Jim Dowd
Main Page: Jim Dowd (Labour - Lewisham West and Penge)(10 years, 11 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Mr Wright
I think the hon. Gentleman is pitching for that job, so he should have declared his interest. However, he makes an important point. During deliberations in Committee, it will be important to table amendments to consider what the Intellectual Property Office will do to promote innovation and jobs in the UK economy. Having some sort of IP champion, IP tsar, or whatever the hon. Gentleman wishes to call the role, needs to be considered closely, and hopefully we will do that in Committee.
Let me turn at last to manufacturing. High-value manufacturing is dependent on innovative design to produce comparative advantage. Indeed, high-value manufacturing in the 21st century requires a blend of design, creativity, innovation and production to compete and succeed. Modern means of research, development, production and distribution all emphasise in the modern age open, innovative models and the sharing of ideas. That makes IP more, not less, important.
The increased proportion of intangible assets on the balance sheets of many firms means that there is an ever-growing importance to securing returns from those assets. That in turn means that companies need to pay more attention to IP issues. In the 21st century, a strong intellectual property regime is needed. IP should not be seen as regulation or bureaucracy, with all the negative connotation that that entails. IP is not regulation but a legal right, and it would be wrong to suggest that, in an era of globalisation and digitisation, IP is irrelevant or an anachronism that needs somehow to be swept away. Businesses will not invest if their innovation or creativity is not protected. If somebody has created or invested in something, they should have the right in law to derive benefit from that creation or investment. That right should be protected and enforced by the legal system.
The Minister rightly referred to the recent global IP index, produced last year by Taylor Wessing. It should be a source of pride to the House that the UK was placed No. 1 in the world for IP. We need to protect, maintain and enhance that position as much as possible. However, the difference between the top three ranked nations in that report—the UK, Germany, and Netherlands—was only 0.2%, showing intense global competition and the perils of introducing proposals that might undermine our position as No. 1 in the world.
Jim Dowd (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)
My hon. Friend says that the UK is the No. 1 place in the world for IP, but the ranking in that survey was actually for the enforcement of copyright and trademarks. It was ranked only in second place for patents and in fifth place for design. IP is not a single entity; there are a lot of activities, and we protect some better than others.
Mr Wright
My hon. Friend makes an important point. There is a second consideration. We might have the best framework in the world, but if it is not enforced properly, it is largely redundant. We need to ensure that enforcement is maintained.
It is important to retain our position as No. 1 in the world for IP. We should also reinforce the need to avoid needlessly tinkering with the system. The House will agree that IP needs to adapt to take account of changing circumstances such as globalisation; growing collaboration across firms; and new, often disruptive, technologies such as 3D printing and digitisation. All of those bring many challenges. However, it is also important to be mindful of avoiding changes that undermine business certainty and thereby deter investment and innovation.
It is in that context that the House considers the Bill, which is brief and flimsy. It gives the impression of being the remnants of a much larger piece of legislation—perhaps it is the remnants of the much vaunted but hitherto unseen communications Bill. That reinforces the notion that the Government do not have a strong and clear vision on how to proceed with IP, leaving industry with uncertainty. Ministers could be accused of tinkering and making piecemeal changes that could undermine confidence and investment in our economy.
In many respects, the Government are continuing the approach they used last year with the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2013, several sections of which are devoted to IP and copyright. They were not discussed with stakeholders, and subsequently there was much alarm within the creative industries. The Act deterred investment in the UK economy. We should avoid that when possible.
As the Minister has said, the Bill is meant to simplify and to provide greater clarity and certainty on the IP framework, but it often does not do so. For example, the Government’s recent design consultation asked whether the Registered Designs Act 1949 should be amended by providing greater consistency between joint ownership provisions for both registered and unregistered designs. All or most respondents to the consultation agreed with the move to greater clarity and consistency in principle, but for whatever reason the Government have decided not to change the law in that regard.
Clause 13, to which I will return, has been mentioned a number of times. It provides a significantly different approach to registered and unregistered design rights. It is as if the Government are saying, “We like consistency in certain areas, but not in others,” which merely provides inconsistency by a different name. The measure is a new inconsistency, so it provides greater complexity and subsequent uncertainty to business. We will want to scrutinise the Government on those inconsistencies in Committee.
That said, much in this slight Bill is to be commended, and the Opposition will not oppose it this evening. For example, clause 8 is welcome. It allows UK implementation of The Hague agreement, which allows for the protection of design rights throughout the EU with a single application rather than multiple applications in each country. That should help small and medium-sized firms to cut down on costs.
