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Mr. Chope: Does my right hon. Friend agree that one of the problems is that the promoter has sought to make the Bill what he has described as future-proof?
Mr. Forth: If that is so, I would have thought that, in the context of the technologies that we are discussing, it is a pretty bold claim, to put it mildly. Even I am aware that the advance of this technology, perhaps more than any other in history, is mind-bogglingly rapid. I would have thought that a more modest aspiration was appropriate: to try to frame legislation that can contain what we think we know of the existing technology and to make an effort to look a little bit ahead. But the claim that this will deal with the future is barely credible.
My own reservations are about what is, or what I believe to be, and the difficulties that arise therefrom. It distresses me to say that, on this occasion, I am not happy with the new clause tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Cambridgeshire, for the reasons that I have given and, sadly, I am not yet convinced about amendment No. 24 in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch. Until I hear more from them, and I hope to seek to catch your eye again, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I may have to withhold my support.
Mr. Simon Thomas (Ceredigion): I do not know about interplanetary logging on and logging off, but I feel as though we had been to the planet Zog and back in the last half an hour. There are, however, a couple of serious points to be made about the amendments.
The Bill puts print and non-print publications, published for use in the United Kingdom, on exactly the same footing. New clause 4 would change that relationship, and I would oppose that. I believe strongly that what we are trying to achieve with the Bill is the recognition that non-print publications are as important to our cultural, intellectual and scientific life as were print publications in the past, and we must recognise that they need to be collected in exactly the same way as we have collected print publications.
That brings me to amendment No. 24 and collections policy. It is a pity that some hon. Members in the Chamber today did not attend the Second Reading debate as they would have been able to hear strongly expressed views about what librarians and archivists have achieved in building up our national collections. There are six for the whole United Kingdom, three of which are the national collections for the constituent nations; there are also collections in Oxford and Cambridge and one for the whole island of Ireland.
The Second Reading debate made it clear—as I hope will also be clear today—that those national collections were built up using the knowledge of archivists and librarians and their interpretation of what was culturally significant at the time. They may not always get it right, but they have a depth of experience and a well of knowledge, as well as the sense of the history of such things that is passed on in those institutions from generation to generation. I should have thought that the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth) would have appreciated that work and its future.
I speak as someone who has worked in such an institution, so I have seen how such work is carried out. I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman and his colleagues would be welcome at any of our national libraries to see how the collections were built up. The Bill entrusts librarians and archivists with future proofing in the sense that it entrusts them with collection policy, and I very much support that.
Dr. Andrew Murrison (Westbury): I rise principally in support of amendment No. 24. I agree with the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mr. Thomas) that librarians and archivists are extremely skilled. Perhaps they can be entrusted to determine what is significant, but they need guidance in statute, as, by nature, they are magpies—rightly so. However, the collecting instincts that are reflected in the provisions of this generally laudable Bill need some structure or framework.
Often, in our haste to collect everything, we belittle and demean what is really important. Most of us have experience of weeding our office files, for example. We do so because we want to ensure that important documents are not disguised by the generality, which is relatively trivial. That workaday example has some relevance in the context of our debate.
One of my chief concerns relates to awareness, compliance and enforcement. Under the current law applying to the printed media, we see how things can operate sub-optimally. For example, we publish
political leaflets, with the imprint duly appended. Under the current law, in theory, such leaflets should be deposited yet few people would seriously claim that they were of
- "national intellectual, cultural or scientific"
Most of us have web pages these days—with the exception, perhaps, of my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth).
Dr. Murrison: In theory, under the law, web pages should be deposited and, as most of us update them, they should be redeposited at regular intervals. However, no one would seriously suggest that those documents have any great significance for future historical research, although one or two of us might flatter ourselves that they might. I suspect, however, that they will not.
Amendment No. 24 would cover such matters and, with guidance—I hope—from professional archivists and librarians, would exclude the trivial, and for that reason I support it.
Estelle Morris: I particularly want to address my remarks to new clause 4 and amendment No. 24, as I support the other amendments tabled and ably introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Mr. Mole). However, before I do so, I wish to say that this business is undoubtedly complex and that many of the comments made by hon. Members have been right and proper. As people who have charge of passing down our cultural heritage to the generations that come after us, we must decide whether we want to include non-print publications. Whether we like it or not and whether or not we have a website, we must accept that the world is moving into a time when communication and publishing takes place other than in print.
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My personal view is that it is right for us to try to find a way forward so that future generations can have access to what was published in the past. That is my starting point. In some ways, that is very simple, but I entirely accept that, once we try to make that happen, things become very complicated, partly because it is a world that does not stand still and all the notions of what constitutes a publication, let alone where it is published, call for decisions that are very difficult to write down in law. That has been the difficulty with the Bill throughout its proceedings in Parliament. Certainly, from what I have picked up in the past few days, I sense that that has been the difficulty.
What we are doing—I think that this is what my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich meant when he referred to time proofing—is providing a framework that will allow us to have discussions with people who are far more knowledgeable than we are. Certainly the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth)
has admitted that he is not very knowledgeable about websites. I may know a little more about them, but I am certainly not as knowledgeable as I would need to be if I were to take decisions about what should be saved for the future. The comments made by the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mr. Thomas), who has a good background in this subject, were absolutely spot on, and I wish to emphasise them, which is why I shall concentrate on new clause 4 and amendment No. 24.New clause 4 deals with an important issue and I give the hon. Member for North-East Cambridgeshire (Mr. Moss) credit for raising it, but I draw his attention to clause 6(2)(g). The Bill does not state what constitutes a UK publication in primary legislation. We are not deciding that today; it will be subject to further regulations. If the hon. Gentleman feels that new clause 4 offers his preferred definition of what constitutes a UK publication, he could propose that as part of those regulations and—who knows?—it might be adopted, but, for once, I agree with the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst that that is not the right way to define such things.
I take the point made by the hon. Member for North-East Cambridgeshire that that may be his preference, but the best way to deal with this issue is to have the proper consultation and discussions with those who are very knowledgeable about what constitutes a UK publication and for the definition to be the subject of those regulations. I do not wish to detract from the fact that I do not have any easy definition up my sleeve. I do not know what the definition will be—it is very difficult—but it is important to consider where things are published.
The clause that the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst read out was absolutely key because some of the definitions in that clause are not used in the legislation. If we were to adopt that part of the legislation, we would have great difficulty in interpreting it. I am not arguing against the definition of what constitutes a UK publication proposed by the hon. Member for North-East Cambridgeshire; I am arguing in favour of acting under clause 6(2)(g), having proper consultations and then making regulations.
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