Brexit: Creative Sector

Lord Clement-Jones Excerpts

Wednesday 20th June 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, my noble friend is right to highlight the importance of this sector, and I want to emphasise just how big the creative industries are as an exporting sector and in terms of what they produce in this country. I stress, as I did at the beginning, that much of our reciprocal copyright protection is underpinned by international law, but obviously there are parts that need protection that involve EU-UK law. That will obviously be a matter for our future relationship, and that is a matter for the ongoing negotiations taking place at the moment.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, has the Minister read the document from the Intellectual Property Office entitled IP and Brexit: The Facts? There are no facts in it. It says that the Government recognise the concerns of IP professionals, and recognise that owners of registered community design rights “want clarity”. On trademarks, it says that the Government,

“is looking at various options”,

and similarly on the exhaustion of rights. Is it not high time that the Government showed some leadership on IP matters and delivered some certainty to those who need it?

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, the noble Lord and I, and others in the House, debated this matter when the noble Lord had a Question on it, I think, back in March. As I said then and as I repeat now, this is obviously a matter for the ongoing negotiations. The noble Lord will have to wait for the White Paper, which will be coming out shortly. We can then deal with these matters in the negotiations, but as I made quite clear, much of our protection that is already there is underpinned by international law. As I also stressed, we have a pretty good intellectual property regime in this country as it is.