Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988: Sporting Events

Baroness Neville-Rolfe Excerpts

Thursday 2nd December 2021 Grand Committee

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, I am glad we have come to that agreement. I thank my noble friend Lord Astor for initiating this debate and the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, for his colourful perspective, although, as he says, the solutions in these matters are never easy.

Like both noble Lords, I love racing, especially on the flat, and believe that elite sport broadcast here and around the world is important to UK growth, enterprise and soft power. Over the years, I have spent a good deal of time in Asia and Europe and have been struck by the power of teams such as Manchester United and indeed Manchester City, English cricket, Welsh rugby and of course the Derby to bring people together and attract wealth and investment into Britain.

I was Intellectual Property Minister for nearly three years—happy times—mainly under David Cameron, and I helped others to understand the evolution and importance of intangible assets such as those that we are talking about. Over 4% of our GDP in 2019 was invested in intellectual property rights, and of course copyright, which we are discussing today, is the biggest intellectual property right in economic terms.

At that time, we not only had the best IP regime in the world but we prided ourselves on good enforcement of the rights, which provided certainty for business, sport, inventors, scientists and the creative industry, while the Intellectual Property Office and the IP crime unit in the City of London Police led the charge against infringements of all kinds. Some of them were very dangerous, such as counterfeit airbags and website scams. I am delighted to see the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson of Balmacara, in his seat; we did a lot of work together on trying to get IP into a decent place, and to avoid the sorts of scams that we have heard about from my noble friend today.

One offending area was autovisual content, including live match footage, which could then be streamed in from abroad by, say, Greek or Asian providers for a very low fee but not be caught by the rules on copyright and the associated licensing because of the wording of an exemption in Section 72 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, which followed a confusing ECJ judgment in 2011. The beneficiaries of that state of affairs seemed to be from overseas, as in the racing example that my noble friend Lord Astor has raised. While some pubs might have been getting cheaper deals, they might well at the same time have been breaching copyright laws, which was itself a big cause of concern.

Like much to do with IP, this area is very complex, as we will discover when we seek to put our towels around our heads and solve the very real problem that has been raised today. On the issue that I have mentioned, after two painful consultations, we concluded that the right thing was to remove film completely from the Section 72 exemption. We made regulations in 2016 that seemed to do the trick and reduce lawbreaking. We put a review clause in, which is something I am always very keen on in regulations, and that review is now taking place. I recall this and mention it today because of its relevance and because it has been mentioned in the excellent briefing by the Library for this debate. My strong advice to the Minister on that one is to leave well alone, because it is very complex and you can go around in circles.

I listened to my noble friend Lord Astor, who raised a new horror that perhaps could be addressed by the right regulation of copyright, which is what we were doing on that occasion. This is exactly the sort of issue that the Intellectual Property Office, of which I am a great admirer, is good at tackling. Illegal gambling is for the DCMS, of course, but in my experience they work well together and should act as my noble friend Lord Astor suggested.

He has identified a very valuable and unfair two seconds. That was the thing that struck me—the delay that allows this profit to be a completely wrong accretion of value. It is a new online harm for us to wrestle with, and regulation is no doubt needed. That is why this debate is very timely, with the legislation on that issue coming forward soon.

I very much look forward to my noble friend the Minister’s comments and hope that the two issues we have raised are not in conflict.