Mike Weatherley
Main Page: Mike Weatherley (Conservative - Hove)Intellectual Property Bill [Lords]
Mike Weatherley Excerpts(10 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Mr Wright
Thank you very much.
Does what the Minister said mean that we will see the regulations in less than a fortnight? When will they come before the House for consideration? Will it be before the next Session begins in June? Given that, as his answer states, the Government have made a number of technical changes, and as the regulations will be different, will he confirm that a further round of wider consultation is not needed? He cannot seriously suggest that a commencement date of 1 April 2014 is still feasible. Will he give further details?
Mike Weatherley (Hove) (Con)
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the earlier part of that answer, in which the Minister stated that he welcomed the contributions and had made amendments accordingly, is potentially good news?
Mr Wright
It could be good news, but we are acting in the dark. The Minister said in Committee—the hon. Gentleman was there—that the Government are in implementation mode. However, the hon. Gentleman, who is a knowledgeable expert, must accept that it looks very much like the Government are making it up as they go along, with no long-term vision for the direction of IP or copyright.
The Government have been left floundering. The hon. Member for Hove alluded to the fact that they have had to be rescued by stakeholders and have reinforced the impression that IP policy is not considered a priority, despite the importance now and in future of the creative industries. That is why new clause 1 is as relevant now as when we discussed it in Committee. The Government’s handling of this important matter has been shambolic, and I should like to test the opinion of the House on it. It is important that we send out a clear message that copyright is important. It is an important driver of wealth creation in the 21st century, and what the Government have done is not good enough.
On amendments 2 and 3, clause 13 was debated at length in Committee and in the other place. I do not want to detain the House, but, as I have said several times during the passage of the Bill, it is the most contentious measure. It is a significant matter when Parliament decides to impose criminal sanctions. The provision that ensures that anybody convicted of deliberately infringing registered designs can go to prison for 10 years needs careful consideration.
Some stakeholders have stated that such a provision will have a chilling effect on innovation in this country and that, as a result, Britain will lose something of our comparative advantage and competitiveness in creativity and innovation. We should not easily give away that advantage in innovation and design. As a result of that persuasive argument from industry—from Dyson and others—the Government tabled amendments in Committee to tighten the wording of clause 13 to ensure that unintentional infringement is not captured by the new criminal sanctions.
Mike Weatherley
May I start by paying tribute to all the members of the Bill Committee for an excellent couple of days of deliberations on the clauses? In particular, I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright) for drawing out points for debate without needlessly pushing for votes on each one, and of course to the Minister for reflecting on each point in a highly constructive manner—and not grumpily at all.
There are several areas of concern in the Bill. The first is in relation to education. As a general rule, rights holders have lost the debate with the public generally. Many see creative output as something they should be able to access for free—after all, they have been doing it for years; it is not a tangible product; they probably would not have bought it anyway, so they are only increasing the awareness of performers; and the chances of getting caught are low and there is no penalty. On a positive note, there have been moves by industry to step up the game in terms of education, and we have had some Government-funded schemes such as those produced recently by the Intellectual Property Office. But with the Department for Education ruling out any formal copyright education in schools, we need a co-ordinated approach, led by Government and helped along by industry. In my view, the IPO is best placed to lead the charge on education on IP matters and it was my intention to add a clause to the Bill to formally require the IPO to report annually on what initiatives it had undertaken in the past year. In the end, I have not pushed for that amendment after hearing assurances from the Minister that education on the importance of IP will be at the heart of the IPO’s activities.
My second concern related to the amendments tabled by the hon. Member for Hartlepool, especially in relation to the differences between offline and online crime penalties. Even with this Bill, there remains a worrying message that online crime is considered to be one fifth as serious as offline crime. It may be that the maximum penalty of 10 years for offline crime is too high and is unrealistic, and therefore online crime will never get the same penalty. I hear that argument. However, in Denmark they have recognised this and have a two-level crime, with 18 months maximum for less serious stealing and six years for serious commercial crime. Importantly though, in Denmark the penalty is the same for both online and offline crime. I was particularly pleased that in Committee the Minister accepted that this issue does need to be looked at, even if only to underpin the message that IP crime is equally serious, and has undertaken to review the anomaly and report back. That is a very positive step and I look forward to the results of the review. For that reason, I will not support the hon. Gentleman’s amendment.
My third concern has been less easily satisfied and relates to criminal penalties for copying designs. I welcome the introduction of a criminal penalty for registered designs. While it has always been possible to claim for damages in the civil court, this was expensive, took a great deal of time and, ultimately, did not provide a sufficient deterrent. The threat of criminal proceedings almost certainly will. I also welcome the addition of the word “intentionally”. This may give rise to difficulties in proving intent, but ultimately no one should want to see anyone subject to criminal penalties for not knowing. I appreciate that ignorance is no defence normally in law, but in design it probably should be. Providing someone has undertaken reasonable checks to be sure that someone else has not already produced the idea, criminal sanctions would be a step too far.
