I certainly accept that point. I do not think for a moment that the Secretary of State would allow regulations to exist that forced that on a publisher.

However, the clause relates to more than one medium. The same work might be published in several media; it might be available online, offline and in different digital formats. We know how much we have already lost. Indeed, it is curious that we can pick up a book that is 500 years old and still read and understand it, but we cannot pick up digital media that is five years old and still easily read or understand that. That is the difficulty in the Bill. Such issues must be thrashed out and the interests of the national archive must be paramount. I am not suggesting that we disregard publishers’ interests or do not consult them about the best usual medium for the deposit of work, but if the Bill is to mean anything, the information deposited under it must be available to readers in an easy format from libraries. It must be catalogued and available in a technologically suitable form.

Decisions about deposits should ideally be left to the Secretary of State who, as the hon. Member for Ipswich said, can draw a ring around those issues. However, placing the onus on the Secretary of State to come to an agreement with a publisher on every medium seems too great a centralisation of responsibilities, and suggests not enough trust in the system, or in our archivists and librarians to get it right—and they do get it right most of the time.