license itself. I submit that this is a stronger safeguard than that proposed by these amendments. The Government concur that representative rights holders, wherever possible, should be on the governing body. In practice, this will not always be possible with some types of orphan works, for example, old diaries, correspondence and other material never intended for publication or commercial use.
I would like to clarify an issue which was raised by my noble friend Lady Buscombe concerning Amendment 49. Any changes to the jurisdiction of the tribunal should be subject to full parliamentary scrutiny. All regulations, including changes to tribunal jurisdiction, are now subject to the affirmative procedure.
The Government have carefully considered these amendments, and I hope that in the light of my response my noble friend Lady Buscombe feels able to withdraw her amendment.