Decarbonising buildings, especially our homes, is a vitally important part of the UK’s journey towards Net Zero emissions. However, how that decarbonisation is delivered is equally important.

That’s why I have taken such a keen interest in a situation that was recently brought to my attention by a group of local Flagship Housing residents in Weasenham.

Flagship Housing/Victory Homes rightly decided to take measures to decarbonise the heating of many of their properties and, in Weasenham, installed ground source heat pumps – with the added incentive of reducing the heating bills of those living in those homes.

Heating is in fact one of the toughest things to decarbonise however and, unfortunately, this positive step forwards by Flagship has been undermined by a number of issues. Residents began reporting difficulties in heating their homes to the desired temperatures despite setting the thermostat accordingly and the new heating systems broke down several times. Furthermore, technical issues would mean the heating would come on at the wrong times and heating bills actually increased.

The dissatisfaction of many of these residents was compounded by the fact that they had been required to sacrifice their airing cupboards to accommodate the new heating systems, with new unpainted pipes added along skirting boards and down walls. The mess, noise and disruption caused during the improvements also left many feeling very disillusioned with the process.

I therefore welcomed the chance to meet with affected residents, alongside local councillor Robert Hambidge, this past Friday. Meeting at the Community Rooms on Lambert Close, we listened to residents as they detailed their frustrations in depth and, having invited Adrian Barber (MD from Flagship Housing/Victory Homes) to attend also, I was pleased to see that he was taking the complaints being raised very seriously indeed.

Adrian explained that Flagship/Victory had installed the new heating systems with the very best of intentions and acknowledged that lessons were being learned as a result of the problems that had been encountered. Residents appreciated his commitment to send out members of his team to meet with them and document all of the issues they had experienced, with Adrian also promising to then follow up on each complaint to ensure that everything was being addressed.

Vulnerable residents in social and sheltered housing should not end up paying more.

It is a huge honour and privilege to have been named the first Minister of State for the new UK Department of Science, Innovation and Technology today, with Secretary of State the Rt Hon Michelle Donelan MP.

A historic moment for UK Science, Technology, Engineering and Innovation.

#ScienceSuperpower

#InnovationNation

As I have pledged on each of the four election nights on which I’ve been honoured to be elected, I will always do my best to represent EVERYONE in Mid Norfolk – not just the people who voted for me.

I take that pledge incredibly seriously, and that’s why I was delighted to resume my regular schedule of constituency school visits again this past Friday – this time visiting Litcham School.

Visiting alongside local councillor Mark Kiddle-Morris, it was a pleasure to talk to the school’s Year 8 pupils about the work of a local MP and the story of how I became one. It was great to learn more about many of their own career aspirations too – also taking the opportunity to tell them about some of the incredible jobs and skills courses already here in our area.

If YOU are a school in Mid Norfolk that would be interested in having me visit, or simply need my help, please do get in touch via george.freeman.mp@parliament.uk . I’d be delighted to come and speak with you all.

An MP’s first duty is to their constituency. I believe it’s so important for me, as YOUR elected representative, to be out and about and accessible, to listen to and present YOU! And not just at election times!

That’s why, in addition to the 500+ casework emails, letters and telephone calls I receive each week, as well as my various campaign work, I run a regular programme of Supermarket and Community Surgeries here in Mid Norfolk – moving them around the constituency to make it as easy as possible for people to come and see me.

On Friday, I was delighted to hold my latest Supermarket Surgery at Watton Tescos where I met dozens of constituents, discussing a range of specific casework matters and/or wider policy topics on issues like NHS dentists, pensions and local jobs and opportunities.

Engagement with my constituents is such a vital part of my job and I relish the chance to have YOU come along and ‘bend my ear’.

If YOU would like to come along and informally bend my ear at one of my upcoming surgeries, please do contact me at george.freeman.mp@parliament.uk

Or if YOU would just like some help with an issue, or to make me aware of a policy concern, please do just send over your comments via email for me to pick up too.

Vibrant and thriving town centres need vibrant and thriving small businesses. As a former small businessman myself (and now in my third spell as a Business Minister), I have long been passionate about supporting and enhancing our local high streets and local business communities.

That’s why it was such a joy to visit Café Contrast on the Watton High Street this past Friday – meeting with owner Tina, her mum and daughter, alongside Cllr Claire Bowes, to celebrate Tina’s remission from cancer and the reopening of her brilliant Portuguese café bistro.

Anecdotally, I know how popular this wonderful local business is in Watton and I was thrilled to be put in touch with Tina by local councillors Claire Bowes and Tina Kiddell. The café has become a real hub on the High Street and it was a pleasure to learn more about Tina’s plans.

If YOU run a local business and would be interested in welcoming me and bending my ear, please do drop me an email at george.freeman.mp@parliament.uk

I look forward to continuing my programme of regular local business visits in the coming weeks and months.

