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Digital Economy Bill [HL]

I thank the noble Lord. If I had any influence on the draw, I would readily accept those congratulations. However, it is true to say that it was a happy draw. I declare an interest as chairman of the FA, because football rights holders are among the rights holders that are affected. However, this is an opportunity to reflect on the period of approximately eight months when I was Minister with responsibility for intellectual property in the short-lived DIUS, when I was routinely confronted by the debate between those who believed that everything should in a sense be free because technology had made that possible, and those who were unable to generate the economic activity that many of our new and most innovative industries are capable of generating. As was said in the Second Reading debate, which I read, they are a significant and growing part of our economy. That was of great significance when I had that responsibility because it is clear that, broadly speaking, as a nation, we will not make our living digging things out of the ground or beating on metal to any extent. We will make it out of our innovation, our inventiveness and our being at the front edge of what we are capable of achieving. That is why I want to reflect on the comments made by the noble Lords, Lord Mitchell and Lord Lucas. Many will say that vast numbers of people break this law—I was presented with copious evidence of it—and ask whether it is practical to intervene without unwanted consequences, or say that there will be those in the legal profession and elsewhere who will exploit this law. The temptation when you hear such arguments, with the greatest respect, is to put it all in the box which says "too difficult". There is a cultural propensity to say that these are all big corporations which have made a fortune over the years, so there is something vaguely picaresque about stealing from them now. But the truth is that if we really value the innovative structure that is a great capability of this country’s economy, then there need to be proportionate means of trying to deal with this. First, not everybody who steals a file on their computer is a 16 year-old who wants one song. We found huge evidence that many people not only download material; you can find in car boot sales and market stalls vast quantities of material that has been stolen and downloaded, frequently associated with illegal immigrants taking part in the marketing of it. I say this not to paint a lurid picture but because the coming together of these different kinds of criminal activities should be of significance to us, and also because it is a very significant criminal activity. One of the reasons why trading standards officers and others have been invited to try to make London fake-free by the time the Olympics take place in 2012 is that those who are pursuing this activity with considerable success are not just youngsters but people with a much more serious criminal intent. In the case of football, people do not always regard the output as intellectual property. None the less, it is a very serious product in a very serious industry which is sold with huge success worldwide, and its economic model is dependent on doing that. I sincerely applaud, for example, the FA Premier League for making one of the great world export products which is one of the huge successes of this country. In the case of my own organisation, the FA, we are a not-for-profit organisation. The money that we make by selling those properties is the money that goes into grass-roots football in every park and small stadium and into the opportunities that we can offer to youngsters to get them into a sport and off the couch and away from the television—and occasionally, one hopes, away from their computers and stealing files. All of this suggests that the response needs to be genuinely robust. I think that the response in the Bill is genuinely robust and strikes a helpful balance. However, in the final analysis, it would be wholly inappropriate to deny people the opportunity to seek by legal means to prevent people stealing their property. Difficult as it may be for some youngsters to see it as theft, it is interesting—I do not know whether the noble Lord on the Front Bench has had this experience since taking up ministerial responsibility—that when you went to schools and discussed it with rather younger children, they understood it instantly. They understood that if they really wanted to hear that kind of music in the future—music of the indie bands and others who were being driven out of doing what they do in the creative industries in this country—they needed to change what they did. It needs a long-stop, and that long-stop is vital to music, to film, to sport and to very many other sectors. Those are the sectors that are the future of our economy.