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Digital Economy Bill [HL]

My Lords, I will make a couple of points on this, because it is a very important issue. Are we talking about numbers of infringements? There are many other amendments, coming up later, which talk about the number of infringements as opposed to the value of the infringements. An awful lot of figures are being thrown around by various interested parties, for example, that X billion pounds are lost per year to the industry. Some of it I doubt, because I do not think that the people would have spent the money on it; some of it is probably real. There are also figures of how many people are involved. It would be useful to gather some of these for statistical purposes so that we can see how big the issue is and if it is really as big as they say. For instance, one lot of people say that 7 million UK citizens are involved in this unlawful activity. That is a lot of people. It would be very useful to know whether this is the figure before we get heavyweight. If that is the figure and we are going to have an impact on it, these measures will not be able to go to them in one letter. The Minister very often says, "Oh, well, they’re just going to get a letter and, of course, they are going to desist at that point". I would be very surprised if they did. I know several senior government employees—it is probably safer for them if I leave it very general—who have unsecure wireless networks at home. One of them, who I was having a go at because he really ought to know better, said, "Oh, I’m miles out in the country; I’ll be perfectly safe". Someone else at the same dinner said very much the same thing. This was a few nights ago when we were discussing this Bill. Do not think that there are a lot of sensible people out there who know what they are going to do or that this is going to happen overnight. You will catch a lot of people. Let us say that to crack down on this 7 million, you are going to have to send out 1 million, perhaps 2 million, letters. It is quite a lot. Let us say that at the end of this you send a second letter, then a third letter; I do not know where we will get to. This is why the number of the infringements, or the value of the infringements, is so important because, at some point, technical measures will be taken to render that person’s internet access useless. Music files are not very big. To prevent the downloading of music your internet access will be unusable. To prevent the downloading of film and large games programmes, you can throttle access to deny that and still allow moderate internet access. Some government websites, like Defra, will still time out on you but some of the others will not. The whole point about this is that there has to be a proportionate and commensurate gain for the level of harm that we are going to do when we start cutting off, possibly, half a million or a million people’s internet access. The rest of the Government are watching and will be worrying about it. I quote from the 8 January edition of the Daily Telegraph. Under the headline of a smiling chap who calls himself Gordon Brown and looks very like the Prime Minister—I am quite sure he is the Prime Minister—he says: ""This can deliver benefits both to the firm and the worker, as well as the wider economy, society and the environment"." He is talking about universal super-fast broadband in all areas of the country. He continues: ""Indeed, it will soon be seen as indispensable as electricity, gas or water … The digital initiative … can create 1.5 million new skilled jobs … no one area should be left out … Thanks, too, to the exceptional work of Martha Lane Fox, our aim within the next five years is to shift the vast majority of large transactional services online. This should help secure even better value for money"." This is saving taxpayers’ money and means the efficient delivery of government services, but you must balance that with the fact that it all goes out of the window if you cut off a significant number of people’s internet. That will happen perhaps after the third or the sixth letter, or after a certain value of transactions. I thought that I might as well mention it at this early stage because, in all the debates on this, the question of the level of infringement before action is taken needs to be taken seriously. The Minister, in his circumlocutions, is trying to suggest that we are being very heavy-handed about this, but I am afraid there is no point in going on and on about this at length; at the end of the day, he does not fool us. It is very simple; we must balance the money for six large digital rights holders against the value for the UK taxpayer. At some point, that will have to be decided, and this is as good an amendment as any for raising the issue.