PA renews call for government to push Digital Markets Bill to become law

The Publishers Association (PA) has renewed its call for the government to “push” the Digital Markets Bill so it becomes law. 

At a summer reception on 4th June at the House of Commons Terrace Pavilion, PA president Nigel Newton, chief executive of Bloomsbury, said: “Great technology needs great regulation and that doesn’t happen at the moment.”  

Although he said it was “thrilling news” the bill, which aims to create new competition rules for digital markets and the largest digital firms, has been included in draft in this year’s Queen’s speech, he emphasised the need for it “to come through into full law”. 

Looking ahead to his presidency, Newton expressed optimism about the state of the industry. “It is notable that with the many competing forms of distraction re-emerging, such as getting together and eating and drinking and going out in the evening, people are still reading, so hurrah and long may it continue! 

“But we must also remain alert to the threats and opportunities that face us. We must concentrate on growing the book market and securing the financial viability of books and journal publishers and concentrate on growing the diversity and sustainability of our great industry,” he said. 

He revealed Ian Fleming’s Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (Macmillan Children’s Books) had been a particularly influential book in his life, “showing me the incredible fun of reading and being drawn into imaginative worlds”, and encouraged other speakers to discuss and celebrate books that had impacted them in some way.  

Andrew Lewer MP, who chairs the Publishing All-Party Parliamentary Group, said Samuel Johnson’s works were most important to him, having studied in the same library Johnson read in, and studied him at Newcastle University, before eventually writing the entry for him in the Oxford Companion to British History (OUP). 

Incoming c.e.o. Dan Conway said A A Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh (Egmont) had the biggest impact. “It is one of the greatest children’s books of all time. It means so much to me because it was read to me as a child and I am now currently reading it to my children and usually it ends with everyone in fits of laughter,” he said. 

Authors Kamila Shamsie and Jeffrey Boakye also attended. Shamsie discussed life growing up a military dictatorship in Karachi in the 1970s and 1980s, remarking how “incredibly boring” culture gets when “all that censorship gets in the way”. She said books were one of the few things still around that hadn’t been controlled, and were a way for her to discover the “magic” of the world. She also praised the “remarkable ecosystem of publishing”, adding: “It is an extraordinary thing to have and it needs to be really honoured and preserved”.