The first duty of any Government is to protect and support its citizens in the event of a critical incident, and that’s why, following the September 11th terror attacks, twenty specialist urban search and rescue teams were established across the country.

These teams were introduced as part of a national capability to provide strengthened resilience, equipment and skills to deal with large scale and/or complex incidents – and one such team has been headquartered right here in Mid Norfolk (at Dereham) ever since. Not only has it been trained to respond to terror attacks, it has also been trained to provide specialist assistance to local emergency services in the event of chemical leaks, flooding, water rescues, traffic accidents, coastal erosion, building collapses, body recovery and more.

Over the years, the Dereham team has become a highly respected and effective local asset, and it is for that reason that I shared local shock at the news that it may be one of five urban search and rescue team cut in the not too distant future.

That’s why I have written to ministers to highlight the strategic importance and value of the Dereham team, asking for clarification about any decisions that may have been made and asking that they look again to ensure everything that can be done to safeguard this service is done.

The loss of this service in Dereham would significantly increase the response times of such specialist support and, at a time when Norfolk’s “risk” is increasing (for example, through the addition and expansion of key infrastructure locations like Bacton, Necton, Dunstone and Walpole), I agree with local councillors that we should be doing all we can to ensure our local emergency services have the best possible support in the event of a critical incident.

Rest assured, I will continue to work with local authorities to do all I can to help protect the long term future of our Dereham team.  

George Freeman, as the Minister responsible for AI and intellectual property, responds to a Westminster Hall debate on the potential impact of artificial intelligence on intellectual property rights for creative workers.

The Minister for Science, Research and Innovation (George Freeman)

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson, and to have the chance to put the record straight in answer to the sensible points and questions made in the debate.

I congratulate and thank the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney). Had the debate not been scheduled, I would have hoped for someone to secure such a debate in order to give me a chance to explain the situation. I also thank all colleagues from across the House, from all parties, who have spoken this afternoon. I think we have covered most of the points.

It is a particular pleasure for me not only to be back in this role as the Minister responsible for AI, the Office for AI and the Intellectual Property Office, as part of my wider role as Minister for science, research, technology and innovation, but as someone who years ago ran a very basic AI drug discovery business. I mean, it was very basic: it was an algorithm with an elastic band connected to it compared with the technologies of today. It deployed basic early AI to look in the pharmacopoeia of “failed medicines” to find those that are actually dream medicines for certain segments of the population, trying to reprofile them.

I have therefore seen for myself how AI, properly deployed in an ethical framework, can be a huge driver for not only drug discovery, but better medicine and public services. I am also from a family with a lot of interest in the creative industries—my wife is a musician, artist and writer, my brother works in film and I have published a book—so I am very aware of the balance that has to be struck and that colleagues across the House have spoken about this afternoon.

I think it is fair to say, as a number of colleagues have, that AI is coming at us as a transformational technology at a pace that we have not had to deal with before in Government. The pace, the halving of technology cycles, and the speed at which it is maturing and reinventing itself are creating some big and interesting challenges for established industries, new industries that are taking shape and creators across all the different spheres of the creative industries. We need to get the balance right.

In case the Division bell goes or we have some other interruption, let me make it clear that when I returned to office, the Minister of State, Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, my hon. Friend the Member for Hornchurch and Upminster (Julia Lopez), and I met promptly to look at the issue. We have written around to make it clear to other Ministers that the proposals were not correct, that we have met with a huge response, which should have been picked up in the pre-consultation before the proposals were announced, and that we are looking to stop them.

We will have a rather deeper conversation with the all-party group, whom I met yesterday, and with experts in both Houses and in the industry—creators, platforms, publishers, broadcasters and digital intermediaries—to ensure that we do not rush precipitately into a knee-jerk move that is wrong. We must try to anticipate the challenges that are coming and to get a regulatory framework in the UK that can keep pace with the pace of the technology and the issues it raises.

I reassure the hon. Member for Richmond Park, who secured the debate and asked a specific question about this, that we will not be proceeding with the proposals. I will go on to answer the question that I know the right hon. Member for Warley (John Spellar) is going to ask me, which is, “How did this happen and what are the lessons from it?”

John Spellar 

I thank the Minister for that welcome announcement—I presume it was an announcement? I understand that this has to go through a number of stages of inter-departmental consultation, but could he give any idea of when a definitive policy will be produced?

George Freeman 

Theses have been written on whether it was an announcement with a capital “A” or a small “a”. I do not think I could be clearer that the two Ministers concerned agree that the proposals submitted, approved and published did not meet with the expected support. I hasten to say that they were published after I left Government, and it was a period of some turmoil. One of the lessons from this is to try not to legislate in periods of political turmoil.

