Business News

Hunt appointed Culture Minister

By CMU Editorial | Published on Thursday 13 May 2010

Jeremy Hunt, possibly rhyming slang in the making, has been appointed as the new UK government’s minister for culture, media and sport, which presumably means he’ll have the music business in his remit. Though his initial job title will specifically namecheck the Olympics too, which makes you think the world of sport will be getting a lion’s share of his attention for at least two years. Hunt already had the cultcha brief in the shadow cabinet so will already have been heavily lobbied by the music industry before the General Election, not least because the support of Hunt and his colleagues was crucial in getting the three-strikes part of the Digital Economy Act onto the statute book before the big vote. 

When dissing the outgoing Labour government for letting the then Digital Economy Bill slip right to the end of the last parliament, Hunt said that, if the Tories formed government, they would use “every parliamentary means at our disposal” to remove any aspects of the DEB that proved to have “unintended consequences”. So, do look out for any unintended consequences once three-strikes goes live, and see just what parliamentary means Hunt employs. 

Of course during the election Lib Dem leader and now Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said he thought the Digital Economy Act should be repealed and started again anew, arguing that in the end it had all been far too rushed to be good law. But it’s possible that in his big new job, and with this crazy ‘Tory Boys feat MC Lib Dem’ collaboration to work out, he’ll have other things on his mind than the tricky old digital economy laws and the three-strikes system they introduce.