Guest Vocals: Peter Wishart

MONEY can't buy me love", sang Paul McCartney sagely all those years ago. And as he considers his divorce, money has indeed proved to be a limited commodity. Like the rest of that very exclusive minority of musicians who got to the "toppermost of the poppermost", though, he has found that money is able to acquire practically everything else.

Those early Beatles recordings were the most successful of that amazing explosion of British pop that defined a generation. But fast-forward 50 years and Macca's less successful contemporaries now find themselves at the sharp end of a piece of discrimination that will see their earnings from their recorded work come to an abrupt end. They will fall victims of the 50-year copyright term on their recordings, and in their old age be deprived of the royalties.

Musicians alone are subject to this copyright cut-off. On a single from the 1960s the songwriter(s) received a copyright of life plus 70 years; the producer got the same terms; even the guy who designed the sleeve would receive a royalty for lifetime-plus. Everybody creatively involved in the record could pass on their copyright to their next generation, except the musicians themselves.

I have introduced a Bill in the Commons to address this discrimination. The Sound Recordings (Copyright Term Extension) Bill is supported by almost everyone in the music industry, has support across all parties and 36,000 musicians have signed a petition to end this discrimination.

"But don't you stand to gain from this yourself, Wishart?" I hear the more cynical readers protest. While notionally I might, I never had the big hit that would secure more than pennies in the future. I'm doing this because in the 20 years I spent in the music business, with Runrig and Big Country, I saw many more poor musicians than rich ones. The majority of musicians live on less than £15,000 a year. There is no such thing as a minimum wage for the jobbing musician.

The creative industries will soon take over from the financial sector as the most valuable part of our economy. We've therefore got to treat everyone involved in them fairly. Money won't buy us love, but it should be used to continue to reward the artists who have entertained us throughout the decades. Everybody tells me so!