The key bit of the right hon. Member’s question is: when will we see proposals? My strong instinct is that we should draw breath, take a chance to go through all the feedback from the last few months, and then, in rather more deep consultation with all the various interests, see if there are proposals that might command the support that is needed.

John Spellar 

I am sorry to be pedantic. The Minister refers to discussions between him and the Minister of State, Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, the hon. Member for Hornchurch and Upminster (Julia Lopez), which is enormously welcome. As he is speaking from the Dispatch Box, is that now Government policy?

George Freeman 

The right hon. Member is well aware, as a veteran of these things, that for something to be a formal announcement on policy, a Government write-round has to go through the various Committees. That process is under way. Until that is done, I cannot formally confirm that it is collective responsibility Government policy, but the two Ministers concerned say that the proposals have not met with the support that was expected. [Interruption.] He has just said that that is good enough for him. I hope that it will be good enough for all those listening.

As colleagues have highlighted, the real issue is how we get the balance right. That is why AI is considered by the National Science and Technology Council, our senior Cabinet Committee, which is chaired by the Prime Minister and looks at the big issues that science and technology raise. I sit on that, and it is there to grapple with the big geopolitical and ethical issues that some of these technologies are raising. That is why we are working this year on both a creative industry strategy, led by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, and an AI regulatory strategy, which will set out our approach to regulating AI.

As the global AI revolution accelerates, we need to be aware that we are working in a global environment, and to set a regulatory framework that does not drive AI creators and investors out. We are a leading AI nation. We have an opportunity to set the regulatory framework in a way that reflects the values that this country is respected for all around the world. I think the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah) knows me well enough to know that I do not believe that there is a huge dividend from scrapping all the regulations that were put on the statute book during our membership of the European Union. There is, however, a very strong case for clearing up our regulatory statute book; there is an awful lot of dead wood and daft regulations. It can be very unclear.

I have led the charge in my party for saying that a lot of the Brexit regulatory opportunities are to set the frameworks in new and fast-emerging areas, whether it is AI, autonomous vehicles, nutraceuticals or satellites. The creation of regulatory frameworks that command the confidence of both consumers and investors helps to position this country as a global testbed for innovation, drives international markets, attracts investment and establishes the UK’s leadership in standards.

As Minister for Science, Research and Innovation, I am passionate about our leaning into that sort of leadership, as well as getting rid of some of the dafter regulations, such as the one that says that coffee machines have to turn off after 30 minutes. I do not know which Committee passed that, or nodded it through one day a few years ago. The truth is that our regulatory framework is incredibly complex for regulators, innovators and investors to navigate.

Chi Onwurah 

I think the Minister will find that rather than our leading the way on AI regulation, both the US and the European Union have already made strides in AI regulation that it would be good for us to respond to. I wonder whether he inadvertently made an announcement with regard to the National Science and Technology Council, which he said the Prime Minister has chaired. Previous Prime Ministers have chaired it, but it was my understand that the new version was not going to be chaired by the Prime Minister. Is it chaired by the Prime Minister?

George Freeman 

Unless an announcement has been made in the last few weeks that I have missed, yes. He has the right to depute the chairmanship of a particular meeting, but the point is it that it is the senior Committee of Cabinet dealing with science, technology and innovation. I am delighted that the Prime Minister reinstated it very early on—as soon as he took office.

The argument of the Intellectual Property Office last summer, presented to Ministers in good faith, was that if we look at what is going on around the world, there are other jurisdictions that have moved quickly to put in place similar text and data mining exemptions—in the EU, the US, Japan and Singapore. They are structured differently, but all are wider than the current UK exemptions. I do not want anyone to think that we were going out on a massive limb; we were making a move that was in the spirit of that made by other countries. There is an irony here, in that we were an active player in helping to shape some of those EU regulations. The challenge and opportunity for us, now that we are out of the EU, is to take the ambitions that we were pushing when we were in the EU and reach them more quickly and agilely—possibly even more digitally—in a new regulatory framework outside.

Damian Collins 

My hon. Friend is right that there are exemptions in other jurisdictions, but none is as wide as the ones that we have set. The most comparable jurisdiction is Singapore. While Singapore has many great qualities, it is not a net exporter of music, nor does it have a creative economy on the same scale as ours. We have been discussing the Intellectual Property Office’s response to a consultation, in which it recommended introducing these measures. Am I right to take from what the Minister said that the Government are now minded not to introduce these measures, and so that for the time being, the status quo prevails until such other proposals may be considered?

George Freeman 

That is exactly right. I will come to some of the lessons from that in a moment, but I am happy to confirm that.

In the consultation carried out by the Intellectual Property Office, a number of consultees made the case that UK copyright law was too restrictive, and was impeding investment in AI. The point was made about text and data mining exemptions in other countries, but I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe. He has a distinguished record in these affairs as a former Chair of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, and through his career. The regulations must be proportionate and reflect the economy that we are regulating. We have an incredibly strong digital creative industry and non-digital creative industry, and we must ensure that that is appropriate.

