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Digital Economy Bill [HL]

My Lords, the Minister hangs on to the principle that the subscriber must be the one with whom the buck stops. I can see the practicality of that; the question is then how to make that practically liveable-with. Coming back to what the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, has said, we must have some kind of idea what defences will be available to a subscriber. I would very much like the Minister to say what I tried to get him to say before: that a subscriber who has done what he reasonably ought to have done will not find himself prosecuted under the Bill—in other words, his appeal against his details being given to the copyright holder will be successful if he can show that he has done what he ought to have done. He has, perhaps following the warning notice, taken some action of which he is reasonably capable and therefore, if a further transgression occurs, he has done what he could. There has to be some kind of defence here, otherwise subscribers are being laid open to the actions of people over whom they have no control. The poor Clerk of the Parliaments is going to be in a great deal of trouble; every evening when I go home, I sit upstairs and zip a movie down on to my machine—my internet is very fast so it takes only a few minutes—and he is going to be liable for it. Presumably we will have some defences put up on the parliamentary network and there will be some accepted means for the Clerk to evade what would otherwise be his liability under the Bill. That is if it is indeed the Clerk; I presume it is, because Clerks seem to control everything in this place. There has to be some protection for the person who is essentially innocent and diligent, because the technology has too many holes in it otherwise.