Iain Wright
Main Page: Iain Wright (Labour - Hartlepool)Intellectual Property Bill [Lords]
Iain Wright Excerpts(10 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Mr Iain Wright (Hartlepool) (Lab)
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
Mr Speaker
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 2, in clause 13, page 11, leave out lines 40 to 41.
Amendment 3, page 12, leave out lines 6 to 7.
Amendment 4, page 12, leave out line 19.
Amendment 5, page 12, line 41, at end insert—
‘(9) In this section “design right” includes an unregistered community design and a reference to the owner of the design right is also to be read as a reference to the owner of a community design right in a design.’.
Amendment 1, in clause 17, page 17, line 31, at end insert—
‘(3A) In making an order under this section which confers jurisdiction on a court, removes jurisdiction from a court or varies the jurisdiction of a court, the Secretary of State shall—
(a) ensure he takes into account the views of—
(i) HM Courts and Tribunals Service;
(ii) the Scottish Courts Services;
(iii) the Northern Ireland Courts and Tribunals Service; and
(iv) any other appropriate body;
and
(b) where the number of patent cases is such as to meet the requirements as set out in Article 7 of the Agreement on a Unified Patent Court, to confer local divisional court jurisdiction on—
(i) in England and Wales, the High Court;
(ii) in Scotland, the Court of Session; and
(iii) in Northern Ireland, the High Court.’.
Amendment 6, in clause 20, page 18, line 32, leave out ‘obtained in the’ and insert
‘created or obtained in the planning of, or’.
Mr Wright
It is good to be back discussing the Intellectual Property Bill.
We discussed the new clause in Committee and are returning to it on Report because, in the intervening period, there has been no progress. I will remind the House about this long-running saga.
The Government made proposals on copyright exceptions in 2012, during the passage of the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2013. In December 2012, the Government published “Modernising Copyright”. One could be forgiven for thinking that that was a simple and straightforward means of implementing the recommendations of the Hargreaves review, as the Government try to maintain. I will come on to the crucial matter of implementation in a moment. However, the level of opposition from stakeholders and the delay in implementing the Government’s proposals suggest otherwise.
In “Modernising Copyright”, Ministers stated:
“The Government will publish draft legislation for technical review in 2013. It intends to introduce the measures in the smallest possible number of statutory instruments to minimise disruption to stakeholders, make best use of Parliamentary time and ensure that the revised system is implemented in a clear and consistent manner. The intention is that measures will come into force in October 2013.”
None of those plans has proved successful.
Major changes to copyright have usually been made through primary legislation. The Copyright Act 1911 placed provisions into one piece of legislation for the first time, and the Copyright Act 1956 put into statute the UK’s accession to the universal copyright convention, and protected for the first time media such as films and broadcasts by copyright. The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 provided a major reform of the copyright process, and currently remains the main legislative framework.
When modernising copyright, however, the Government do not intend to make changes via primary legislation but rather through statutory instrument. As is clear from the document I have already cited, the Government always intended to bundle up the proposals on copyright exception into
“the smallest possible number of statutory instruments.”—[Official Report, 4 February 2013; Vol. 558, c. 54W.]
On Report of the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill in October 2012, the Minister stated that
“any proposed exceptions will be the subject of secondary legislation and will therefore be debated. Each separate element of a statutory instrument can be debated—that is the function of the secondary legislation procedure.”—[Official Report, 17 October 2012; Vol. 551, c. 406.]
That is certainly true; each element can be debated separately, but the key point that will concern the House is that it will not necessarily be possible to vote on each element separately, and that still seems to be the Government’s position.
On Second Reading the Minister stated that
“the regulations will not be completely bundled up.”—[Official Report, 20 January 2014; Vol. 574, c. 83.]
