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Digital Economy Bill [HL]

My Lords, this is the first of many groups dealing with the knotty question of the division of costs. The amendments in this group look at the costs of sending out the notification letters and compiling the copyright infringements lists, which is a good place to start. However, the question at the moment is left open. As the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, mentioned, this morning the Government brought out a draft statutory instrument on the division of costs to tackle that issue. From my initial study, it appears to apportion 75 per cent of the costs of Clauses 4 and 5 to copyright holders and 25 per cent to ISPs. The costs of Ofcom’s administration and the appeal tribunal are similarly divided. That is a considerable shift from the Government’s original thought of dividing most costs 50:50. One area in which the draft SI has not helped us is in giving more information on the estimates of what the costs actually will be. Currently, we have available several different estimates—the Government’s impact assessment, which is soon to be supplemented by another report on costs, as well as numerous external industry-commissioned reports, some of which are still coming. Perhaps the Minister will enlighten us as to when the department will be able to produce more accurate figures for us to work with, or will the Government leave even that work to Ofcom for resolution after Royal Assent? This draft SI raises a number of other questions. Having different fixed sums in respect of different categories of ISPs is an interesting concept, which merits further scrutiny, as does paragraph (5) of Article 4, which sets out what costs cannot be included in the sum for division. However, with such a short time to absorb this document, perhaps we could await the Minister’s response to these amendments. Fortunately, a few more opportunities are coming up to debate the appropriate division of costs later in Committee. The debate on this group of amendments, as well as the draft SI, will do much to inform them.