Regulatory Reform (Registered Designs) Order 2006

I join the noble Lord, Lord de Mauley, in thanking the Minister for the way in which he has explained quite a complicated issue. The Minister will know that I have consistently in this Room and on the Floor of the House congratulated the department on how it conducts its consultation exercises. That has not yet persuaded me that my party should abandon our policy of abolishing the Department of Trade and Industry, but it will be important that the culture of consultation survives the transfer of functions as they go to other departments. There is only one point that concerns me about the consultation. I certainly welcome the proposition that the novelty test should be abandoned. I am slightly concerned that in the public consultation exercise the Chartered Institute of Patent Agents suggested that the registry should consider alternative approaches to the registration process, such as the Australia model, where applications are never examined unless the validity of the design is challenged in litigation proceedings. I am not certain why the Government have simply rejected that proposal, which goes slightly further than what they are suggesting. There is a slightly strange sentence in the regulatory impact assessment, which states that, "““despite some concern over the exact process of examination, they””" the CIPA— "““agreed that the Registry should either ‘search or not search’ and that the present situation should be clarified””." That does not seem to me to answer the question of why the CIPA recommendation has been rejected. I should be grateful if the Minister could explain that. In general, we support the order and think that it is a very important reform.