That is a curious phrase that I referred to in Committee, which gives rise to the strong possibility—even probability—that bundling will occur. In Committee, he said that he was not in a position to say how many different instruments there will be, and that the Government were still consulting on the matter with parliamentary counsel. It is six weeks or so since we discussed the issue in Committee on 30 January, but I do not think he is in a position to provide much of an update. In Committee the Minister said:
“The problem with IP and copyright is not insufficient reviews, but insufficient implementation. We are implementing. That is what the Bill is about,”.––[Official Report, Intellectual Property Public Bill Committee, 30 January 2014; c. 91.]
However, evidence shows that that is far from the case.
Let us be clear and put on the record the dither and uncertainty that the Government have provided to those stakeholders involved with copyright. As I said, the Government’s response to “Modernising Copyright” was published in December 2012. In early June 2013, documents were published in relation to new exceptions for private copying, parody, quotation and amendments to exception for public administration. Later that month a new exception for data analysis for non-commercial research was published, as were amendments to exceptions for education and research, libraries and archives.
In July 2013, further amendments to copyright exceptions for people with disabilities were published. All documents were subject to consultation periods that ended in the summer or early autumn of 2013. Since then, no tangible progress has been announced. On Second Reading the Minister pledged that regulations would be laid before the House in February, and in Committee I asked whether the Government still intended February to be the target date. The Minister responded:
“That remains our intention; I cannot put it more strongly than that, can I?”––[Official Report, Intellectual Property Public Bill Committee, 30 January 2014; c. 93.]
Well, he could. We are now into mid-March, and we have still not seen any white smoke from Victoria street. That delay is causing uncertainty among the creative industries, and undermining our competitiveness and attraction as a nation for this crucial sector in the new economy.
The hon. Member for Hove (Mike Weatherley) is knowledgeable and diligent about these matters. He is the Prime Minister’s adviser on IP and served on the Committee, and I am pleased to see him in his place this afternoon. Last week, he received a response to a parliamentary question that he asked about progress made by the Department on drafting changes to copyright exceptions. I hope he will not mind my quoting the Minister’s response, because it is important and helped shape my view on whether we needed an amendment on Report. In his reply to the hon. Member for Hove, the Minister said:
“The Government are grateful for the contributions of all those who responded to the various consultations and have continued to engage with stakeholders since the review closed. We have made a number of technical changes following the helpful input of stakeholders, and we consider the regulations have been improved as a result. So, the regulations will be different in light of the valuable consultation process.
The draft regulations are subject to final checking and in accordance with routine practice the Department is currently consulting the legal advisers to the Joint Committee on statutory instruments. This process can help to avoid difficulties about powers, drafting, etc. arising at a later stage, and assists both the Department and the Committee in minimising any delay in the passage of an instrument. Unless otherwise agreed with the legal adviser, Departments should normally allow a period of not less than two sitting weeks for this advance scrutiny. The regulations will be laid before Parliament and published as soon as this process is complete. The regulations will be subject to affirmative resolution and will be debated in both Houses of Parliament.
The Government will publish a response to the technical review, explanatory notes, guidance and other supporting documents alongside the regulations. This will explain the changes we have made to the drafts on which we consulted and why. Copies of all of these documents will be placed in the Libraries of both Houses and will be available on the IPO website.”—[Official Report, 6 March 2014; Vol. 576, c. 944W.]
The Minister for Universities and Science (Mr David Willetts)
That was a very good speech.
Mr Wright
Thank you very much.
Does what the Minister said mean that we will see the regulations in less than a fortnight? When will they come before the House for consideration? Will it be before the next Session begins in June? Given that, as his answer states, the Government have made a number of technical changes, and as the regulations will be different, will he confirm that a further round of wider consultation is not needed? He cannot seriously suggest that a commencement date of 1 April 2014 is still feasible. Will he give further details?
Mike Weatherley (Hove) (Con)
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the earlier part of that answer, in which the Minister stated that he welcomed the contributions and had made amendments accordingly, is potentially good news?
Mr Wright
It could be good news, but we are acting in the dark. The Minister said in Committee—the hon. Gentleman was there—that the Government are in implementation mode. However, the hon. Gentleman, who is a knowledgeable expert, must accept that it looks very much like the Government are making it up as they go along, with no long-term vision for the direction of IP or copyright.
