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Digital Economy Bill [HL]

My Lords, this has been an interesting debate. I thank all noble Lords who have drawn the Minister out to get at least the statement he made in the last 30 seconds. The clause is remarkably sloppily drafted; noble Lords are right that we do not know what is meant by "allowed", nor do we even know what is meant by "subscriber". I am grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, who induced the Minister into what was for him a record speech, at something over 20 minutes, declining to answer the simple question of which subscriber it would be; Parliament or the individual. I never cease to be an admirer of the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham, because he is able to carry on at length, which enables him to avoid answering a very direct question like that. The real clue in the Minister’s answer, though, came when he started to talk about child abuse. Nothing in the Bill aims to deal with that issue, nor should it want to; we already have perfectly strong laws to deal with it. The only reason why I can imagine he would stray into that territory is to distract us all from the total inadequacy of the definitions in the clause. I would be grateful if the Minister could come up with a list of the defences. I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones for his suggestion that there should be more that we can draw out from the code. However, it will not be adequate for us to feel that we can rely entirely on the code; there are some fundamentals that need to be defined in the Bill, and the definition of "allowed" is certainly one of them. The other point that the Minister rested far too heavily on was the claim that we are all making a meal of the fact that there are not heavy sanctions and that this is not a very serious issue; the first letter will simply arrive for the subscriber, and if they are not guilty then they need not worry very much. I was under the impression, though, that by the time they receive that first warning letter, they will already be on a list. For most normal law-abiding citizens, even being on a list of people who have done something that they should not is not a position that they should be in if they have done nothing wrong. There are a lot of issues there. However, the fundamental issue is that the subscriber is still, in the way that this is drafted, in the box labelled "guilty" until proven innocent. The Ministers may shake their heads, but until they have defined "allowed" then the subscriber is in the box marked "guilty" because they are not able to prove that they are innocent without going through the whole rigmarole of what is allowed in the Bill. They may only get a letter, and no further action may be taken. However, at that time, they are already, as I have said, on a list. These are serious issues. It will be quite right to return to them on Report. Anything that the Government can do in the mean time in terms of elucidating exactly what they mean would be helpful. However, further definition is required. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment 43 withdrawn. Amendments 44 to 49 not moved. Amendment 50 unallocated. Amendment 51 not moved. Amendment 52 Moved by