I thank noble Lords for their valuable and supportive comments and, indeed, for their very kind welcome this afternoon. I share the warm words that have been said about my noble friend and predecessor Lord Younger of Leckie. I will do my best to be an equally hard-working and successful Minister. I am also a great fan of the art of letter writing, and if I can learn from him and use that well in my departmental responsibilities and in the House more generally, I will be very pleased. There is one plus to the change, which is that there will be even more people in this House with a knowledge and a passion for the complicated subject of IP. I assure the House that I come to this area with great passion. I was especially delighted to be offered a role in carrying forward such an important agenda.
ECL is a tool that can be used where there is market appetite for it. That appetite has to come from licensees, the collecting society and, most importantly, the rights holders. The Government cannot impose ECL on a sector; rights holders must want it. It is not possible for the Government or anyone else to force it on the rights holders. It is not possible without a significant representative collecting society acting with the informed consent of its voting members. It is not possible for a non-member to be forced to stay in a scheme. This is because there are a number of safeguards for all concerned. My noble friend Lord Clement-Jones commented positively on the safeguards, and I have gone through some of them. Their range includes: the absolute right of non-members to opt out; the ability of any interested party to make representations about any ECL proposals; and, of course, the minimum standards of good governance and transparency which an authorised collecting society must adhere to and offer.
The noble Lords, Lord Howarth and Lord Stevenson, referred to the length of the authorisation and the practice in other countries. The Government believe that, following an authorisation, it is essential that the ECL is thoroughly scrutinised within a relatively short period to ensure that it is running smoothly. This is particularly so given the additional powers granted to an authorised collecting society. The length of the initial authorisation period is not dissimilar to authorisation periods in the Nordic countries, where ECL schemes have been running successfully for many years, as has been said. The renewal process is designed to strike a balance between the business continuity and low cost, desired by some licensees, and the need to ensure that all those affected by the ECL can continue to have confidence in it.
It is therefore the Government’s view that the renewal process should be open and transparent so that representations can be invited. A renewal application would need to include evidence of the performance of the collecting society in respect of non-members and a number of other features. If the ECL is running smoothly, the renewal process should not prove a barrier. If it is not, the ECL would have needed to be revoked anyway regardless of the length of the authorisation. The Government believe that the authorisation period is balanced and proportionate, reflecting a legitimate need to look at an ECL at a relatively early stage. As I said in my opening remarks, there is a light-touch renewal period after that.
Obviously the Government have sympathy with the efforts of libraries and archives to digitise their collections. However, those efforts cannot be at the expense of safeguards to ensure that ECL schemes are functioning properly, and one of the safeguards is an initial authorisation period of five years. It should also be remembered that only collecting societies can make ECL applications. If a licensee cannot interest a collecting society in the possibilities of an ECL scheme because it makes no financial sense to the collecting society or because member rights holders oppose it, that is a matter for the collecting society and the licensee. The Government have no role to play in this process, and the regulations may not be a factor in what is essentially a commercial decision. It is the Government’s understanding that digitisation projects are not a first-order priority for collecting societies. It is therefore unlikely that there will be applications for such schemes in the first few months. For these reasons, the Government do not think it appropriate to commit to a review in a year’s time.