The PPA’s Head of Policy and Public Affairs, Eilidh Wilson attended the three major conferences and shared the key takeaways for members.

Liberal Democrats

Their success in the general election has injected a new lease of energy into the Liberal Democrats, who now enjoy having 72 members of the House of Commons. These new MPs will have to work hard to keep their seats and will be expected to put a lot of time into their constituency work.

Many MPs expressed an interest in tech policy, in particular AI. As these new MPs are assigned more specific roles in parliamentary committees, we will seek to engage further on the PPA’s key issues.

Labour

This year was the most well-attended Labour Party conference of all time, with more than 20,000 delegates. It is clear that the Government has a lot of challenges to consider ahead of the Autumn Budget and much of the engagement with senior stakeholders reflected a desire from the Party to manage the expectations of the public and businesses.

No binding commitments were made about AI and copyright, despite there being a high volume of fringe events discussing AI more broadly.

The PPA has been engaging with the central Government about copyright and AI to understand the Government’s next steps for a policy resolution.

Conservatives

The Conservative Party Conference was surprisingly cheery, considering their defeat in the July general election. The central focus of the Conference was the leadership election which enabled a discussion about strategic direction and how the party was going to improve performance at the next general election.

There were many opposition MPs, familiarising themselves with newly appointed opposition portfolios. The PPA had a positive meeting with the new Shadow Minister for Media, Dr Luke Evans, about the importance of protecting publishers’ copyrights in the context of AI.

We will continue to keep members updated on any developments. If you have any questions or wish to discuss this with our team, please get in touch with our Head of Policy and Public Affairs, Eilidh Wilson, eilidh.wilson@ppa.co.uk.