This prompted Planché to begin campaigning for copyright to be extended to dramatic works. He gathered a group of dramatists (including John Poole, James Kenney, Joseph Lunn and Richard Brinsley Peak) who prevailed upon writer and MP George Lamb to introduce a bill in Parliament; but the bill did not pass its third reading. In 1832 Edward Bulwer-Lytton, a novelist and MP, was successful in getting a select committee set up to consider dramatic copyright, as well as theatrical censorship and the monopoly of the patent theatres on drama. Planché gave evidence before the select committee; the following year the Dramatic Copyright Act 1833 (3 Will IV c. 15) was passed.