The bill
The Automated Online Software (Access and Transparency) Bill was published on 13 October as Bill 025 of the 2026-27 session. It is a Private Members’ Bill brought under the ballot by Damian Hinds, the Conservative MP for East Hampshire, and it started in the Commons.
Its long title sets out two duties: it would “make provision about the registration of operators of specified automated online software” and “make provision about duties on those operators with regard to the functions of that software, including in relation to accessing online material published by persons other than the operator.” In plain terms, a bot that reads someone else’s website would have to say who runs it and why.
Hinds set out the principle in an opinion piece on 17 October: “you should have to tell the owner who you are and what you intend to do with it.” He also wrote that website owners are unable to identify the vast majority of bots.
The letter
Two days before that piece, on 15 October, the News Media Association published a joint letter to the prime minister, Andy Burnham, asking the government to back the bill or introduce equivalent provisions this session. Sixteen people signed it, and the range is the point.
From national newspapers: Anna Bateson of Guardian Media Group, Danny Groom of the Daily Mail, Dominic Carter of The Sun, Jon Slade of the Financial Times, Chris Longcroft of The Times and The Sunday Times, Chris Evans of The Daily Telegraph, Geoff Maynard of the Daily and Sunday Express, Neil McIntosh of the Daily Record and Steve Graves of the Liverpool Echo. From trade bodies: Theo Bamber of the News Media Association, Dan Conway of the Publishers Association and Sajeeda Merali of the Professional Publishers Association. And from outside publishing: Jen Wong, chief operating officer of Reddit; Justine Roberts, founder of Mumsnet; Scott Lovett, president of Fastly; and Vasanth Williams, chief product and technology officer of Condé Nast.
That last group is what distinguishes this from a newspaper campaign. A content delivery network and a forum company sit on the same letter as the Guardian and the Sun, because the problem they describe — crawlers that do not identify themselves or declare a purpose — lands on anyone who serves pages.
The argument
The letter’s case is short. “The case for transparency is clear,” it says. “What is missing is a decision to act.” It also makes a self-interested argument aimed at the AI industry rather than at publishers: “Without a continuing supply of high-quality, accurate information, AI models will degrade.” The letter quotes a senior scientist at an AI developer describing the practice as the “largest theft of labor in human history.”
Notably, the ask is not a ban and not a licensing fee. It is disclosure: who the operator is, and what the access is for. Hinds has framed the point as leaving the decision with the publisher — able to see who is reading, and then to block, allow, or negotiate a price.
Why it probably does not become law
Hinds said so himself. His bill “has scant chance of making it onto the statute book,” he wrote, adding that he hoped raising the issue would move the debate forward.
The mechanics explain the pessimism. Ballot bills get limited Friday time and die easily; the bill was listed for second reading on Friday 16 October. The Commons order paper also records that a money resolution is required for the bill to be proceeded with in committee, and a money resolution is in the government’s gift. A registration scheme costs money to run, so the clause that makes the bill work is also the clause that hands the government a veto by inaction.
What to watch
The signal to watch is not the bill’s progress but the government’s response to the letter. If ministers adopt the transparency duty into their own legislation, Hinds will have achieved what he said he was aiming at. If they do not grant a money resolution and say nothing, the question becomes what the signatories do next — and a group that includes Fastly, which sits in front of a large share of the web’s traffic, has options that do not require an Act of Parliament.
