Reviewing the UK Government Response to the Hargreaves Review

I've written a number of columns about the Hargreaves Review, and its generally sensible ideas. But, ultimately, those proposals mean nothing if they are not accepted by the UK government and implemented. That makes today's official response particularly important. You can measure the scale of Hargreaves's success from the opening paragraph on that page: "The response accepts all ten of Professor Hargreaves’ recommendations.

The Government’s goal is to have measures in place by the end of this Parliament that will realise the Review’s vision and deliver real value to the UK economy, and to the creators and users of Intellectual Property (IP)." That's a pretty amazing achievement, given the way that previous reports were ignored to a greater or lesser degree. But of course the devil is in the details, and what follows is a quick run-through of the key proposals.

As I noted a couple of months ago, perhaps the key proposal of the report was one that might be overlooked as being “obvious”: that policy should be based on evidence. But the importance of that truly profound idea can be seen from the number of times that it is invoked by the UK government in its reponse....