We heard rights holders arguing that no change should be made in the UK, and we also heard not just the big AI and tech firms but researchers in the life sciences and social sciences making the case that many of them were increasingly finding problems, not with negotiating with the obvious rights holders when it was clear who they were, such as universities, but with material available on the internet. They were finding it difficult to find the person to get permission from them, and that was holding back research, especially when working with multiple rights holders. While I am happy to concede that the proposals perhaps were not correctly, fully or properly drafted, there are some issues that are still worth pursuing. The Intellectual Property Office was asking the right questions, but it is more complex than the original proposals suggested. That is why we have committed to continuing that consultation.

Yesterday, I was with the all-party parliamentary group. I have instructed the Intellectual Property Office to share its analysis of the consultation findings, so that we can sit down together and go through what the issues are that we still need to deal with, and can get the balance right. As was said by a number of colleagues from across the House, when I say “get the balance right”, there is clearly a difference between those small and sometimes voiceless creatives—whether analogue or digital, but particularly if they are not in the digital creative economy—because some may want to completely opt out and say, “I just never want to see my image turned into an avatar, ever.” People need the ability to just opt out. People also need the ability to license, to be on the front foot, and to negotiate terms, which happens.

What the Intellectual Property Office picked up on from both sides is that there is a middle ground: there are those without a strong organisational platform through which they can set out the terms on which they are prepared to have their material accessed, and there are digital creators using intermediary AI technologies to create digitally, which is a legitimate activity, and who are struggling to find that interface and make it work. It is in that space that we particularly need to look to get the balance right between our creative, digital and AI sectors. Many in those sectors are small, extraordinarily dynamic and entrepreneurial.

In Coventry, I recently met a fantastic, almost underground coding community of teenagers doing amazing things. We need to be careful to ensure that the creative industry can flourish, and that the rights of the creators, who may or may not want their material to be used, are not trampled over. If they do want their material to be used, that takes us to a second issue: fair remuneration. I have stood here and discussed this with the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) before. There are issues about rights and about remuneration. How should we ensure that small creators are properly remunerated? There are issues that we need to deal with. As a number of colleagues have said, this is about the balance between rights, responsibilities and remuneration in the world of digitalisation of content and creativity.

There are two big lessons from last summer. One is that data is important. I have started a conversation with the Intellectual Property Office to ask if we could not do more to ensure that we have better datasets on exactly what the situation is with new, emerging revenue streams, new providers and new creators. The industry is moving very fast, and when it comes to which bits of the market are working well and which are not, there is a slight lack of data on which to base policy. Creating market conditions in which everyone can have confidence is the real challenge for the Government and for me as Minister.

I tentatively suggest that there may be another lesson, which is that we should harness the power of digital technologies and digitalisation when doing consultations. I am not quite suggesting that we should have run the AI-ometer over the consultation responses, but given the number of analogue Government processes, harnessing smart intelligence systems may provide us with a good way of identifying better clusters of feedback in consultations, and help to democratise the process of consultation. It is a slightly left-field point, but I am trying to signal that as we think about these industries, we have to ensure that we are not just talking to the same people, but driving new methods of consultation to keep up with the pace of the industry.

I have probably detained you, Mr Robertson, and other Members long enough. I hope it is clear that we have listened and heard, and we are absolutely committed to making sure that we get this right. Although the Government need to be on the front foot in anticipating the regulatory framework and getting it right, the proposals have clearly elicited a response that we did not hear when they were being drafted. We have taken the responses seriously. The Minister responsible for this area—my hon. Friend the Member for Hornchurch and Upminster —and I have made it clear that we do not want to proceed with the original proposals. We will engage seriously, cross-party and with the industry, through the IPO, to ensure that we can, when needed, frame proposals that will command the support required.

Hansard

Having had a fifteen year career running my own small business before coming to Parliament (one that also helped other small businesses in the science, research and innovation fields), I have long had a deep appreciation for local Business – something that has only been enhanced during my three spells as a Business Minister.

Local Business is the real engine that drives our local and national economies – and I am acutely aware of the pressures so many local companies and entrepreneurs have been under since the pandemic and, now, because of the increased energy prices.

That’s why I appreciated the opportunity to catch up with New Anglia Local Enterprise Partnership Chief Executive Chris Starkie this past Friday – to discuss all things local enterprise here in our area.

Despite the challenges being faced, there is a buoyant jobs market in our part of the country, with a great many local companies doing exciting work. I am determined to do all I can to help them get through this difficult period and ensure that our local economy gets stronger, boosting opportunities and prosperity in our local towns and villages.

Rest assured, this continues to be a central focus of mine and I look forward to continuing my efforts with the likes of the LEP moving forward.