Intellectual Property Bill [Lords]

Debate between Jim Dowd and Helen Goodman

Monday 20th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[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—

[Helen Goodman]

Very sensible!

[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.