Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:

To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what steps his Department is taking to help tackle the sale of (a) unlicensed band merchandise and (b) other counterfeit goods on (i) TikTok and (ii) other social media platforms.

The Government is committed to protecting IP rights for our businesses and protecting unsuspecting consumers from those who seek to profit from all forms of intellectual property infringement. Trading Standards are primarily responsible for enforcing Intellectual Property Rights and are working with platforms of all sizes to remove counterfeits from their online stores.
The Intellectual Property Office also regularly meets many of the major social media and e-commerce trading platforms in the UK and overseas to help ensure they have policies in place to remove goods identified as counterfeit, advertisements of counterfeit goods, and persistent sellers of counterfeit goods.