Intellectual Property: British Economy

Debate between Nigel Adams and Chris White

Tuesday 28th February 2017 Westminster Hall

[Nigel Adams (Selby and Ainsty) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the importance of intellectual property to the British economy.

Thank you for chairing the debate this morning, Mr Gapes. I also thank the Backbench Business Committee for allocating time to the important subject of British intellectual property. I was particularly keen to have the subject before the House again because we are in the midst of a number of important developments in the area of IP. I hope that we can report on and flesh out some of those today, but I also reiterate my desire to debate the subject in the main Chamber in due course.

Intellectual property is one of the major areas of competence that will revert from Brussels to the UK when we leave the European Union. I welcome the Prime Minister’s plan to deal with that transition in part by converting the existing body of European law and regulation applicable to the UK into UK law for Parliament to debate, amend and repeal with sufficient time to consider each piece. I also understand her intention thus to create stability for business. Legislation, in particular in a complex area such as intellectual property, takes significant time to put in place, so it behoves us to start preparing to manage our own affairs in the area now, establishing what works, what does not and how we want to improve the latter.

[Chris White (Warwick and Leamington) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. He talked about the transition and legislation, but does he also share my support for the inclusion of intellectual property in the industrial strategy, given that key sectors rely on it, such as the creative industries which are so well placed to contribute significantly to economic growth?

[Nigel Adams]

Absolutely. I completely share my hon. Friend’s pleasure at IP’s inclusion. That tells us that the Government are taking IP, which cuts across so much of our country’s industrial policy, seriously. I am very much of his opinion.

The Digital Economy Bill, which is in the other place, has only three clauses on IP. I do not take the Government to task for that—it has been a long time since the previous legislation, the Digital Economy Act 2010, and there is much important ground to cover—but it serves to highlight the need to prioritise examination of the area in more detail.

To that end, I welcome the acknowledgement of IP’s importance in the Green Paper on industrial strategy, which my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Chris White) mentioned, and the allocation of this important brief to the Minister for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation, my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington (Joseph Johnson), who is known for his seriousness and attention to detail, as well as his great cricketing prowess.

From established phenomena such as the Beatles and David Bowie to emerging superstars such as Stormzy and Skepta—a great favourite of the Minister for Digital and Culture, my right hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk (Matt Hancock)—and from our brilliant film and television exports to our technological innovators, such as those who created the bagless vacuum cleaner and the worldwide web, the UK has never been short of ideas.

IP is critical to our growing our tech sector, but I will focus my remarks on the creative industries, in my capacity as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on music and as a member of the Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport. Other hon. Members will, I hope, bring up other areas of interest during the debate. This month, for example, the all-party parliamentary group on intellectual property held an inquiry into IP enforcement, which was incredibly valuable. I believe the report has now been published. The APPG chair, the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart), is in his place, so I hope that he will share more of that report with us.

This debate is about the importance of IP to the British economy and, to give a brief reminder, the numbers speak for themselves: the creative industries account for approximately 7% of GDP; for £187.4 billion in gross value added, according to Department for Culture, Media and Sport estimates; and for exports worth almost £20 billion. That does not even account for the cultural soft power of having such a powerhouse in our creative and music industries. I would highlight the 35% growth in the export value of the live music sector between 2014 and 2015, and the fact that five of the 10 top-selling artists globally in 2015 were British. As anyone who has turned on the radio recently or watched the Brit awards last week will know, 2016 was surely another great year for the music industry.

Now to the problems. Piracy is obviously one of the biggest threats to creators being allowed to capitalise on their own efforts and to see returns on any growth in interest in their work. Without that, not only will they not be able to continue to create, but they will certainly not be able to invest in mentoring or developing new talent. We should keep in mind that all such issues are interconnected for the industry. We encourage record labels to advance social mobility through pioneering apprenticeship schemes or engagement with at-risk youth, for example, but it is harder for us credibly to ask them to put into society when we are not also making serious inroads into getting our laws and regulatory regimes up to scratch in dealing with the new threats to creative industry revenues.

In that vein, I welcome the agreement announced last week between the search engines, such as Google and Bing, and the Intellectual Property Office, with the aid of the DCMS, on an industry code of practice for tackling piracy. In changes that are expected to be rolled out by the summer, search engines will modify their algorithms to demote piracy sites in results, making them harder to find. That is a good first step.