My Lords, I will be relatively brief because much of what I want to say has been covered by the other speakers, not that I could ever have competed with the tour d’horizon that was the speech by the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, and the expertise also shown by the former Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe. It was also a bit of a tour de force, since it touched on every issue there is to touch on in terms of intellectual property. Indeed, if the noble Lords were minded to follow that up with amendments to back up some of the points they were making, the glacial progress we are making so far on the Bill would turn into a complete and utter standstill. So much is going on here, and so many things need to be addressed, that I am almost tempted to go into cahoots with them to try to see whether we can pick them out. Perhaps I will resist that one.
Both Amendments 15 and 16, taken together or separately, are helpful in the sense that, as others have said, they pick up some of the rather considerable concerns that we are all hearing from the IP sector about the future, about what is going to happen to personal data flows and, indeed, about what is going to happen to our IP industry, which is so vital to the UK economy and our cultural industries. They seem to be very sensible information-gathering amendments
that do not impose any great burden on the Government, and they would help to inform the situation as we reach the turning points at the end of this year. I hope that they commend themselves at least in outline to the Minister.
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Underlying this, as I have already said, is a real concern in the industry about the data adequacy agreement. Where are we? It would be helpful if there were anything that the Minister could say about the timescales, what plan B will be, and whether the adequacy issues will fall at the hurdle because of the concerns about Schrems. These are all very alive and interesting. It is a small group of people who perhaps do not have the public ear in the way some of the other issues that we have been discussing have, but they are just as important.
Amendment 34 is in a different vein, but it raises similar issues. The noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, has a wonderful record in this area and we should listen to her with great interest. The good point that she made in relation to the debate that we are concluding is that, whereas in the past there have been discussions around the House in relation to what might be put in place to constrain the Government in any future deals that they might wish to carry out, that argument cannot be used here because this legislation is still in progress. The worries that she made clear, which I fully support—that the very high-level approach taken by the UK Government up until now will be frustrated by this issue needing to be moderated in the light of the need to do deals—are very real. We have heard enough from those who spoke in this debate to recognise that this will not go away and needs to be addressed.
The point about the issues raised by the recent US agreements and the USMCA about Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act will not go away. No doubt it would prompt the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, had he put his name down, to say what he said already —that that is for the future, not for now. We have to have a debate about this, and whether it is now or later, the Government cannot duck this very important issue that matters so much to the people of this country.