The Government have been left floundering. The hon. Member for Hove alluded to the fact that they have had to be rescued by stakeholders and have reinforced the impression that IP policy is not considered a priority, despite the importance now and in future of the creative industries. That is why new clause 1 is as relevant now as when we discussed it in Committee. The Government’s handling of this important matter has been shambolic, and I should like to test the opinion of the House on it. It is important that we send out a clear message that copyright is important. It is an important driver of wealth creation in the 21st century, and what the Government have done is not good enough.
On amendments 2 and 3, clause 13 was debated at length in Committee and in the other place. I do not want to detain the House, but, as I have said several times during the passage of the Bill, it is the most contentious measure. It is a significant matter when Parliament decides to impose criminal sanctions. The provision that ensures that anybody convicted of deliberately infringing registered designs can go to prison for 10 years needs careful consideration.
Some stakeholders have stated that such a provision will have a chilling effect on innovation in this country and that, as a result, Britain will lose something of our comparative advantage and competitiveness in creativity and innovation. We should not easily give away that advantage in innovation and design. As a result of that persuasive argument from industry—from Dyson and others—the Government tabled amendments in Committee to tighten the wording of clause 13 to ensure that unintentional infringement is not captured by the new criminal sanctions.
Mr Gray
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for mentioning that outstanding company in my constituency. Dyson now employs some 1,500 designers and does groundbreaking design work in Britain. I am also grateful to the hon. Gentleman and the Opposition for agreeing to table the amendment. The word “intentional” should be included in clause 13, but will he explain why amendment 2, which removes insignificant changes from the exemption, makes any sense at all?
Mr Wright
I will come to that later, if I may. In Committee, Government amendments reworded the clause to ensure that it referred only to designs
“with features that differ only in immaterial details from the design”.
Amendment 3 would remove that wording. Let me explain the purpose of that to the hon. Gentleman. We do not want to set the bar lower than the Government intend, but the current wording will provide more uncertainty and the prospect of further litigation. Is there not a risk that the clause will focus on counterfeits rather than on intentional infringement and copying? Given what the Minister said in Committee, I am pretty sure that that is not what he intends.
I mentioned in Committee the fascinating and informative case of Apple v. Samsung. In the context of that court case, is there not a need to consider the design corpus and the informed user? The test for infringement of community designs is whether the later design produces an overall different impression on the informed user. I believe that that is important and would like the Minister’s view. Why is he not using that wording from community designs legislation?
The Minister might recall that in Committee I quoted the judge in the Apple v. Samsung case, who said:
“When I first saw the Samsung products in this case I was struck by how similar they look to the Apple design when they are resting on a table. They look similar because they both have the same front screen. It stands out. However to the informed user (which at that stage I was not) these screens do not stand out to anything like the same extent. The front view of the Apple design takes its place amongst its kindred prior art.”
Does the Minister accept that his current wording, which emphasises “immaterial designs”, will more than likely be concerned with counterfeits? Why has he not included in the clause the common community wording for infringement of community designs, which asks whether the later design produces an overall different impression on the informed user? That is the purpose of amendments 2 and 3.
Like other proposals, amendment 5 has been debated several times during the Bill’s passage in the other place and the House. It is essentially about consistency and the scope of effectiveness. If the Government believe—it is a big “if”, and opinion is polarised—that intentional infringement of design rights should be subject to a prison sentence of up to 10 years, why should that criminal sanction apply solely to registered designs rather than also to unregistered designs?
As I mentioned in Committee, about 4,000 designs are registered in the UK each year, and about 18,000 to 25,000 unregistered designs are lodged with the Anti Copying in Design database. I also mentioned in Committee a glaring inconsistency in the Government’s position—that is at the heart of the amendment. On the one hand, in Committee in the other place in June, the Minister said:
“SMEs…do not tend to register their designs”.