The Bill does not include a criminal offence in relation to unregistered designs. I fully understand that all designers should be encouraged to register their designs formally in most instances, and I fully understand that doing checks to ensure no infringement of an unregistered design is more difficult—and in many instances, impossible to check completely. However, given the insertion of the word “intentionally” into the Bill, one has to ask why the penalty cannot be a little harsher and more of a deterrent. As it stands, even if a designer can prove that a copy of an unregistered design was done intentionally, the only recourse the original designer will have in law is once again the civil courts, and that is often just not enough of a deterrent for someone who wishes to take others’ designs as their own. Nevertheless—
Mike Weatherley
I am sorry to disappoint the hon. Gentleman. Nevertheless, I do not intend to support his amendment which would harmonise unregistered and registered designs, at this time. The Bill is a step in the right direction and I merely put down the marker that should evidence be provided that the law is failing in this regard, we should come back to this issue and consider it again. I am prepared to see where the legislation as it stands takes us, rather than supporting the amendment now. All I ask now is that the Minister acknowledges the potential and agrees to return to the point in a future Bill.
The hon. Gentleman should be aware that an IPO conference is coming up in June, which will address some of the IP issues that he was talking about. I will return to the issue on Third Reading, but it is important that the Prime Minister and No. 10 make a clear declaration about intellectual property being a property right. If that is done, it is not necessary to add new clause 1 to the Bill.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
I am glad to have caught your eye, Mr Speaker, in this not so crowded Chamber. I presume that everybody is paying great attention to the debate on their television screens. It goes to show the lack of interest in intellectual property issues, which disappoints me very much. As I have said before, we need a Minister who is answerable for intellectual property in this House, so that we can raise these very important questions, and so that an IP Minister can respond to these critical debates on this very important issue.
Amendment 1 stands in my name. We have discussed the issue before—on Second Reading and in Committee—and we have had assurances from the Minister, but now is the time for a cast-iron commitment. He knows the anxieties and concerns about this issue, not just from the Law Society of Scotland and the Faculty of Advocates in Edinburgh, but from the whole legal community in Scotland, which remains very concerned that Scotland will lose the right to judge, assess and hear cases to do with patents.
The Minister may have his views about me as a Member of Parliament, but the Faculty of Advocates and the Court of Session in Edinburgh could hardly be described as hotbeds of nationalist militancy. If even the Faculty of Advocates could write to the Minister in such graphic terms about its concerns, surely those concerns should be taken into account and treated seriously. We have heard enough warm words from the Minister; we must now start to hear him express a commitment to Scotland.
It is possible that, after centuries, we will lose the right to consider patent issues in the Scottish courts. Clause 17 makes provision
“to confer…remove… or vary the jurisdiction of a court”
in relation to the new unified patent court, thus effectively allowing the United Kingdom to decide how to approach the whole issue of divisional courts. The UK can have up to three or four of them. Why can it not accept the Court of Session as one of those courts? My amendments would simply ensure that Scotland was once more a jurisdiction with the ability to rule on important patent cases.
We all support the arrival of the new unified patent court. Of course it makes sense for patent hearings to be unified across all the jurisdictions in the European Union, and many of us have argued long and hard to that effect. It will make life so much easier for our inventors, creators and artists. However, it cannot come at a price for Scotland’s legal establishment. For Scotland, with its history of invention and creation, to be denied the ability to consider the issue of patents is—patently—absurd. For decades, if not centuries, the Court of Session in Edinburgh has had the power to consider patent issues in Scotland. We have built up experience and skills that may be lost if we are denied access to a divisional court.
Scotland has a distinct legal establishment. For the last 300 years, as members of the United Kingdom, we have been able to keep our own Scots law when it comes to matters such as this, and people have acquired the necessary experience of that law—and, of course, we in Scotland have a history and culture of creativity that goes back for centuries. As you know, Mr Speaker, Scotland practically invented the modern world: everything from tarmacadam to television was invented by Scotsmen, and today we are still achieving things through our biotechnologies and biosciences. There has been Dolly the sheep, for instance, and—I recall that the Minister rebuked me when I mentioned this in Committee—our contribution to the Higgs boson. Scotland has a culture of being able to invent and create, and we must be allowed to consider issues relating to that culture in our own courts.
Yesterday, in advance of today’s debate, a programme on BBC Scotland showed some of our fantastic new creators and inventors, who are coming up with wonderful new products. They were discussing the importance of allowing these matters to be considered in Scotland. Our Scots law is a totem, an important centre. Some fantastic examples were shown during that BBC Scotland programme—and, I should add, there were some particularly good comments from me. The programme demonstrated the degree of interest in these issues that exists in Scotland, as indeed it should, because the creative industries are important to Scotland. Indeed, they are probably more important to Scotland than they are to the rest of the United Kingdom: we invest more in them, and they play a dynamic and important role in the overall Scottish economy.
