It was deeply regrettable that the Government was unable to prioritise Parliamentary time in the House of Commons for this important bill - some of which raised constitutional issues. It says a great deal about their support for the creative industries that, despite considering many of these issues as far back as 2006, they have only now just brought this piece of legislation forward.
Despite these concerns there were a number of very important aspects of this Bill that are needed as soon as possible. Online piracy is a rapidly growing problem for our creative industries and one that we need to tackle. The measures within the Bill designed to block access to websites promoting illegal downloading and tackle illegal peer to peer file sharing set up a relatively weak regime that could, following repeated warnings and due process, lead to people having their internet connection temporarily suspended. It will not, as many have suggested, lead to people being disconnected without an appeal. Even if people are disconnected they will be able to sign up to another ISP immediately without penalty.
Blocking these measures in their entirety would have risked hundreds of thousands of jobs in the TV, film, music and sports industries and therefore not something I was willing to do.
There were a number of other aspects of the Bill that my party did not find acceptable. Clause 1 added an unnecessary duty to the regulator Ofcom which will make little difference to the way they operate. Clause 29 would have propped up regional news with tax payer subsidy when we should be looking at long term financially sustainable measures to support local news. Finally, clause 43 tried to create a system that would unlock a large amount of digital content primarily held by the BBC and the British Library whose ownership is unknown. Unfortunately this has been drafted so badly that many rights holders would find their content automatically defined as an orphan work - as such they would lose control over their content.
If there are unresolved issues, we will return to them after the Election.
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Promoted by Tracey Kirk on behalf of Sir George Young both at 2 Church Close, Andover, Hants SP10 1DP 