Intellectual Assets: Crime

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Jones]

The noble Lord puts his finger on a very important issue, and one that will be a concrete and identified part of the strategy that the Government are developing. Clearly we need to have proper competences in government and co-operation with the private sector, and to build skills in this country, which means enhancing the necessary studies at our universities. We must also encourage best practice and good behaviour among all cyberusers—individuals as well as companies.

[Lord West of Spithead]

My Lords, I know that the noble Baroness shares my view about the importance of cyber, and I welcome the extended work on that. However, her initial Answer did not quite give the right impression that we are still looking at the problem. Am I not right in saying that whole areas—for example, whole engines and their entire design specification, and whole aircraft and their design specification have been taken from companies in this country and America? We know that that has happened. That information is already there and it is important that it is acknowledged by the Government—it was certainly acknowledged by the previous one.

This might be more difficult, but I would be interested to know the answer. Mr Jonathan Evans, head of the Security Service, mentioned China as a specific country. Would the noble Baroness be willing to agree with that, or is it too sensitive to talk about?

[Baroness Neville-Jones]

I think that I will refrain from rising to that one. The noble Lord is quite right that this is one of the reasons why we have fixed our eyes on this threat. It is real. There is evidence that theft has taken place and it must be stopped, so there is no dispute between us. In my original Answer I was saying that we are trying to put a value on the losses. In other words, we are doing some historical work but also looking at the trend lines to be able to know more than we do at the moment about both the volume and the nature of the threat we face.