My Lords, Amendment 234A takes us to Clause 232, which provides for a review of the operation of the Act. A lot of concern has been expressed during the course of the Bill about the speed of change of technology. Most recently, David Anderson, in his report on the operation of bulk powers, said, encapsulating this very neatly,
“nothing in this field stays still forever, or even for long”.
He also quoted Matt Tait, who told the review that,
“for the overwhelming majority of the time that the IP Bill will be law, it will be interpreted in secret by HMG lawyers, when seeking to authorise as-yet unknown operations in support of not-yet
decided policy objectives, needing to relate the provisions of the IP Bill to technologies that do not exist yet, where technological norms may be markedly different to how they are today”.
In most fields, five years would seem a reasonable time, even though quite ordinary products such as washing machines become obsolete—they are even made for obsolescence—within a shorter period than that. However, in this field five years is almost a generation. Devices manufactured five years ago are apparently now obsolete, as I have just discovered with the desktop PC which I have been using, and are not supported by the manufacturers. Enormous advances are made every year, and as all noble Lords who have spoken about this have acknowledged, it is essential that the Government and the authorities that will be acting under the powers that will be given by the Act keep abreast of those changes. I appreciate that a great many attempts have been made to future-proof the Bill, but this is not an easy project, and we may find the day after tomorrow that something new comes along to undermine that future-proofing.
We believe that five years and six months is too far into the future before the legislation is formally reviewed. Of course, the Secretary of State can arrange for a review without the formal provision in the Bill, but this is the requirement and it should itself be fit for purpose. We are not wedded to two and a half years, but five and half is too long. Two and a half would enable a report well before the end of this Parliament, assuming that the next election is in 2020. Although we are not wedded to two and a half years, we would be interested to hear the Government’s justification for the period of five and a half years and, I hope, an acknowledgment that a shorter period would be appropriate in this instance. I beg to move.