My Lords, I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, was only trying to be helpful with his first amendments but, from the word go, he has a certain way of frightening the horses. The reaction to his amendment by the design community, perhaps apart from the seven professors who lurk in the background to these and similar amendments tabled by the noble Lord—I am glad to say that we firmly rejected their wise advice on the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill—is that this is a last-minute change to emasculate unregistered design right, which is relied upon by almost every designer, as opposed to registered design. The noble Lord knows the scale of the use of unregistered design rights; more than 100,000 designs annually are protected by them, whereas only some 4,000 are protected by registered design. The whole purpose of unregistered design is to be analogous to copyright. That is what UK unregistered design right is about. It is very long established. The term for unregistered design rights is of course much shorter than for copyright, which was always the intention. However, the noble Lord’s amendment is extremely radical. I am sure that he does not really believe that this is the right way forward. I heard what he said about the Government's approach being merely piecemeal, but this is utterly fundamental at this stage.
I hope that the amendment is purely provocative and designed to have a debate but the noble Lord should know that many individual designers up and down the country would be absolutely horrified if the amendment passed and if unregistered design right did not have the scope that it now has. I will not go into the way in which the test is put forward in terms of whether it is worldwide or original and what sort of protections are given. It is sufficient to say that in almost every respect small independent designers would be disadvantaged by the amendment.