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Digital Economy Bill [HL]

My Lords, Clause 2 amends the Communications Act by inserting new sections requiring Ofcom to report to the Secretary of State at regular intervals on the UK’s communications infrastructure and services. One such report is where there is a significant change in connection with the matters listed in new Section 134B(1) or (2). It requires that, should Ofcom become aware of a marked change which has a significant impact on business or the public in any of the reporting areas and which it considers should be brought to the attention of the Secretary of State, it should write a further report as soon as practicable. We have not been prescriptive as to when these reports will be prepared. This will ensure that, if there are developing problems or constraints on the UK’s infrastructure, the Government will get advance warning of this from the regulator and, as appropriate, will be able to consider whether any action is needed. Your Lordships will no doubt appreciate that the persons or organisations from which information will be gathered are likely to be very sensitive to disclosure, since much of the information will be commercially confidential, as the noble Lord, Lord Howard, recognised. Disclosure could prejudice network security issues, for example. Because of commercial confidentiality, we believe that the information that Ofcom would obtain will be exempt under Section 44 of the Freedom of Information Act. This is because it is information relating to a particular business, which is subject to the prohibitions in Section 393 of the Communications Act 2003. For the reasons stated, we do not believe that these reports should be made available to the public. However, I assure the noble Lord that we propose to publish an account of the broad information on the overall state of health of the UK’s communications infrastructure, detailed in both the initial and biennial reports. I mentioned earlier that it is our intention to set out in a note for your Lordships how we expect this reporting process to work in practice in a number of areas. I will ensure that that note includes our expectation that the conclusions of these reports will be made public wherever possible. The purpose of the second amendment in this group is to require that all reports to the Secretary of State on domain names are made public by laying a copy in both Houses. I understand what this amendment might be trying to achieve. However, it is likely that Ofcom will itself publish any report on domain names. This might satisfy the noble Lord. The Government are open to transparency and would expect to see any reports published save in exceptional circumstances, where, for example, matters of security or commercial confidentiality would make it inappropriate to publish. Therefore, there just might be cases where the Secretary of State could choose not to publish the report. I would expect this to be the exception rather than the rule, but nevertheless it should be left to the Secretary of State’s discretion. Once again, I will ensure that this is covered in the note that I spoke of earlier. In the light of that assurance, I hope that the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw the amendment.