If so, what are the Government hoping to achieve with that provision? On the other hand, the same Minister said:
“The introduction of criminal sanctions for unregistered rights could lead to a negative effect on business and innovation.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 13 June 2013; Vol. 745, c. GC395-409.]
If that is the case for unregistered designs, why is it not the case for designs that the innovator has gone to the trouble of registering? I cannot believe that the Government’s position is consistent.
In Committee, the Minister gave a practical example to illustrate his opposition to the amendment by referring to the design of a sofa. Where I come from, we call a “sofa” a “settee”—that is the proper word for that piece of furniture. The Minister said that, if a case about an unregistered design of a settee—or a sofa—were to be brought before a criminal court, it would need to establish whether the right existed and which parts of the design were original. As we discussed in Committee, surely the concept of design corpus would apply not only in the civil court, but also for the higher standards demanded in the criminal court, where the Government are pushing, and to registered designs and unregistered designs.
In Committee, the Minister said:
“We should not forget the ultimate reason for the Bill and the clause. There are small and medium-sized enterprises up and down the country in the design business that are being ripped off. Their designs do not have the protections that they require.”––[Official Report, Intellectual Property Public Bill Committee, 30 January 2014; c. 67.]
However, the vast majority of designs are unregistered, and the Government’s proposals will do nothing to help them. Small firms without resources will still run the risk of being ripped off by larger and unscrupulous businesses. Clause 13 in its original form did not address that, and the Government changes to the clause through the Bill’s passage in this House do not do so either. The Minister must accept that inconsistency, and amendment 5 tries to deal with it.
Mike Weatherley
May I start by paying tribute to all the members of the Bill Committee for an excellent couple of days of deliberations on the clauses? In particular, I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright) for drawing out points for debate without needlessly pushing for votes on each one, and of course to the Minister for reflecting on each point in a highly constructive manner—and not grumpily at all.
There are several areas of concern in the Bill. The first is in relation to education. As a general rule, rights holders have lost the debate with the public generally. Many see creative output as something they should be able to access for free—after all, they have been doing it for years; it is not a tangible product; they probably would not have bought it anyway, so they are only increasing the awareness of performers; and the chances of getting caught are low and there is no penalty. On a positive note, there have been moves by industry to step up the game in terms of education, and we have had some Government-funded schemes such as those produced recently by the Intellectual Property Office. But with the Department for Education ruling out any formal copyright education in schools, we need a co-ordinated approach, led by Government and helped along by industry. In my view, the IPO is best placed to lead the charge on education on IP matters and it was my intention to add a clause to the Bill to formally require the IPO to report annually on what initiatives it had undertaken in the past year. In the end, I have not pushed for that amendment after hearing assurances from the Minister that education on the importance of IP will be at the heart of the IPO’s activities.
My second concern related to the amendments tabled by the hon. Member for Hartlepool, especially in relation to the differences between offline and online crime penalties. Even with this Bill, there remains a worrying message that online crime is considered to be one fifth as serious as offline crime. It may be that the maximum penalty of 10 years for offline crime is too high and is unrealistic, and therefore online crime will never get the same penalty. I hear that argument. However, in Denmark they have recognised this and have a two-level crime, with 18 months maximum for less serious stealing and six years for serious commercial crime. Importantly though, in Denmark the penalty is the same for both online and offline crime. I was particularly pleased that in Committee the Minister accepted that this issue does need to be looked at, even if only to underpin the message that IP crime is equally serious, and has undertaken to review the anomaly and report back. That is a very positive step and I look forward to the results of the review. For that reason, I will not support the hon. Gentleman’s amendment.
My third concern has been less easily satisfied and relates to criminal penalties for copying designs. I welcome the introduction of a criminal penalty for registered designs. While it has always been possible to claim for damages in the civil court, this was expensive, took a great deal of time and, ultimately, did not provide a sufficient deterrent. The threat of criminal proceedings almost certainly will. I also welcome the addition of the word “intentionally”. This may give rise to difficulties in proving intent, but ultimately no one should want to see anyone subject to criminal penalties for not knowing. I appreciate that ignorance is no defence normally in law, but in design it probably should be. Providing someone has undertaken reasonable checks to be sure that someone else has not already produced the idea, criminal sanctions would be a step too far.
