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Part of Intellectual Property Bill [HL] – in the House of Lords at 4:45 pm on 23 July 2013.

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Photo of Viscount Younger of Leckie Viscount Younger of Leckie The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills 4:45, 23 July 2013

My Lords, Amendment 12 tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Howarth of Newport, relates to representations, lobbying and advocacy concerning intellectual property. It would place a duty on my right honourable friend in the other place, the Secretary of State Vince Cable, to maintain an open register of all lobbying which has taken place.

I wish to assure noble Lords that this Government take the issue of lobbying very seriously. This is the most transparent Government ever. I am pleased that the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, while not necessarily agreeing with that, certainly recognised it in his speech. We are the first Government to publish proactively meetings that Ministers and Permanent Secretaries have had with external organisations. We publish an unprecedented amount of information about whom Ministers and senior officials meet. This information is published on a quarterly basis.

The noble Lord, Lord Howarth, is right in saying, however, that the public are worried about lobbying. The Government also recognise that the public are concerned that some lobbying activity is opaque, allowing certain powerful organisations and individuals to exert a disproportionate influence on government in the shadows. We need to combat the sometimes negative perceptions of the relationship between lobbyists and government by giving people confidence that the process is transparent.

That is why only last week the Government introduced the Transparency of Lobbying, Non-party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill, which again the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, alluded to. This Bill will bring forward a statutory register of lobbyists, which will make it clear whom lobbyists are lobbying on behalf of when they meet Ministers. Noble Lords will have the opportunity to debate this Bill, which, subject to timetabling, will be before the House later this year.

The noble Lord, Lord Howarth, tabled an amendment in Committee which would have required the annual report on the IPO’s activities, which is to be introduced by Clause 20, to include information on approaches by third parties. In Committee, as Minister for Intellectual Property, I committed to publish proactively a list of all meetings between the chief executive of the IPO and external organisations. This demonstrates the Government’s very real commitment to transparency. I also remind the noble Lord that the IPO responds to requests made by Parliamentary Question and through the Freedom of Information Act. Since 1 July 2012, the IPO has received 184 FoI requests, only five of which relate to lobbying activity.

Proactive publication of the level of information required by the amendment would be highly resource-intensive. It would mean the documentation of contact between external parties and some 1,000 IPO staff. In the previous financial year, the IPO received 41,150 applications for trade marks and 22,818 patent applications. Representations on these applications would be covered by the amendment. Such a system would therefore be a highly bureaucratic addition to many of the IPO’s statutory functions concerning the administration of IP rights and applications, which quite properly involve receiving many tens of thousands of representations from the public concerning their IP. The vast majority of such contact would be of no significance or interest to others. Furthermore, the amendment would require in some cases a duplication of the work already carried out in relation to transparency and under the draft lobbying Bill.

The Government’s approach therefore represents a proportionate response to legitimate concerns about the influence of external organisations on policy development. A balance needs to be struck between the need for transparency and the resources required to collect, maintain and, indeed, read through potentially large amounts of information. My points about the Government’s approach generally in this area, when taken with the additional reporting duty in Clause 20 and the further commitment I made in Grand Committee with respect to IPO meetings with external organisations, should, I believe, reassure noble Lords about just how much the Government are doing in this area. I therefore request that the noble Lord withdraw his amendment.