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Digital Economy Bill [HL]

My Lords, if the debate on this amendment is not quite a Second Reading debate it comes very close to one, given the range of issues involved, the depth and significance of them and the differing views that have been expressed about the issue with which the Government are confronted and seek to deal with in this Bill. I will deal with one or two extraneous matters first, and then perhaps I will get on to the main issues. I have not the slightest doubt that the noble Lord, Lord Razzall, is more than satisfied with the debate that he has provoked with his amendment and therefore will not have the slightest hesitation in withdrawing it in due course. So I am not going to address him in terms of the necessity for the amendment to be withdrawn. I am sure he knew when he tabled it that, as has been reflected in this debate, at present we are merely in the foothills of this Bill and the issues we have to address, and Clause 17 rises before us as the Everest which we will need to surmount in due course. We will have had extensive discussions well before that. As has been indicated to the Committee during this debate there are close to a couple of hundred amendments between us and Clause 17. So it is not as though these issues will not receive extensive discussion. The amendment has helped to identify difficulties, challenges and problems and, in asking the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment, I hope to show that the Government, in their wisdom and after full consultation and endless representation, have got the balance right in the Bill. On most sides there is recognition of the serious problems and of the great difficulties involved in solving them. I shall deal first with the extraneous ones. If the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, will forgive me, I shall address his point at the proper location, which is the next amendment. I have got almost word for word what he said and he will receive my reply when we get to the next amendment, which is where it should be properly addressed. In introducing the amendment, the noble Lord, Lord Razzall, identified an issue which, in an obvious way, was countermanded almost immediately by the noble Lord, Lord Howard of Rising, who indicated that he took an entirely contrary view. He said that the problem at the present time was that those who needed to get on with the business of suing successfully were having great difficulties; it was essential that they should have the path cleared for them and nothing in the Bill ought to inhibit that. I hear what the noble Lord says; he speaks from the Opposition Front Bench and therefore makes an important point. However, he will have heard from all sides of the Committee, not least from his own Benches—this was graphically expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas—of the problems faced by ordinary citizens through the depredations of lawyers, acting often on behalf of significant interests, who are conducting themselves in ways which are exploitative of our fellow citizens. We need to erect defences because, as the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, indicated, the issue is not one of a gentle warning note or anything like that; nor is it one in which the lawyers operating in this way expect the issue to go to court action; it is one which is exploitative of people’s fears. The demands go out and people respond because they are under a great deal of pressure from those demands; they feel that a court case will put them in great difficulty and therefore concede. This is not the way in which we want the law to work in circumstances where right holders have interests to be defended. This was identified by my noble friend Lord Triesman. We fully understand why he was not here at Second Reading—he was in a much less interesting location, of course, because the debate on Second Reading here was quite fascinating—but we are glad that he is back today to give us the benefit of his perspective on one significant element of right holders. I emphasise that the Government are cognisant of all the issues that have been raised. I wish to deal with one other extraneous factor. I do not call it a red herring but my noble friend Lord Mitchell is right when he says that a lot of downloading activity goes on among young people who, if not acting in full innocence, are certainly not setting out to be law breakers and we would not want to criminalise them. As a fair percentage of the people in the age bracket he identified are voters, I am sure that we do not want to be in the business of criminalising them in this year of Grace 2010. Let me emphasise the fact that the Bill is not about criminalising people. That is not the issue that we are involved in. Peer-to-peer file-sharing is already unlawful. With the Bill, we are simply seeking to enforce an existing civil law more effectively. The behaviour we are tackling is a civil infringement, not a criminal one. I want to dispense with the canard that we are about the criminal law against people, who in many cases identified today, may be acting with some degree of innocence.