Intellectual Property Bill [Lords]

Steve McCabe Excerpts

Monday 20th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Sutcliffe]

I do. I know it is difficult when, in austere times, we are asking the Treasury to give more tax breaks, but I think it is a case of invest to save: if we do that for the music industry, we will get more back in the fruition and growth of that sector. I support what the hon. Gentleman proposes.

I think that Google has responsibilities and needs to consider the issue raised by BPI—I had forgotten that so many million requests have been made, and I do not think Google responded in anything like the way it needed to. I hope that with this debate, and with pressure from Ministers, we can put some pressure on Google to meet its requirements and responsibilities.

Clause 21 concerns the IPO report. I was grateful that the Minister said that Members would be able to consider all aspects of that report annually, though there are areas where things have not worked out as well as they could have. Returning to my former role as the Minister responsible for consumer affairs, I remember that on issues like trading standards, reports came from many areas of the country showing that things worked well in some places, but not in others. Enforcement is a big issue, and perhaps when we get the opportunity in Committee, we can look at the role of the IPO, trading standards, packaging, and some of the goods that mimic others. As a former sports Minister, I think particularly of the football industry where counterfeit football shirts and so on are produced. There is a tremendous cross-section of areas to consider, which is why it is important to have an IP tsar. We will want to consider clause 21 in greater detail, as well as clause 13 and the issue of criminalisation.

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

Like my hon. Friend, I am interested in how successful the legislation will be in addressing new kinds of difficulties with intellectual property. Does he think that clause 13(1)(a) will deal with something like TrafficPaymaster, which is the software product marketed by the HowToCorp company? It allowed people to scrape content from websites, and spin it so that it was presented as fresh content, rather than plagiarised content. I would say that that is a form of intellectual property theft. Will clause 13 deal with that?

[Mr Sutcliffe]

I would be interested to see how the Minister responds to those issues because it is difficult to get to the definition of what is and is not a criminal offence. I understand the arguments on both sides, but having received representations from designers in the furniture manufacturing industry, I feel that we have to do something; we cannot continue without there being recourse to some punishment, or without problems being addressed. I believe that clauses 13 and 21 will take up most of the Committee’s time.

To return to the issue of education raised by the hon. Member for Hove, we need to educate many of our colleagues about these issues and how they affect companies in their constituencies. It will be interesting to look at how we can work together to try to raise the profile of such matters. I know the hon. Gentleman has done that through Rock The House and Film the House and I congratulate him on that work, but more needs to be done.

I want to raise a point about IP rights and what the Government are proposing across the health sector with the introduction of plain packaging for cigarettes, and the IP costs linked to that. Legal opinion has stated that compensation may need to paid to some tobacco companies for their loss of intellectual property rights, which could be between £5 billion and £6 billion. I raise the point because people do not look at the consequences of a loss of IP rights. Perhaps in future debates we will consider that issue on the back of what happens in Australia.

I welcome the Bill and the spirit in which the Minister has said that he will listen to what has been said, so that we can try to enhance and develop it further. This is a great opportunity and at long last IP rights are getting recognition in being addressed by this House.