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Creative Industries

I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich, North (Dr. Gibson) is absolutely exhilarated by the thought of becoming the mentor of the hon. Member for Wantage—he showed that by various gesticulations during the debate. I shall respond as quickly as I can to the points made in the debate. I agree entirely with the hon. Member for Maldon and East Chelmsford (Mr. Whittingdale), the Chairman of the Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport, that all the creative industries need to develop new business models. Everything that we have said about copyright protection will only work in part. The real way forward for all the creative sectors is to develop new business models. The music industry, although it came to the table late because it was hit first, is doing more work on new business models than others. I was at an interesting session with representatives of the BPI just before Christmas, at which they demonstrated to me not just the model that the hon. Gentleman talked about, but the way in which mobile phone technology will now be used. We can think of Radiohead and the way in which they have used technology. The hon. Gentleman talked about live concerts. That is almost a new business model in its own right. The film industry has to do some catching up to the point that the music industry has reached. That is an important point. I want to pick up on the hon. Gentleman's point about camcording in cinemas. In relation to his discussions with the film industry, I say to him that we need better evidence that a new offence would have the impact that it thinks it would have. As far as I can see from the evidence so far where that offence has been introduced, it has not made an enormous difference, so we have asked the industry for more evidence. A number of hon. Members referred to copyright extension. I repeat what I have said in the main Chamber: we have an open mind. However, I hope that hon. Members will look at the evidence, because it was not an unthinking decision on the part of Gowers; he based it on the best evidence that he had. It was echoed—I have now found the reference—by the Hugenholtz report to the European Commission. Although Commissioner McCreevy seems to have had a change of heart, we will certainly look forward to discussions with him. We need to get good research evidence, and the hon. Gentleman will know that the research that his Committee considered was questioned by some of those involved in the earlier research. Let us look at that research again in that context.