With the announcement by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak that an election will take place on 4 July, the current parliamentary term was brought to an abrupt end and the main political parties began campaigning.

By law, parliament must be dissolved 25 working days before the general election (in this case by 30 May). Due to the pre-arranged timetable for recess, this meant that all the bills making their way through parliament had to complete passage by Friday 24 May or be thrown out. This process is also known as parliamentary wash-up.

There were three key Bills in the House of Lords that were of significance to specialist publishers:

1. The Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill

The Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill completed its passage in the House of Lords last week and became the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act (DMCCA).

This new law gives powers to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) to take steps to tackle market failures that stem from the dominance of large technology companies (see our explanatory document here). It also establishes new rules for subscription providers, to protect consumer rights and combat so called ‘subscription traps’.

The central Government and the CMA will now work with stakeholders to determine how the DMCCA should be implemented.

PPA next steps: On competition, the CMA has published a consultation document on its guidelines for the new regime. The PPA will be meeting with members of the Digital Policy and Regulatory forum to understand members’ views on this as we develop our formal response.

On subscriptions, the Department for Business and Trade in central Government has set up a working group to engage stakeholders on the consultation for this part of the DMCCA which the PPA’s Head of Policy and Public Affairs, Eilidh Wilson, will sit on. We will continue to liaise with the members of the PPA’s subscriptions group to understand the operational and commercial concerns about the new subscription laws. However, we have been given assurance that this element of the DMCCA will not be enforced before Spring 2026.

2. The Media Bill

The Media Bill also completed its passage in the House of Lords and become the Media Act. This law contains provisions to repeal Section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act which, if enacted, would force publishers to sign up to a state-backed regulator or pay both sides’ legal costs if they were sued.

PPA next steps: The PPA is delighted that this was passed as it protects press independence. We will continue to support the work of the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO).

3. The Data Protection and Digital Information Bill

The Data Protection and Digital Information Bill did not complete its passage in parliament and has been thrown out.

The PPA is pleased that the Bill did not become an Act of law as it would have given powers to the Secretary of State to centralise cookie consent with browsers. This would have prevented publishers from being able to collect data from their own cookies and leave the sector at the mercy of browsers such as Google chrome to access any kind of user data.

PPA next steps: The PPA has engaged with key political stakeholders in the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, the House of Commons and the House of Lords about our concerns regarding cookie centralisation. The PPA will support the next Government in developing legislation that promotes data fairness for users and specialist publishers.

What the election means for Artificial Intelligence

Addressing the lack of regulation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) remains a top priority for the PPA, as open AI systems continue to benefit from the use of copyrighted data scraped from specialist publishers’ websites without their permission. The PPA has been calling for the roll-out of regulatory mechanisms to enforce transparency from AI developers about what data they are scraping and how it is being used.

The Government made no regulatory interventions but did commit to “exploring mechanisms for providing greater transparency so that rights holders can better understand whether content they produce is used as an input into AI models”.

The election means that it will be incumbent on the next Government to establish a regulatory regime for AI. There have been reports of speculation that Labour could publish a policy document outlining a position on this before the election takes place. Labour leader Keir Starmer, and Shadow Technology Secretary Peter Kyle have both made statements (see here and here) on the record indicating they would take a tougher regulatory approach than the Conservatives. However, we are yet to see a detailed policy commitment from Labour on establishing transparency provisions for AI in the interests of copyrights holders.

AI and copyright are at the heart of the PPA’s policy manifesto, published last year. We will continue to lobby key political stakeholders for regulatory interventions and will monitor the election campaigns for key announcements on AI.

PPA next steps: The PPA has designed policy positions and nourished political stakeholder relationships in anticipation of this general election. The next Government will be responsible for the implementation of the regulatory regime for digital competition and will have the opportunity to design new bills on AI and data fairness. The PPA will continue our advocacy work to ensure that digital regulation upholds rather than inhibits the interests of specialist publishing businesses and their readers.

For more information, please contact our Head of Policy and Public Affairs, Eilidh.wilson@ppa.co.uk