UK Software Industry

Debate between John Pugh and Jim McGovern

Wednesday 10th November 2010 Westminster Hall

[Dr Pugh]

I am not sure that the causal chain is as emphatic and clear-cut as the hon. Lady represents it, but later I shall come to the business of a level playing field.

It could be argued, could it not, that the indicators for what the industry offers and its potential are so good that the case for state investment is almost being undermined? If it is that good and there is that much potential, why would the Government be needed? Why should venture capital not be there; why would it not be there? I suppose there are some answers to those questions. It could be argued that this country’s financial sector is notoriously short term, which indeed it is. It is somewhat tax averse, and we have seen plenty evidence of companies preferring to go to places where the tax burden is less. The companies are certainly not patriotic and if they have scope elsewhere in places such as Canada, they might well decide that they want to place their funds there.

There are other strong arguments against the state getting too heavily involved in managing the industry. One is that the IT industry is notoriously volatile and unpredictable. One only has to look at the giants of the past that have crashed in the night—the IBMs, the Lotus Notes and the strange fall and rise of the Mac. One need only consider what would have happened had they put their money into floppy disc manufacture a few years ago, or into CD-ROM manufacture in the past five years. When someone puts money into the software industry or the IT industry more generally, they do so at an appreciable risk.

It cannot be in the long-term interest of the nation—of all nations—to base national taxation, for any sector, on the lowest common denominator of international taxation. Although the video games industry has said a lot about Canada, I would like to see what is happening in other areas where the software industry is also thriving and is competitive with Canada. I shall not rehearse the arguments that we could have about state aid and protectionism. I do not understand, however—the Minister can help me here—the argument presented by the Chancellor for not giving tax relief to the video games industry. He said that it could not be well targeted. I do not grasp that, and some evidence in the notes that have been provided makes it less than clear what is being said, meant or agreed by the Treasury.

[Jim McGovern (Dundee West) (Lab)]

I think the Chancellor actually said that the tax breaks were poorly targeted, rather than not well targeted. I have since had meetings with Ministers who have said that it is Government policy no longer to target any industry for tax breaks. Does the hon. Gentleman have a view on that?

[Dr Pugh]

The second answer that the hon. Gentleman was provided with seems to possess greater clarity than the first, because the first is, I guess, contestable. We can have a long discussion about how we can and cannot target breaks. A rational argument can quite decently be made that the software industry, given its potential for the capital venture market, is a lower priority than some other industries in a context of scarce resources; or it could be said that a break would be an unnecessary fiscal discount. The Minister can perhaps explain later exactly what is meant by the poverty of targeting in this case.

It is true that under our existing taxation policy some industries have failed, but even some of those mentioned in the notes we have been provided with have failed not because of the taxation policy, but because other things have gone wrong in the software development world and the product simply has not taken off. It is an intrinsically risky market, and the state ventures into it with some caution.

Just to extend the debate, there are other things that we should be talking about. I do not think the Government’s role in encouraging the software industry simply starts and finishes with tax breaks. They have a definite role in education. The hon. Member for Houghton and Sunderland South underplayed the continuity of British education between one Government and the next with regard to developing the software engineers of the future. In that context, I have a general worry about how the curriculum shapes up. In the initial phases of IT education, children were taught about programming and so on, but a great deal of recent IT education is simply about how to use applications. The people who are going to produce the applications of the future will not be the British: they will be Indian, Chinese and possibly American. There is a decline in IT education in this country—or, rather, it is not what it could be.

On the Government’s role, there is a further aspect to consider. The Government are probably the biggest customer for IT. Some 40% of all IT products, software included, are ordered by Departments. Government procurement is extraordinarily difficult for small software companies to work with, the process often being so prolonged that they cannot sustain their interest in applying for work, which the big companies ultimately get. The Cabinet Office and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport should consider how that process operates.

Labour Members must forgive me for going in this direction, but I have to say that huge software projects that were going to be embraced in the Building Schools for the Future programmes were, by and large, built by allowing the biggest players—the big American software firms—to engage with the process. Small British software firms found it difficult to get on the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency list. I have complained about BECTA in this Chamber in the past and I am glad that, as a result of my representations, it has been abolished.

There is a close and unattractive relationship between big government and big IT. We are blessed with the Connecting for Health project, with all its problems, ramifications and extra costs, largely because of close connections and conversations between the previous Prime Minister and Bill Gates. There has been a slow commitment to interoperability, open standards and open source in IT procurement in this country—particularly state and government IT procurement—all of which has effectively shut out the burgeoning British software engineering companies and favoured the large players, including Microsoft and Oracle.

I noted the Chancellor’s suggestion before the election—I am sure the Minister can comment on this—that by adopting a more favourable position towards open source and open standards, the country would save £500 million. I have not seen that in the comprehensive spending review so far. I can provide the press releases if any hon. Member doubts it, but I am sure we would all want to follow that up. That must surely be better than falling for the trick, as has happened in the past, where we receive memorandums of understanding and order shed-loads of products from big software houses abroad, simply because they give us the licenses at slightly less than the exorbitant prices they would charge a private customer.

The Government can do a huge amount in monitoring how taxation policy plays out. If there is a case, and serious empirical evidence is produced, showing that the video games industry is deserting the UK purely off the back of current taxation policy because the Government are reluctant to follow through on some suggestions made prior to the election, they will need to look at that. We cannot afford to stand by and let the industry go, because that would be a serious loss to the country.

We need to keep an open mind on fiscal measures and what will work, and to take a hard, prolonged look at both our education—

--- Later in debate ---

[Jim McGovern]

Before the general election, the Conservative and Lib Dem spokesmen on this subject both said unequivocally that they would support tax breaks for the video games industry. Why has that changed?

[Dr Pugh]

I am not party to the discussions that have led to that change. Clearly, there were opportunities for previous Governments to do precisely that.

The opportunities for the British software industry are huge. The Government just need to make the right move. Some of the right moves are plain and obvious, and I hope they will make them.