Thats misleading, since software patents are regularly granted anyway. From the article you quoted:
"Patent laws in the UK and throughout Europe specify a non-exhaustive list of excluded things that are not regarded as inventions to the extent that a patent application relates to the excluded thing as such. This list includes programs for computers.
Despite this, the United Kingdom Intellectual Property Office (UKIPO) regularly grants patents to inventions that are partly or wholly implemented in software"
The patent situation is definitely better in UK and Europe than in US, but actual enforcement is key. The problem is using ambiguity of English to justify the software as having a "technical effect" and patentable by that metric. At which point saying that software isn't patentable is at best misleading since you could argue that all software has a "technical effect".
It's not "ambiguity of English" -- all (usefulsoftware does have a technical effect. Or would you say software should be excluded from the "tech industry" and people should stop calling themselves "software engineers"? This is why it is mostly patentable in the EU.
About the only thing the "technical effect" limitation prevents is business method patents.
I don't know the rules in detail, but the claim is that "software isn't patentable". And yet software with a technical effect is patentable. But all software has a technical effect. Ergo, software isn't patentable because its software, its patentable because it has a technical effect and UKIPO has granted patents on software on that basis. This means that claiming "software isn't patentable" is a misleading claim at best.
"Patent laws in the UK and throughout Europe specify a non-exhaustive list of excluded things that are not regarded as inventions to the extent that a patent application relates to the excluded thing as such. This list includes programs for computers.
Despite this, the United Kingdom Intellectual Property Office (UKIPO) regularly grants patents to inventions that are partly or wholly implemented in software"
The patent situation is definitely better in UK and Europe than in US, but actual enforcement is key. The problem is using ambiguity of English to justify the software as having a "technical effect" and patentable by that metric. At which point saying that software isn't patentable is at best misleading since you could argue that all software has a "technical effect".