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Digital Economy Bill [HL]

First, I declare not a financial interest but an interest as a member of Nominet UK’s policy advisory body for several years, so I am fairly well acquainted with some of the affairs of that company, which runs the .uk domain space on which we rely. In principle, I see exactly why the Government would like to have reserve powers over Nominet. Nominet was originally owned by the people who got people to sign up for domain names, so perhaps the current governance structure is not the most suitable one for something that is really a .uk plc asset and we need extra powers and/or to reorganise the governance of the company. Moves are being made in that direction at the moment. I have tabled these two amendments because Nominet was concerned about a mistake in Amendment 27—I spotted it just in time, although I know that it was also spotted by the Bill team—which sought to take out two lines too many; the lines actually refer to another new section on preparing reports. I have asked to delete all the stuff to do with asking Ofcom to report on Nominet. Why is Ofcom involved in this? Nominet is not a regulated industry; Ofcom is a regulator, so why should the Government want Ofcom to report on Nominet and the domain name space? I can see that it comes under telecommunications and looks as if it is in the same ambit, but some of its stuff does not touch on the Ofcom area and is not Ofcom’s responsibility. Therefore, there may be circumstances in which Ofcom is not the most suitable body to report, should we require such a report, and if we feel there is a challenge in this area. Surely the Secretary of State could ask anyone to prepare a report, as Secretaries of State do when they see that things are going wrong in other areas. We have had many notable reports recently on other IT matters, such as losses of data and other such significant matters. I repeat, why should Ofcom report on Nominet? Is there, therefore, an intention to start regulating Nominet? What is the challenge? Why is Ofcom involved? That is what these amendments seek to find out.