Our history of invention and creation makes it plain that Scotland is more than adequately equipped to be a successful independent nation. We know that we could be one of the wealthiest nations in the world because of the resources and skill of our people. If we were independent, this would not be an issue, because, as a member state of the European Union, we would be allowed direct access to the unified patent court. There is an especially important reason why that should happen. It is important to the legal establishment, and it is important to all the individuals who are involved in business. Why should Scottish business men have to bear the extra costs of going to a different jurisdiction to have their day in court and secure justice in relation to important patent issues? We have some incredible new industries in Scotland, not least in the renewable sector and particularly in oil and gas. Our businesses, including small and medium-sized enterprises, need to be able to come to Edinburgh for this purpose. Not being able to do so is an inconvenience that small businesses in Scotland can ill afford.
This is in the Government’s gift. All the Minister need do is say “Yes, the court in Edinburgh will be one of the divisional courts.” London, of course, will have one of the central divisional courts, as will Paris and Munich. As I said in Committee, all that we need is New York: then we could have “Pop Muzik” by M. So London will be looked after, but what about the other capitals in the United Kingdom? We are always being told that Scotland has a part to play in the UK—indeed, that is what the debate that we shall continue to have over the next few months is all about—so why has it been overlooked?
Mike Weatherley
The Bill is excellent as a step in the right direction. At times, back in 2010 and 2011, it felt as if the juggernaut that is intellectual property rights was heading towards dilution as the norm. However, I feel that the brakes have been applied recently and that the mood in both Parliament and elsewhere is now changing.
We have an excellent IP Minister in Viscount Younger, and I found John Alty and others at the Intellectual Property Office to be very accommodating and helpful. However, given that the Bill is the main legislation on intellectual property over a full Parliament, it is important to mention some of the items that have not been included but should definitely be considered.
The first is education. Government and industry must work together to inform the public better about the fact that IP is important to every single one of us. Is it too much of a stretch to say that our NHS depends on our protecting IP for our creative industries? I do not think so. Without the £71.4 billion added gross value that we generate from our creators, which includes £15.5 billion from overseas earnings, we would need to borrow or raise taxes elsewhere. Those are not attractive options.
As a country, we should thank the creative industries for being such an important contributor to our economy. I welcome all Government measures to support the industry, and protecting IP is one measure of support. I have challenged the IPO to provide details of 100 forums a year that we need to be at to promote IP. Industry has committed to find representatives to go to those forums. That, and other measures, need to be carried out.
The second item not included in the Bill is what I refer to as “follow the money”. If we can stop sites that host illegal material advertising and, additionally, find a way to stop payments being made for illegal material via Mastercard, Visa, PayPal and other forms of payment, we can take away the main reason why many of those sites exist. I recently met representatives of the police intellectual property crime unit and others on that very point. Following a very useful discussion, I hope we can produce a report with suggestions in the next month or two. I thank Steve Head, the commander of PIPCU, and his team for their excellent work and support. I have also just met Google representatives to discuss the same point.
All that brings me to search engines generally. We often forget that it is not the search engines that create or consume illegal content. I am aware of a band that recently released a CD that was on 20 Russian torrent sites within an hour—it did not appear on Google rankings until some hours later. The CD was not on those Russian torrent sites because it was on Google; it was there because the Russian sites were monitoring what was on iTunes. I am currently working with Google on some suggestions and I have promised the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills a report on the matter shortly. I thank the law firm Olswang for its assistance.
There is one other point in the IP chain that needs to be mentioned—internet service providers. Like search engines, they are not the persons creating or using illegal content, but their lines are transporting the activity. They do not need to be the policeman, but they can be part of the solution. Whether that is via a levy on users to fund education enforcement or whether it is making the ISPs accountable for illegal activity is something to be debated. None the less, I am sure that they need to be part of the solution.
A worrying footnote is that I am told that the voluntary copyright alert programme—VCAP—proposals cannot be implemented for at least a year once an agreement has been found on the other technicalities that we are going through at the moment. I must say that that feels more like prevarication than determination to implement, but I am not a technical expert, so I cannot comment on that further, but I would welcome others doing so.
The industry has made it clear to me that it feels that a US-type IP tsar or director-general would be useful in co-ordinating Departments and industry and delivering IP-related initiatives.
Mike Weatherley
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that suggestion. I would like to see the Government at least look at the idea. I appreciate that we have an IP Minister, but his priorities would be different to those of a director-general.
Finally, above all else, what the Bill needs is for the Prime Minister to state categorically that IP rights are the same as property rights, and are something to be cherished and protected. In many ways, Europe is looking to us, in the UK, for IP direction, and this repeated message is important so that rights are not drip fed away.
The IPO is organising an IP enforcement conference for June, which will be important. Indeed we are renaming that conference “Respect for IP” and I am sure that it will form part of the Government’s direction on IP generally. In summary, there is still much to do, but this is a good Bill overall and a positive step in the right direction.