Welcome once again to the Chair, Mr. Benton. Owing to the Licensing Bill, we have been seeing each other quite regularly recently. I even have the same Minister opposite me today as I did when we were in that Committee.

The heart of the Bill lies in the first sentence of the clause. It refers to a

“person who publishes in the United Kingdom a work to which this Act applies”.

Amendment No. 8, which was tabled by the hon. Member for Ipswich (Mr. Mole) to clause 9, would redefine and clarify the meaning of a publisher and published material.

On Second Reading, Conservative Members rode in behind what we thought was a consensus about the Bill. There was broad support from the parties that would be involved. We anticipated that the consensus would continue throughout the Bill’s passage in the House. At the eleventh hour, however, an important group of people who will be affected by the Bill—the publishers—did not consider that their serious concerns had been dealt with, nor did they believe that the amendments that had been tabled would deal adequately with those anxieties.

The main issue is how to define a publisher and published material, so that all the affected parties are of the same opinion about such matters. There has been an extremely good working relationship between the libraries and the publishers in the joint committee for voluntary deposits and the voluntary deposit scheme, which has been in action for some years. It has worked extremely well and all the parties to it are happy with the arrangements.

The Bill then comes along and raises all sorts of issues that hitherto had not been considered. The majority of proposed legislation tends to widen matters to a catch-all situation, which is what this Bill does. The problem for people outside the House is that if measures will affect their lives and livelihoods, they want to know in print—that is, in the Bill—exactly what they are letting themselves in for. They want their worries dealt with in the Bill. We are discussing generic legislation; it is an enabling Bill under which the Secretary of State can make regulations, and that is par for the course.

The problem is that the regulations are not even in print. They may be only a figment of the imagination of one or two hard-working officials at the Department. Who knows? They are certainly not available to us. Publishers and published material will be dealt with in the fine print of such regulations, and that is what the publishing community is worried about. The non-print media covers publications in microform or on diskette, physical media, such as magnetic tapes and discs, or optical discs, such as CD-ROM or DVD. They are primarily text based and intended more for information than as educational products.

The benefit of a Bill that limits itself to that sort of hardware, or offline type of publication, would be that it would mandate the terms of the existing voluntary scheme to which I alluded. Libraries have practical experience of operating it, albeit with a cataloguing backlog, and the technical issues have already been addressed. The publisher and library communities would be able swiftly to implement regulations to double the content currently being deposited.

There are a great number of problems and we will cover those in more detail as we get into the Bill and the amendments. There are several problems, both known and as yet unknown, surrounding the concept of deposit of online. That perhaps ought to be addressed separately, because there is real concern from the publishers that the in-depth consultation that is so necessary has not yet taken place. The consultation that has already taken place, which was important, sent out questionnaires to only a relatively small number of publishers. Only 22 respondees to that questionnaire are logged in the appendix.

However, the questionnaire that went out in the consultation process related mainly, if not totally, to offline products, and the bigger companies, which are very much involved in the online business, were not consulted at that time. It seems to have come as something of a surprise to many of them that their activities would be caught up with the Bill. The point of the questionnaire was to have a regulatory impact assessment but, by definition, if online deposit was not touched on at that time, it can have been only on a speculative, hypothetical basis as no trials of such deposits—that is, online—had actually taken place and major online publishers were notably absent from the list of consultation interviewees.

There are serious questions about the online publishing system. The nightmare of some worldwide online publishers is that they will become subject to a multiplicity of different national deposit schemes that would be costly and disruptive, and, in some jurisdictions, susceptible to abuse. The United Kingdom’s Legal Deposit Libraries Bill is probably one of the first in the world, although I understand that New Zealand has recently introduced a similar Bill. The hon. Member for Ipswich, who should be congratulated on bringing forward the Bill, is moving into uncharted waters as far as the international community is concerned. The Bill is in the van of ideas relating to legal deposit.

Many online publishers have contracts with the international business community and there is a fear that they may be jeopardised if the fine print of the Bill is not made available to them fairly soon. No doubt the hon. Member for Ipswich could set the Committee’s mind at rest on that, but perhaps the e-commerce directive, providing for exclusive country of origin regulations on online services, would in any event preclude the UK from trying to extend the deposit regime to online services available here, but originating from companies established in other member states. However, there is still some uncertainty whether the UK, under its international treaty obligations under the general agreement on tariffs and trade, would extend the regime on publications available in the UK from publishers based in countries outside the EU. In either case, there would be major complications and a great deal of controversy and resentment from overseas publishers and their Governments if the UK tried to impose a British deposit regime on publications from publishers established in other countries.

A large proportion of the content of services of many international online publishers is provided under licence from third party content sources based outside the UK. For example, there might be contracts with almost all the world’s stock exchanges to disseminate in real time their market prices globally in return for payment of per user fees for each subscriber choosing to receive price data from the stock exchange concerned. The service providers are prevented contractually from supplying price data to subscribers who do not pay the exchange’s end-user charges. We do not believe that the UK has the legal competence to override those contractual obligations, so we could be putting companies in breach of contract with the exchanges if they were required to supply the data free of charge to the libraries.

To extend the argument about online systems and businesses, we must have clear definitions in the legislation. The hon. Gentleman will promise that that will happen through secondary legislation, as clause 6(2)(g) states that the Secretary of State may

“make provision as to the circumstances in which works published on line are or are not to be treated as published in the United Kingdom”.

However, that is of little comfort to a business that deals in billions, and which is probably one of the most important industries that we have in this country. In terms of its earning capacity and the number of people it employs, it is bigger than the pharmaceutical industry. If we do not get the Bill right, and the regulations are not formed in a way that assists the business but rather diminishes or undermines it, we shall do a great disservice to the business and the country as a whole.

In order to progress that idea, when the hon. Gentleman responds, perhaps he needs to give a clearer indication than we have received hitherto that consultations will start in earnest with the business community to ensure that its concerns and fears are taken into account in the wording of the Bill. Perhaps the problem should be taken in stages: take what is offline to begin with and work on the basis of what has

already been agreed and worked on through the joint committee, and bring it online at a later date. That is one possible solution.

The time scale is short, and one of the problems with the Bill is that it appears to be being rushed. That is not an indictment of the hon. Member for Ipswich—he made the right decision in taking the Bill off the shelf and promoting it. Most of the people to whom I have spoken agree in principle that the Bill is an important piece of legislation. There is general agreement about its principles, but it is the nitty-gritty and the small print of the regulations that will impact on those involved.

I should like a promise that greater consultation will take place before we reach our discussions on Report and Third Reading. If time for that is not available, consultation should take place before the Bill finishes its passage in the other place. That would be helpful to the business community, which feels that serious concerns need addressing. It would welcome more detailed consultation with the hon. Gentleman and those who are helping him with the legislation.

Thank you, Mr. Benton, for giving me licence to use this opportunity. I have introduced some broad concepts, some of which will be addressed later under specific amendments. At the heart of the Bill is the requirement on publishers to deposit, so we must be sure clearly to define which publishers and which published material we are talking about. I hope that there might be some response from the Minister about a way forward that would satisfy everyone.