The Bill does not include a criminal offence in relation to unregistered designs. I fully understand that all designers should be encouraged to register their designs formally in most instances, and I fully understand that doing checks to ensure no infringement of an unregistered design is more difficult—and in many instances, impossible to check completely. However, given the insertion of the word “intentionally” into the Bill, one has to ask why the penalty cannot be a little harsher and more of a deterrent. As it stands, even if a designer can prove that a copy of an unregistered design was done intentionally, the only recourse the original designer will have in law is once again the civil courts, and that is often just not enough of a deterrent for someone who wishes to take others’ designs as their own. Nevertheless—
Mike Weatherley
I am sorry to disappoint the hon. Gentleman. Nevertheless, I do not intend to support his amendment which would harmonise unregistered and registered designs, at this time. The Bill is a step in the right direction and I merely put down the marker that should evidence be provided that the law is failing in this regard, we should come back to this issue and consider it again. I am prepared to see where the legislation as it stands takes us, rather than supporting the amendment now. All I ask now is that the Minister acknowledges the potential and agrees to return to the point in a future Bill.
The hon. Gentleman should be aware that an IPO conference is coming up in June, which will address some of the IP issues that he was talking about. I will return to the issue on Third Reading, but it is important that the Prime Minister and No. 10 make a clear declaration about intellectual property being a property right. If that is done, it is not necessary to add new clause 1 to the Bill.
Mr Iain Wright
We discussed this matter in Committee. Does the Minister think that, as a result of the implementation of clause 13, the ratio of registered designs to unregistered designs would change? In a nutshell, does he think that more people would register their designs as a result of clause 13?
Mr Willetts
It is hard to give an estimate on that. I believe that the hon. Gentleman has underestimated the significance of registered designs. He suggested that their scope was quite narrow in comparison with unregistered designs. Let me give him the figures. There are already a large number of registered designs in existence. The UK’s and EU’s publicly accessible registers hold about 728,000 design registrations that are in force in the UK. That is a substantial number. I do not want to try to forecast whether it will become even greater, but we are extending criminal sanctions to cover those 728,000 design registrations. That is a significant step towards protecting our design community.
It would be difficult to extend those sanctions further to include unregistered designs, given the uncertainties involved, but let me assure my hon. Friend the Member for Hove that we will evaluate the effects of this legislation. Following its conclusion, a suitable framework will be developed to evaluate its measures, including the criminal sanctions for copying a registered design. The evaluation will include an assessment of the effectiveness of this measure, and we will keep an eye on whether further changes need to be made to its operation and scope, and whether there might ever be a case for including unregistered design rights.
Mr Willetts
I do not want to give a time scale. The hon. Gentleman has already referred to one that I gave upstairs that has come back to haunt me, so I am wary of offering him any more time scales when faced with his blandishments. All I can say is that it will take time for the new system to take effect, and we will need to monitor it. We will undertake to do that.
I will now move on to the hon. Gentleman’s amendments 2 and 3. Having sought to broaden the criminal sanctions to cover unregistered designs, he is seeking in the same group of amendments to narrow the scope by effectively restricting the sanction to exact copying only. That would be the effect of amendments 2 and 3. That would go too far in narrowing the scope of the provision.
I remind the House that the clause was introduced to assist designers who told us of the problems they had in dealing with copyists who set out to copy their designs intentionally and blatantly. That is what we are tackling in this important legislation. They believed that such copyists were skilled at playing the legal system and counted on smaller businesses running out of time and money to pursue them. They told us—as I am sure they told my hon. Friend the Member for Hove and others—that the issue was not restricted to exact copying. Copyists are clever enough not to implicate themselves in that crude way; the issue often involves tweaking an existing design. The sanction protects against that by referring not only to exact copying but to the copying of
“designs which differ only in immaterial details”.
