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Their comments have been published below with kind permission.
Rupert Burchett discusses the potential scaling back of the Environmental Land Management (ELM) scheme, warning it would be a serious blow to the rural community. He highlights recent government decisions as evidence of pressure on farmers who relied on ELM support to diversify and manage land sustainably.
Rupert states:
“Anybody could be forgiven for thinking that the Government is waging some sort of ideological war on the rural community. In the brief time in which they have been in power, amongst other things we have seen the inheritance tax changes, the sudden closure of the Sustainable Farming Incentive scheme, the changes to National Insurance, the changes to the double cab pick-up benefit in kind rules, the proposals to amend the firearms licensing rules, the failure to issue General Licence 45, the failure to issue trail hunting licences on Ministry of Defence land and the proposals to amend the Hunting Act 2004.
Successive governments have told farmers to diversify their income streams, so many have changed the way they manage their land to put a greater focus on environmental diversity and nature recovery in part on the basis of the support available from the ELM schemes. If today’s news proves to be true, cutting these schemes would be a further blow to a sector already operating on the tightest of margins.”
Caleb Bester discusses the Government’s controversial stance on AI and copyright in his ‘Legal comment of the week’, warning that its preference for an ‘opt out’ model on text and data mining risks alienating the UK’s creative industries. He argues that by trying to please both tech and arts sectors, the Government may end up satisfying neither.
Caleb states:
“The Government is attempting to walk a delicate high wire, by appealing to both an emerging AI industry as well as the crucial creative industries in the UK. In practice is it possible to ride both horses?
By indicating its preference for an ‘opt out’ scenario for copyright holders in relation to text and data mining, the Government has demonstrated its willingness to bend copyright protections to indulge the development of AI and to the detriments of the creative arts.
Moreover, in its latest rejection of Baroness Kidron’s amendment in the House of Lords, which would have provided greater protections to copyright holders, the Government puts itself at risk of losing any credibility it may have had as a fair mediator between these two competing interest groups.
In short, in seeking to reconcile its desire to become both a hub of AI innovation and a cultural superpower, it risks appeasing neither, and driving both away from Britain’s shores.
This conflict should not have come as a surprise to the Government. Better engagement earlier on might have resulted in a compromise position acceptable to both sides.”
