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Digital Economy Bill [HL]

Before the Minister completes his response, the worry on many sides of the Committee is not that Ofcom has failed to consider consumers’ interests but that it has hyphenated the interests of citizens and consumers, and that what were laid down in the Act as two distinct duties were conflated. This, as the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, said, is a golden opportunity to remedy that deficiency and to emphasise that these are distinct duties that have to be balanced against one another at certain times. No amount of going back to the importance of the investment in support of infrastructure really speaks to that issue. There is a gap here, and it is what goes into the gap that I take the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, to be addressing.