The amendments would in effect restrict the penalties for copying to exact and counterfeit copies only. The sanction would therefore fail to address the very problem the designers have told us about.
The combined effect of the amendments would be to create greater uncertainty by extending criminal penalties to unregistered designs, and to fail to tackle a genuine grievance by narrowing the provision to cover only exact copying. We are tackling that grievance in the Bill. I hope that, in the light of my comments, the hon. Gentleman will not press his amendments.
Let me now turn to the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire. I always enjoy his speeches, in which he proudly talks of the contribution of Scotland, not only to the UK but to nothing less than world history. He is absolutely right about that. For me, the Scottish enlightenment is one of the great events in the history of ideas, and I always enjoy hearing celebration of it.
I understand the principle behind the hon. Gentleman’s amendment and the importance of the issue to legal services and innovative businesses in Scotland. We have been working closely with the court services in Scotland and in Northern Ireland, as well as with Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service in England and Wales, so that we can take account of their views. Let me make it clear to him again: the Government will look favourably at any proposal to site a local division wherever there is a business need, and a local division can be located in Scotland should there be enough cases to support one. I said on Second Reading that it was very possible that there could be one in Scotland, and I stand by that.
I assure the hon. Gentleman that the Government will consult with the devolved Administrations in Scotland and Northern Ireland and with the court services in those jurisdictions. It is not necessary to legislate to ensure that the consultation and co-operation will happen, because we are already doing it. It is also not necessary to legislate nationally in order to set up a local division, because the process for doing so is purely administrative. That process is set out in the unified patent court agreement. We will be following it with consultation.
Mr Willetts
We are talking about the copyright exemptions covered in new clause 1. Let me be absolutely clear that, by comparison with any previous Government, we are now moving on to implementation. I have said to the House that we will be aiming to lay the draft statutory instruments before Parliament soon.
Mr Iain Wright
When I was discussing new clause 1, I asked about the commencement date. Given the imminent and fast-moving laying of the draft regulations, does the Minister anticipate that the commencement date will be 1 April?
Mr Willetts
I have the experienced and wise Leader of the House beside me on the Front Bench, and I think that things are reaching the stage where, arithmetically, once we remove the weeks in which the House is not sitting, it will be hard to have the commencement date as 1 April. We recognise that it might be some time shortly after 1 April. That will depend on how the timetable pushes out.
A paradox in the position of the hon. Member for Hartlepool is that we are here getting on with something that the Labour Government were not able to implement, but he is standing up to say that it is taking us too long, while bringing before the House a new clause that would make things take even longer. We do not need any more delay, we want to get on with it and we are trying to get on with it. The only effect of his new clause would be to bring the process to a grinding halt so that he can have yet another review, when the last thing we need is more reviews. I hope that in the light of that he will withdraw the new clause and not press his other amendments.
Mr Wright
It has been an interesting debate on this group of amendments. I thank all right hon. and hon. Members for taking part.
The Minister started with amendment 6. He said, rightly, that the Government are implementing the Scottish exemption. The whole purpose is to provide as much reassurance as possible that, despite any premature disclosure, research plans are protected under freedom of information. I am not entirely certain that he has provided that to the satisfaction of the research community, but this is something that we will need to look at.
The Minister went on to talk about clause 13, and I still maintain that there is a huge inconsistency between the approaches on the infringement of registered design rights and on the infringement of unregistered design rights. Looking at the body language and the eyes of the hon. Member for Hove (Mike Weatherley), I would say that he thinks that too. I cannot understand why having criminal sanctions in respect of unregistered design rights would have a chilling effect on innovation but such sanctions in respect of registered design rights would not. Surely the position is inconsistent. My other concern is that this is hindering and penalising micro-businesses and small businesses. Registering a design is a huge cost to business. The cost of registering a single design or the first design in a multiple application with the Intellectual Property Office can be £60. For every additional design in a multiple application the cost can be £40. That cost and the time scale can be particularly prohibitive to design businesses, which is perhaps why we see only a relatively small proportion of designs being registered.
