My Lords, I will make a few brief remarks in closing this short debate. First, I associate myself with the warm expressions of thanks and support to the Minister not only for his very assiduous work in responding to the questions and queries that were raised at earlier stages of the Bill but for the meetings that he has had. I am not quite sure how he has managed to keep going—he is looking a bit shell-shocked, although that may not just have been today. We are all very grateful to him for what he has done. Indeed, it has brought a different sensibility to the whole way in which we have been able to engage with this and I am very grateful for that. I am sorry that the choir has lost his very nice tuneful voice as a result, but I hope he will get back into it after this intensive work is over.
Having said that, has the mood really changed? We have just heard that there are still quite big guns out there, and the reference from my noble friend Lord Howarth to the judicial review—I have benefited from the courtesy of being shown a copy of the 36-page document that went in—certainly suggests that there are still some people with axes to grind out there and serious points, too, which need to be considered and reflected. Although we are making progress and, I think, beginning to arrive at a common position on a number of issues raised in this part of the Bill, there are still some hurdles ahead which we have got to think about. For instance, I got two letters and several e-mails today from people again expressing concern about what is happening here. They are not sighted and perhaps not up to speed with what is going on but they certainly feel very strongly about it.
As other noble Lords have said, there are other things going on here. We are doing a lot of the work in this Bill but, in parallel, the outcome of the Hargreaves report and the various pieces of secondary legislation that will be going through, which radically change the way in which we deal with copyright and performance rights, need to be accommodated and brought alongside some of the movements that are here. A lot of what we have been saying in the discussions and debates on this
Bill has been contingent on a satisfactory outcome for those things, and I do not want to prejudge where we are going to get to on parody, exceptions for educational use and desirable things like copying for archives. These are all important parts of the ecology that this Bill touches on but does not completely encapsulate. We must therefore be careful not to overcall what we are achieving here.
A third example on that list would perhaps be the one raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, which is that we are not alone here; lots of other people are working on their copyright registrations and legislation and moving forward. That will always affect how we do things. We will not make the progress that we want to make in terms of this industry, and the work that goes into this type of activity in the UK will be for nothing, if we are outsmarted and outgunned by those who either have a much more advanced concept of copyright and licensing or none at all. These are important points.
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However, I do not want to be the odd one out in this party. In general I want to support what we are doing in moving forward. In relation to the narrow point about what we are doing to welcome the report, may I just make three or four points? First, while I have the greatest respect for the IPO and for the work of the department to which it is attached, it is not the only part of government that deals with copyright issues. We were graced with a fleeting visit from the former Secretary of State at the DCMS, the noble Baroness, Lady Bottomley. I am sure that had she been able to stay she would have said that her department—indeed, the Minister was briefly in that department—has a lot to offer in terms of copyright and intellectual property, and that not all of it is entirely on a par with what is emanating from BIS. I am sure these issues can be resolved, but I am not sure that the Whitehall structure has got that to the best possible pitch. It would be interesting to know whether the Minister, could say whether the point of view that is quite often expressed—with slight variance—by DCMS will be included in the reports that he will bring forward to Parliament. It is important that we should hear what is being said in the round.
That leads me to another point, which slightly follows up on what the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, said. His suggestion that there should be an identifiable post within the structure was an interesting one, which provoked a very good debate. I was startled by discussions in Committee, and I am still thinking about some of the issues raised. For instance, there was a vogue a few years ago when there was a cross-cutting issue to try to identify who would champion that activity within each and every department in Whitehall. So there was an architecture champion in every department, because in some senses every department of state is involved with ensuring that the public realm is better and more appropriately designed and built than it is. It makes no sense to lock that away in one department. I wonder whether in today’s debate there might not be a case for having not one champion, but lots of champions, because this is really important stuff. There is intellectual property in every aspect of the work that the Government
do, in every sector of the economy. We should think hard about how we can best advocate that across the whole area. Again, perhaps the Minister might do that.
In Committee we discussed the general feeling out there that somehow copyright—the licensing and use of rights created by those with the gifts and skills to work in the creative industries—has not until now been given quite enough attention by Parliament. We ought to try to reflect that in what we are doing. A lot of the angry letters I have received reflect the fact that this is a once-in-half-a-generation opportunity for a debate about what they do and why it is important. It would be really nice to find a way to leave the door a little bit more open, so that their views can be taken into account. I think that will pay off in the long run. Everybody would welcome the chance to have their views expressed, to hear people talking about them and to have their views tested and put to rest in terms of the overall debate.
Photographers certainly feel left out in the cold at the moment, and I know a lot of work is taking place on that. Again, I appeal for us to think hard. It is not just metadata; there is a wider concern there, which comes from photographers’ sense that their work is ephemeral and not of value. Yet we all know that is not true. The image still speaks more powerfully than a thousand words, as they say. Their work is influential in so many different aspects of our commercial and cultural life that we would be wrong to ignore what they say to us, and they are certainly saying it. I look forward to the Minister’s response.