INFRINGEMENT BY ISSUE OF COPIES TO THE PUBLIC (Hansard, 8 November 1988)

§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Industry and Consumer Affairs (Mr. Eric Forth)
I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.[Interruption.]

§ Madam Deputy Speaker (Miss Betty Boothroyd)
Order. I should be much obliged if hon. Members leaving the Chamber did so quietly, so that we can hear the Minister explain these important amendments.

§ Mr. Forth
rose—[Interruption.]

§ Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. I wonder whether conversations could be carded out on the other side of the swing doors, please.

§ Mr. Forth
It would be inappropriate for the House to linger at length on these matters. They have been dealt with in detail in both Houses and we are here to consider the largely technical and clarificatory measures that the other place has brought to bear on this important matter.
I shall outline briefly the intention behind each amendment. Amendment No. 1 seeks to improve the drafting and makes it clear that if copies have been issued to the public overseas, importation and putting copies in circulation in the United Kingdom is not a restricted act.

§ Mr. Austin Mitchell (Great Grimsby)
rose—

§ Madam Deputy Speaker
I call the hon. Gentleman on the Opposition Front Bench.

§ Mr. Bob Cryer (Bradford, South)
My hon. Friend used to be on television.

§ Mr. Austin Mitchell
It is a pity, Madam Deputy Speaker, that you did not reside in the Yorkshire Television viewing area.
We have a full House for the class reunion of the Committee and those who sat through the earlier stages of the Bill, but we are minus the prefect. It is an interesting augury for the Minister and myself that the two Front Bench spokesmen in the earlier arguments have gone on to meteoric rises within their respective parties. We are now beginning to tread the same path as tail-end Charlies, perhaps with the emphasis on Charlie.
The Labour party will not oppose the Bill or talk at length. We welcome the general principle of the revision of the copyright legislation. We broadly support the Bill. There are one or two things that we would have liked to change and which we tried strenuously to change at earlier stages. For instance, we would have liked to change the rights of journalists and design rights. Those arguments are now over. We would have liked the Government to make more concessions to the House of Lords. They could have afforded to throw a few crumbs from a rather crumby table, but they did not. That means that we do not have much on which to bite. In fact, if we were to make a meal of it, it would be anorexia nervosa turned into a system of debate. We are simply cleaning up and polishing the final Lords amendments, which in the main we are happy to accept.
Amendment No. 1 attracted the only Division in the other place and, unfortunately, we lost by 10 votes. We wanted to extend rights to authors as well as producers, but that argument is now behind us.
The issue is one of definition. I would call it a "Spycatcher" definition. The Government have a certain amount of expertise in things that have been imported and sold before they have been published. They have wasted much money in developing their knowledge of that. Lord Young of Graffham, Saatchi and Thomson explained the amendment eloquently and we cannot see any objection to it. We shall bow to the wisdom of the noble Lord and his representative on earth.