I am pleased that, in another place, the Government moved away from implementing that measure via the negative procedure, and that they listened to my noble Friends on the Opposition Front Bench and the recommendations of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee and moved to the affirmative procedure. I hope that that listening exercise will continue in Committee.
Clause 17 enables the establishment in the UK of the unified patent court. The use of the court throughout Europe will provide a consistent and welcome framework in participating European country. It is particularly pleasing for the UK economy that part of the court will be based in London, with the prospect of another part of the country—perhaps Hartlepool—being the location for a second part. I commend the Prime Minister, good European that he is, for helping to secure that.
Mr Leech
Yes, I think time is up for the likes of Sky and Virgin. They have been making a lot of money on the back of this for some time, and it is about time we brought it to an end.
By contrast, in the United States News Corporation has led the campaign for channels to receive fees from platform operators, which has resulted in over $2 billion being available for investment in original content and news production, so I urge the Minister to bring forward an amendment repealing section 73 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act.
Jim Dowd
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on reading out so thoroughly the briefing provided by ITV on this issue, but is it not a fact that as long as there is an obligation to carry the terrestrial channels, the Government could either remove that obligation or charge the pay-TV companies for using the material, particularly Virgin, which has the TiVo machine that allows people to build up private on-demand libraries without paying any of the costs or having to watch any of the advertising?
Mr Leech
The fact remains that the likes of cable platforms are making significant amounts of money on the back of public sector broadcasting, which often invests a lot of money in original content. A very easy way of bringing this to a conclusion is to repeal section 73 of the 1988 Act, which is why I urge the Minister to introduce that through an amendment to the Bill.
In conclusion, although I welcome the Bill I hope the Minister will recognise its limitations and commit to addressing at least some of the concerns that have been raised. This Bill could deal with a number of the outstanding issues in relation to intellectual property.
Jim Dowd (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)
I think everybody welcomes the Bill as far as it goes. The Minister said in introducing it that it was a small but perfectly formed extract from Hargreaves. I agree to some extent with part of the latter, but I certainly agree with the former.
The value of the creative industries—however one chooses to define them—to the UK economy is certainly no less than £20 billion, and I have seen figures suggesting sums up to four and five times that. They are therefore a significant part of our economic and social activity. In the fields of music, arts, literature, film, design, invention, fashion and innovation, Britain is an international leader. That is why we need the strongest possible framework for IP protection and why I think the whole House will welcome the Bill as far as it goes.
May I ask the Minister to tell the Prime Minister that Viscount Younger of Leckie in the other place is the Minister for intellectual property, because when I asked the Prime Minister a question a couple of months ago, he seemed to believe it was the Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, the hon. Member for Wantage (Mr Vaizey)? The fact that the Prime Minister does not know who his intellectual property Minister is does not bode well for the Government’s policy in general in respect of the sector. In a letter, Viscount Younger and the Minister for Universities and Science said that the Bill had three main points:
“to simplify and improve design and patent protection; to clarify the IP legal framework; and to ensure the international IP system supports UK businesses effectively.”
In an additional note included with that letter to all Members, three further areas were highlighted: clarifying and enforcing rights in design; improving the operation of UK patent law; and reorganising the Intellectual Property Office and giving it an annual review. I am an office-holder—don’t ask me which one—of the all-party parliamentary intellectual property group, and I see other members of the group in the Chamber today. We have discussed the proposals and I certainly welcome them.
Will the Minister tell us whether the Intellectual Property Office’s new role will include that of champion, advocate or protector of intellectual property rights, rather than being merely a registry as it was when it was the Patent Office? There is a strong feeling that, since it took on the broader remit, it has been searching for a role. I am led to believe that one of its leading officials is going off to pastures greener—or perhaps a different colour altogether—in the near future. I hope that the Government will take the opportunity to redefine the purpose of the IPO, particularly as many competitor countries have a far more interventionist role in IP, given its value to the economy. Perhaps the hon. Member for Hove (Mike Weatherley) could become a tsar, or be given some other rank. I can think of plenty worse appointments; they number at least 20! We need to take this matter far more seriously and push it up the agenda, particularly as we move from an economy based on industry and manufacturing to one that is more knowledge-based. A modern economy needs the protection of strong IP rules and regulations.
