I do not want to give a time scale. The hon. Gentleman has already referred to one that I gave upstairs that has come back to haunt me, so I am wary of offering him any more time scales when faced with his blandishments. All I can say is that it will take time for the new system to take effect, and we will need to monitor it. We will undertake to do that.
I will now move on to the hon. Gentleman’s amendments 2 and 3. Having sought to broaden the criminal sanctions to cover unregistered designs, he is seeking in the same group of amendments to narrow the scope by effectively restricting the sanction to exact copying only. That would be the effect of amendments 2 and 3. That would go too far in narrowing the scope of the provision.
I remind the House that the clause was introduced to assist designers who told us of the problems they had in dealing with copyists who set out to copy their designs intentionally and blatantly. That is what we are tackling in this important legislation. They believed that such copyists were skilled at playing the legal system and counted on smaller businesses running out of time and money to pursue them. They told us—as I am sure they told my hon. Friend the Member for Hove and others—that the issue was not restricted to exact copying. Copyists are clever enough not to implicate themselves in that crude way; the issue often involves tweaking an existing design. The sanction protects against by referring not only to exact copying but to the copying of
“designs which differ only in immaterial details”.
The amendments would in effect restrict the penalties for copying to exact and counterfeit copies only. The sanction would therefore fail to address the very problem the designers have told us about.
The combined effect of the amendments would be to create greater uncertainty by extending criminal penalties to unregistered designs, and to fail to tackle a genuine grievance by narrowing the provision to cover only exact copying. We are tackling that grievance in the Bill. I hope that, in the light of my comments, the hon. Gentleman will not press his amendments.
Let me now turn to the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire. I always enjoy his speeches, in which he proudly talks of the contribution of Scotland, not only to the UK, but to nothing less than world history. He is absolutely right about that. For me, the Scottish enlightenment is one of the great events in the history of ideas, and I always enjoy hearing celebration of it.
I understand the principle behind the hon. Gentleman’s amendment and the importance of the issue to legal services and innovative businesses in Scotland. We have been working closely with the court services in Scotland and in Northern Ireland, as well as with Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service in England and Wales, so that we can take account of their views. Let me make it clear to him again: the Government will look favourably at any proposal to site a local division wherever there is a business need, and a local division can be located in Scotland should there be enough cases to support one. I said on Second Reading that it was very possible that there could be one in Scotland, and I stand by that.
I assure the hon. Gentleman that the Government will consult with the devolved Administrations in Scotland and Northern Ireland and with the court services in those jurisdictions. It is not necessary to legislate to ensure that the consultation and co-operation will happen, because we are already doing it. It is also not necessary to legislate nationally in order to set up a local division, because the process for doing so is purely administrative. That process is set out in the unified patent court agreement. We will be following it with consultation.