I thank all noble Lords who have spoken in this short debate. I shall refer to Amendment 23, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones. When moving this amendment in Committee, the noble Lord explained that interested parties representing the sector had since proposed a different wording from that used in the amendment. The Government have considered the suggested wording from the sector and our amendment seeks to reflect stakeholder views, although we have achieved the intention
of enabling terms to be applied by rights holders to e-books and e-audiobooks for lending through an amendment to the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Rights holders will therefore be able to make e-books and e-audiobooks available with clear terms about whether these are available for lending and, if so, what conditions on library lending would apply, such as one loan to one user at a time or that the book will be available to lend for a limited overall lifespan.
I am also delighted that the proposed extension of the public lending right to include remote e-lending has cross-party support, as was made clear in Committee. This amendment will maintain protections for rights holders, while enabling authors to rightly receive public lending right payments for the increasing remote lending of their works, as they do for the lending of books from library premises. I hope the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, will therefore not press his amendment but support the Government’s new clause.
In response to the noble Lord, Lord Maxton, I can confirm that, as I think we discussed in Committee, the provision covers all books, including purely online, digital books. It is also UK-wide, so it is not a question of devolved powers. However, it is all to do with public lending rights and lending through public libraries, not with the example he raised regarding Amazon.