In an intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright), I mentioned the Library briefing document on the Bill. It states that a survey of 36 similar countries found that the UK was ranked as the best place to obtain, exploit and enforce copyright, but that it was ranked second for patents and only fifth for design. That illustrates the imbalance that exists. The question posed in recent years has been whether the existing legislative framework is inhibiting expansion of the design sector. In 2010, the Prime Minister set up the review under Professor Hargreaves. That followed the Gowers review, which was set up by my right hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) in 2005. That review reported in 2006, and I have to be candid and say that I was disappointed that the then Government did not do more to implement its findings. I suspect that that was for similar reasons to those that are afflicting the present Government—namely, that parts of the Government do not really understand the necessity of providing the strongest possible legal framework for creators and innovators.
Hargreaves replicated much of what Gowers had done. He reached different conclusions in different areas, but there are parts of his report on which we need to make progress. Given that the Bill represents only part of the fall-out—that is not really the right word; I should say the results—of the Hargreaves report, does the Minister acknowledge that there is much more to do? Given the threadbare nature of the Government’s programme, the inability of the component parts of the coalition to agree on very much at all, and the likelihood of there being precious little more for the House to do after the next Queen’s Speech, would that not be an ideal opportunity to fillet some more out of the Hargreaves report and bring it before the House—
Jim Dowd
Well, I am an engineer by training. I just happen to know these things. We could bring forward those proposals and make more progress. These issues are becoming more, not less, urgent, and the need for us to take action is becoming ever more pressing.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington (Mr Leech) on reading out the briefing from the Alliance for Intellectual Property almost word for word. I am sure that the alliance will be delighted that its researcher has not laboured in vain to bring its concerns to public attention. The hon. Gentleman also pointed out that the most contentious part of the Bill was clause 13. The difficulty with it, and it will be hard to find a way that pleases everybody, is that legitimate and genuine but conflicting rights and interests are involved. Those depend on where someone comes from, and people’s instinct or feelings about the clause tend to be based on their commercial interest in the matter. My hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool outlined how a large organisation could intimidate a small rights holder by saying, “Unless you pay us, we will not allow you to use this.” Equally, a small rights holder could be told by an organisation that it is going to use something come what may and the only way of stopping it is by court action, particularly if it disputes that there is a breach or infringement in the first place. The IP Federation is the most antagonistic to clause 13, although, as has been mentioned, others are too. By contrast, plenty of others, including the Alliance for Intellectual Property and the Law Society, are in favour of its provisions. Clearly something will have to be put in the Bill there. Rejecting the clause entirely is not a viable option, as it will not bring clarity and it will not deal with the imbalance between those who are powerful and those who are not so.
The IP Federation contains some of the largest businesses and corporations in the country, but that does not mean it does not have genuine and serious concerns. Dyson Technology Ltd, which has been mentioned, is a member of the IP Federation. As I say, that does not mean that it does not have genuine concerns and legitimate interests. The problem in this whole area, and it will be with this Bill, is trying to find the correct balance between competing and sometimes contradictory interests.
There is a broad welcome for the Bill, but the missed opportunity has been outlined in detail by the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington. It is not unknown in this House for people to repeat things that somebody else has said, but I will disobey that particular convention and gloss over most of what he said. However, he did make a point about parasitic packaging, which is entirely different from counterfeit packaging—that is an offence in itself.
This issue was brought home to me most strikingly just last Saturday when I was in The Hare & Billet pub in Blackheath, which is well known to my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander), whom I see on the Front Bench. I was having lunch and I asked whether there was any Worcestershire sauce—everybody knows the famous manufacturers of it and, being a simple soul from south-east London, I thought there was only one Worcester sauce. The nice chap serving us said there certainly was, and he came back with a bottle shaped like the one I always remember containing the marvellous concoction that is Lea & Perrins Worcestershire sauce. Not only was this bottle the same shape and size, but, amazingly, its label was orange with black lettering. However, it was something from Sheffield, from someone called Henderson’s, whoever they are. I am sure that Mr Henderson and his company are perfectly estimable, and I am sure they pursue an entirely legitimate business, but I could not help feeling, “Of all the colours they could choose for their label and all of the shapes they could have for their bottle!” I did not even know there was such a thing as Sheffield sauce until then.
I thought that was an ideal example of just how easy these things are to do. As we can all recall, some of the most successful contemporary retailers have their own named products—I will not name them—which mimic exactly the colours and packaging of their more famous rivals. As I recall, in its television advertising one of them actually uses the slogan “Like brands, only cheaper”. That is clearly a deliberate attempt to exploit the efforts of others without any concomitant responsibility to contribute to them.