The Minister may recall that in Committee I mentioned the different lengths of protection. Although registered design rights provide 25 years of protection compared with the 10 to 15 years of protection provided by unregistered design rights, registered design rights need to be renewed every five years. The cost of re-registering a design increases on a sliding scale by about an additional £100 each time, up to a cost of £450. So on a five-yearly basis the cost of re-registering a design for small businesses and micro-businesses could be in excess of £1,000. That seems to be penalising small businesses and micro-businesses, and inhibiting innovation as much as possible. That is not what we should be doing. I maintain that the costs of employing and commissioning a lawyer to deal with this process are prohibitive now and will be in the future. All this is costing designers a fortune and I am not convinced that the Minister has a consistent position.
The Minister finished by discussing new clause 1 and saying that I am in a bit of a muddle on it. If I am in a bit of a muddle, most experienced stakeholders in the copyright business are, too. The Government have floundered. They have taken far too long, floundering in the dark. They are not providing the certainty and long-term vision that is so important to the future of the UK economy—it needs that. We need to show our lack of appreciation for what the Government are doing. He has not been able to provide any real certainties. We may have the measures in a couple of days or we may have them in a couple of months, but there does not seem to be any great co-ordination and certainty. We are also still in the dark on the issue of bundling. It is not good enough for him to take more than two years on this and I want to show my dissatisfaction by testing the opinion of the House on new clause 1, although I will not press the other amendments.
Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.
Mr Iain Wright
As I said during my opening remarks on Second Reading, intellectual property matters and its importance is growing in the world of the 21st century. Britain will retain and extend its comparative advantage and ultimately create wealth, prosperity and rising living standards for all in this country, not by undermining employee rights, sacrificing the security of those in work and racing to the bottom, but by commercially applying our research, innovation, creativity and design skills. That requires a robust legal framework to ensure that people’s creative efforts, whether in music, film, broadcasting, video games or high-value manufacturing, are not stolen.
On Second Reading, I quoted the recent report of the Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport on the creative industries. It is worth quoting again:
“Given the importance of the creative sector to the UK economy and the relative importance to that sector of strong IP protection, strongly enforced, the Government must do more to protect and promote UK IP as a system for growth.”
That is what we have tried to bring about during our deliberations. On a number of occasions in Committee, the Minister and I mentioned the recent Global Intellectual Property Index, produced last year by Taylor Wessing, in which the UK was placed at No. 1 in the world for IP. It should be the objective of the Bill and of IP policy that this country should retain that No. 1 spot in the face of fierce competition around the world.
The desire to remain the best in the world drove the Opposition to question, challenge and scrutinise the Minister throughout the passage of the Bill. We do not want to see a chilling effect on innovation in this country—a concern raised by some senior industrialists—and the introduction of criminal sanctions for up to 10 years for infringing registered design rights needed to be considered extremely carefully. I hope that we have done that.
There remains a concern. Last month, the Institute for Public Policy Research said in “March of the modern makers”, its excellent report on the creative industries:
“Overall, government policy both on…promoting value in intellectual property and on protecting intellectual property from theft has unravelled somewhat.”
The IPPR highlighted the fact that
“Enforcement measures are delayed, proposals for new copyright exceptions are being brought before Parliament with unproven benefits and potential risks, and new systems for better access to copyright material have not yet been given a chance to prove their value.”
There remains a risk that the UK will slip down the global rankings for IP faster than a music track slips down the download charts—
Mr Wright
Thank you; I thought long and hard about that. It is copyrighted.
The risk I mentioned will remain if the Government continue to provide such an unravelling policy with uncertainty, delay and lack of enforcement.
I thank hon. Members for contributing during the Bill’s different stages, particularly in Committee. I am delighted to see in their places the hon. Members for Hove (Mike Weatherley) and for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart), who made excellent contributions. I would like to think that the deliberations were good natured throughout. I thank the Minister, who was never less than polite—if occasionally grumpy.
