My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, said, the debate on the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill was a very useful start to this whole discussion about the IPO report to Parliament. We have built up a considerable degree of consensus about what that report should contain. I welcome Clause 20 as a step in the right direction but the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, put the points extremely well on Amendments 26, 27 and 28, to which I have also put my name. If we are going to have such a clause in a piece of primary legislation, we need to be explicit about the kind of reporting requirement that the Secretary of State has. I entirely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, that those are absolutely essential requirements, particularly as regards Amendment 26, and that the report should be about the promotion of innovation and economic growth,
“arising from the creation and exploitation of intellectual property”.
After all, that is what the Intellectual Property Office is all about.
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Our discussion has diverged to some degree and I am certainly not going to follow the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, in referring to dense patent thickets or using any such language as I think we are on opposite sides of the fence. However, I agree with him that these matters need to be evidence based. I do not resile very much from what he said about the need to achieve a balance. I also quoted him on Second Reading on this point. We cannot deny that these are monopoly property rights. They have to be proportionate and designed in such a way as to encourage future innovation and growth and to reward creators. Sometimes a balance needs to be struck and the evidence needs to be there.
I disagree with some of the examples that the noble Lord gave but I agree that the genes example was an extremely unhelpful start to the whole issue of genetic research and work on DNA. The ability to patent certain genes was unhelpful in many respects. However, I will not go into that in any great detail.
I am concerned that the point mentioned in the Explanatory Notes, which include specific reference to developments in copyright licensing being included in an annual report—this follows on from the Hooper report—is not explicitly stated in the Bill, even in general terms.
The noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, talked about cross-border co-operation, which is very important. Indeed, the Minister encouraged us to think that the report would also include updates on the protection of metadata, which I believe will become increasingly important as time goes on. Therefore, I think there are flaws in Clause 20. I very much hope that the Minister will look sympathetically on a number of the amendments, even if he does not take on board all the precise detail of the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson. They are all heading in the right direction and seek to establish the robust system of intellectual property that we all wish to see.