The other area is the growth of online activities. In recent months, we have seen the emergence of a number of sites that, while not illegal, masquerade as official sites. I experienced that recently in relation to the congestion charge and the Transport for London site. The unofficial site managed to get the search engines to promote it up the scale. Although it offered to pay the congestion charge for someone entering the zone, it charged a fee as well. Anyone going straight to the TfL site can pay the congestion charge with no fee whatever. There has been an increase in the number of such sites, even false sites offering Government services.
One bit of evidence that the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington did not read out said that the British Phonographic Industry, which represents the recorded music industry in which this country excels,
“sends in excess of three million requests to Google”—
I ask my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford South (Mr Sutcliffe) to note that—
“each month to delist URLs which point to infringing content.”
This is a grave and growing problem that we need to address.
My earnest hope is that we will consider all these matters in some detail in Committee and during the later consideration of this Bill to ensure that we optimise the modest proposals that are coming forward today.
In future, comprehensive IP protection will be ever more important as we become more dependent on the knowledge-based and creative industries to ensure the proper utilisation and advance of innovation and the exploitation—in its best sense—of developments while ensuring adequate reward to the creators and innovators to encourage originality and ingenuity. If we do not go down that route, we will lose our expertise across a wide area in which this country has for long excelled, and we will be the poorer socially, intellectually and economically.
Mr Gerry Sutcliffe (Bradford South) (Lab)
It is a great pleasure to be involved in this debate and to follow the hon. Member for Hove (Mike Weatherley), who has shown why he should be the IP tsar. I know that he is the IP adviser to the Prime Minister, but in his contribution he has shown an understanding of the issues that we face. I first became involved in intellectual property rights as the Minister responsible for consumer affairs in the Department of Trade and Industry, and my interest has continued as a member of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee. It has been impressed upon me how important these issues are. The amendment proposed by the hon. Gentleman, which would put education at the heart of this issue, is vital, and I hope the Whips will ensure that he serves on the Committee so that we have the opportunity to debate the issues he raised.
I was grateful to the Minister for initiating this debate in the way he did because it would have been easy for us to get into the usual argy-bargy about how long it has taken to get to this point. My hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham West and Penge (Jim Dowd) is right to say that the Gower report was the predecessor of the Hargreaves review, but it has taken an inordinate length of time to get to where we are today, which is an important stage of discussing an important Bill that will have an impact on creativity. I will chide the Minister a little because he did not mention the Culture, Media and Sport Committee report—unlike my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright)—and what it said about the creative industries and the impact they have on our communities.
I represent a northern city, and we are looking at creativity to replace many of the manufacturing jobs we have lost over the years. The creative industries—whether film, television, the arts, or books—can create lots of new jobs. Bradford university and Bradford college provide opportunities to young people and small and medium-sized enterprises to use creativity as a way of creating those jobs of the future. Intellectual property is a key element of that, which is why the point about education is so strong, especially with the copying and so on that people do because they think they are getting things for free. In fact, that has an impact on the sector, particularly music, film and television.
The Hargreaves review has been broadly accepted by the Government and it is important that we move forward in a progressive way. The point about exceptions in the statutory instruments is a vital message that will be sent to the sector, and it is important we get that right. I hope the Minister will take that issue to his colleagues and ensure that we see the separate installation of the SIs on the exceptions.
I am not anti-Google. I think it does a lot of good, but the way it has operated with regard to intellectual property is a cause for concern. That concern was echoed by the Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, the hon. Member for Wantage (Mr Vaizey), when he appeared before the Select Committee and said that it was easier for Google to get to No. 10 than it was for him—I do not know what that says about him as a Minister, but there are clearly concerns there.
Mr Sutcliffe
How soon I forget. My hon. Friend is right: Viscount Younger did come before the Select Committee, but the hon. Member for Wantage, who is also a Minister from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, also gave evidence to the Committee on IP rights.
The Committee’s report is worthy of being read by hon. Members who have not yet done so, given the impact that creativity can have on well-being, innovation, and the growth of potential new jobs. When the Committee went to America to look at the creative industries—a difficult job but somebody has to do it—we went to Google and to the film studios. I found it interesting to note the importance of tax credits to the film industry. Film tax credits are one thing I will congratulate the Government on, and moving those measures to high-end television and games will maintain our lead in such things.