Intellectual Property Bill [HL]
Debate between Lord Stevenson of Balmacara and Lord Young of Norwood Green
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara
I thank the Minister for his contribution and my noble friend Lord Howarth for making additional points in relation to the proposal in the amendment. Behind this short debate lurks the proposal later in the Bill to have an annual report to Parliament on IP work, and it is helpful that the Minister finished on that point. To anticipate that debate, we will be arguing that to draw the report in the rather narrow terms currently specified in the Bill may be too tight, so perhaps we can come back to this issue when we get to that clause because the recent exchange gave us examples of that. It would be helpful to have a better understanding of how engagement with the wider group involved in the creative industries and in design, in particular, is going. Simply reporting on the economy and growth will not get across that engagement in sufficient detail, so this may be something to which we will return.
This matter also raises whether, as was argued during our discussions on the ERR Bill, having an IP Minister is sufficient in relation to intellectual property work and the support of the creative industries more generally or whether something more grandiose than even a noble Viscount, such as a tsar, will be required. I can see the noble Viscount reaching out across Whitehall and drawing things together much in the style of the films of Eisenstein.
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara
I was not going to mention Ivan the Terrible in particular, but there are other tsars of recent memory who would have been as effective, without necessarily all the killing, in getting people to understand what is important about intellectual property and in thrilling them with the opportunities that I am sure will flow from the Hague agreement.
The idea that somehow the IPO, however many thousands of Twitter followers it has, can do this with 140 characters per tweet does not fill me with enthusiasm. This needs engagement on a much greater scale, as has been mentioned. We will return to this issue, so I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.