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Digital Economy Bill [HL]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the many noble Lords who have spoken. I do not hold to the particular wording of this amendment. I very much hope that the Minister, in his replies, will not do the tiresome government trick of trying to treat every amendment as literal. Certainly, that is fine on Report, but in Committee they are very much designed to elicit debate and draw out points of concern. I think that this amendment has succeeded from that point of view. I certainly shall not press it at Committee stage; I do not intend to press any of my amendments in Committee, unless I get a completely bananas answer from the Government, which I am sure I will not from the noble Lord. I am certain that we will return to this matter in a more directed and considered way on Report, particularly if the Government, as seems to be the case, show no sign of movement. My principal concern with the clause is that it qualifies subsection (1) and not subsection (2). This amplification of the current duties would naturally fit in subsection (2), but it is put into the Communications Act as a direct, single and special qualifier of subsection (1); that is, it reduces the duties to the citizen and the consumer by taking on board the need to cuddle up to the industry in order to encourage greater investment. That is a dangerous thing for a regulator to do. To answer the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Maxton, I think that this sort of thing belongs with the department. That is where this sort of relationship ought to exist and where this sort of support ought to come from. The regulator ought to take a dispassionate view, judging between the consumer and the industry. In particular, as is set out in the Bill, it ought to put the citizen and the consumer first. The way in which the legislation has been structured directly threatens that. As several noble Lords mentioned, it strikes hard at the duties to the citizen and the consumer. The use, twice, of the word "appropriate" puts Ofcom, which is supposedly a regulator, in the position of picking winners. That is a dangerous thing for a Government to do, let alone a regulator. The Minister looks puzzled, but how can Ofcom judge what is appropriate without getting into the business of deciding between one set of investment and another? Paragraph (c) contains the word "efficient", which, in the context of qualifying this, gives me considerable concern about how the investment is to be directed. In his reply, the Minister referred to high-quality drama. I got the feeling when he was talking about that that the people who are briefing him are living in the world of six months ago and not the world of today; they are living in a world where somehow we can defend the old ways of doing things. I hope to live in the world that the noble Lord, Lord Mitchell, outlined—a world of extraordinary new opportunities. When I started looking at the Bill, I thought that it was ridiculous in many ways; the Government seemed to be trying to hold back a slowly rising tide of change and that just would not work. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Mitchell, pointed out, we are facing not a tide but a tsunami—the dam has broken. He outlined a world where there is the growth of apps, to be followed by a decent e-book, at last—I am dead certain that Apple will not produce anything other than that. This will create an enormous change, not only for this part of the Bill but certainly for Clauses 4 onwards. I declare an interest as someone who earns most of his money from selling copyright on the net. It is wrong to see these things as a threat. They are an enormous opportunity. The way in which to harness an opportunity is not to live with the old monopolists and try to shore them up, doing cosy deals with the big beasts of the industry, but to encourage the underdogs and the people who are motivated to change. If the Minister had looked at the computer industry five years ago, how much money would he have put on Apple? I am afraid that I was not nearly as wise as the noble Lord, Lord Mitchell. I thought that Apple had a nice little niche to itself but that it had been defeated; it was hanging on somehow in a little cosy corner. Now it has come back and, goodness, it is making a change to the world. Will noble Lords continue to be refused iPhones? It is becoming impossible to see how, if I had the choice, I would wish to buy a Windows computer again. The world has changed. There is a sudden explosion of capability out of the back field, out of a neglected area. This clause, to judge from the noble Lord’s speech, is aimed at imposing higher prices, which means shoring up the old monopolies and giving them extra money in return for investing rather than looking at new people and new ways of doing things. This has to be the wrong way of doing things and the wrong time to disempower the consumer and the citizen.