The publishing industry has welcomed the result of the UK general election which saw Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party receive a landslide victory. Penguin Random House CEO Tom Weldon said: “We congratulate the new government and look forward to working with it to create the conditions for the creative industries to continue to thrive. Specifically, I would call out the ongoing need for copyright protection, the celebration of creative subjects and the urgent requirement for investment in libraries.
“We are keen to work with the new government on our Libraries for Primaries programme, which aims to put a library in every primary school and aligns with their social justice agenda.”
Author bodies have urged the new Prime Minister to put the “existential threats” to publishing back on the agenda in pursuit of a “fairer deal” for authors amid the “profound challenges” posed by Artificial Intelligence and poor pay.
The Society of Authors’ (SoA) chief executive Anna Ganley urged the new government to “to waste no time in getting these issues back on the agenda”. She added: “We are keen to resume the important work of securing government support for a fairer deal for authors, and look forward to working with the new ministers and their teams.”
The SoA has been “in discussions with government on the existential threats to authors’ work and livelihoods – including the unregulated development of generative AI systems and the legal misuse of litigation by wealthy individuals and corporations against journalists, writers and other critics. These issues cannot be properly addressed without legislation. At a time when author incomes are lower than ever, it is vital that the government offers greater support to freelancers and reviews how it can increase funding for the arts and literature to nurture a better economic landscape for all creative professionals.”