Mr Wright
He knows it is true. I also thank the Minister’s officials.
In many ways, the Bill is brief and flimsy. However, like the issue of IP itself, it is important and often overlooked. We will continue to hold the Government to account, to ensure that we retain the No. 1 spot in something that gives us a significant comparative advantage in the modern economy, now and in the future.
Mike Weatherley
The Bill is excellent as a step in the right direction. At times, back in 2010 and 2011, it felt as if the juggernaut that is intellectual property rights was heading towards dilution as the norm. However, I feel that the brakes have been applied recently and that the mood in both Parliament and elsewhere is now changing.
We have an excellent IP Minister in Viscount Younger, and I found John Alty and others at the Intellectual Property Office to be very accommodating and helpful. However, given that the Bill is the main legislation on intellectual property over a full Parliament, it is important to mention some of the items that have not been included but should definitely be considered.
The first is education. Government and industry must work together to inform the public better about the fact that IP is important to every single one of us. Is it too much of a stretch to say that our NHS depends on our protecting IP for our creative industries? I do not think so. Without the £71.4 billion added gross value that we generate from our creators, which includes £15.5 billion from overseas earnings, we would need to borrow or raise taxes elsewhere. Those are not attractive options.
As a country, we should thank the creative industries for being such an important contributor to our economy. I welcome all Government measures to support the industry, and protecting IP is one measure of support. I have challenged the IPO to provide details of 100 forums a year that we need to be at to promote IP. Industry has committed to find representatives to go to those forums. That, and other measures, need to be carried out.
The second item not included in the Bill is what I refer to as “follow the money”. If we can stop sites that host illegal material advertising and, additionally, find a way to stop payments being made for illegal material via Mastercard, Visa, PayPal and other forms of payment, we can take away the main reason why many of those sites exist. I recently met representatives of the police intellectual property crime unit and others on that very point. Following a very useful discussion, I hope we can produce a report with suggestions in the next month or two. I thank Steve Head, the commander of PIPCU, and his team for their excellent work and support. I have also just met Google representatives to discuss the same point.
All that brings me to search engines generally. We often forget that it is not the search engines that create or consume illegal content. I am aware of a band that recently released a CD that was on 20 Russian torrent sites within an hour—it did not appear on Google rankings until some hours later. The CD was not on those Russian torrent sites because it was on Google; it was there because the Russian sites were monitoring what was on iTunes. I am currently working with Google on some suggestions and I have promised the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills a report on the matter shortly. I thank the law firm Olswang for its assistance.
There is one other point in the IP chain that needs to be mentioned—internet service providers. Like search engines, they are not the persons creating or using illegal content, but their lines are transporting the activity. They do not need to be the policeman, but they can be part of the solution. Whether that is via a levy on users to fund education enforcement or whether it is making the ISPs accountable for illegal activity is something to be debated. None the less, I am sure that they need to be part of the solution.
A worrying footnote is that I am told that the voluntary copyright alert programme—VCAP—proposals cannot be implemented for at least a year once an agreement has been found on the other technicalities that we are going through at the moment. I must say that that feels more like prevarication than determination to implement, but I am not a technical expert, so I cannot comment on that further, but I would welcome others doing so.
The industry has made it clear to me that it feels that a US-type IP tsar or director-general would be useful in co-ordinating Departments and industry and delivering IP-related initiatives.
Mike Weatherley
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that suggestion. I would like to see the Government at least look at the idea. I appreciate that we have an IP Minister, but his priorities would be different to those of a director-general.
Finally, above all else, what the Bill needs is for the Prime Minister to state categorically that IP rights are the same as property rights, and are something to be cherished and protected. In many ways, Europe is looking to us, in the UK, for IP direction, and this repeated message is important so that rights are not drip fed away.
The IPO is organising an IP enforcement conference for June, which will be important. Indeed we are renaming that conference “Respect for IP” and I am sure that it will form part of the Government’s direction on IP generally. In summary, there is still much to do, but this is a good Bill overall and a positive step in the right direction.