Intellectual Assets: Crime

Lord Clark of Windermere Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Jones]

I think that I will refrain from rising to that one. The noble Lord is quite right that this is one of the reasons why we have fixed our eyes on this threat. It is real. There is evidence that theft has taken place and it must be stopped, so there is no dispute between us. In my original Answer I was saying that we are trying to put a value on the losses. In other words, we are doing some historical work but also looking at the trend lines to be able to know more than we do at the moment about both the volume and the nature of the threat we face.

[Lord Clark of Windermere]

My Lords, the Government very sensibly in the spending review announced an increase of expenditure on cybertechnology and cybercrime. Is the Minister confident that there is sufficient co-ordination within Whitehall to ensure that that money is spent correctly, and will she advise the House which is the lead department in Whitehall on this issue?

[Baroness Neville-Jones]

My Lords, the lead department is the Cabinet Office and I am the Minister responsible in that department. The answer to the noble Lord’s question is that we are extraordinarily aware, as I am sure the previous Administration were, of the need for co-ordination. We are building on what the preceding Administration did to strengthen the co-ordination, but we want rather more than that. We want a single strategy that all the departments follow, and do not want simply to co-ordinate existing efforts but to have everybody involved in an overall strategy in which they each pursue their delegated part.