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| Stuff the (Single) Market -- with canapés; Tax the Rich -- lightly ... |
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| Anshika's appointment: a blow for Wallace and Gromit |
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| Tea at 3pm? You must be joking!* |
Reviewed by Jeremy
on
Monday, May 28, 2012
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What the press release about the new attaché does not explicitly say, is that the costs of this and the other attachés that are in the pipeline, are being met by the IPO itself (and not the BIS). As the IPO has agency status and therefore gets all its funds from the income it receives from its users, that means that it is the IPO's "customers" who are ultimately meeting the entire cost.
ReplyDeleteThis and other interesting information can be gleaned from a review of the minutes of the IPO's steering board, available here: http://www.ipo.gov.uk/about/whatwedo/steer/steer-minutes.htm
Readers will draw their own conclusions, but one interpretation of the contents of the last few years' minutes is that the IPO is now being seen by the BIS as a potential [if not actual] cash cow to fund high profile BIS projects that used to be centrally funded.
The IPO is currently running a substantial surplus, and rather than using it to provide its customers with an improved service, a philosophy has been promulgated that the BIS actually has the status of a shareholder in the IPO, and as such is entitled to receive a dividend from the surplus accumulated by the IPO. This is in addition to the payment of interest on notional capital that was provided to meet the cost of the IPO's infrastructure. Staff morale is not good, partly because of the cost-cutting "working without walls" initiative ["spin" for getting rid of individual offices in favour of open plan] and the withholding of increments that are not being withheld in other parts of the BIS who are not run on an agency basis. Trying to balance what the IPO needs to operate effectively and politically-imposed targets has been an ongoing problem.
I recall attending a meeting at CIPA in the early 1990's when Agency status was being proposed, where the senior Patent Office officials expressed optimism that agency status would free them from their shackles and allow them to give their customers what they wanted and were prepared to pay for. As might have been expected, political control is not easily relinquished, as is evident from the following quote from the 1st Dec 2011 minutes:
"7.3 Mr Gilbert regarded BIS as a shareholder and the IPO as its subsidiary. As such it was important for the IPO to get a clear steer from BIS."