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Digital Economy Bill [HL]

My Lords, I very much agree with the closing remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley. The issue of costs applies to later amendments, too, so I would not want us to be too hung up on the ratios at this stage. That is why I will ask the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, to withdraw his amendment. However, I am grateful to him and the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, who tabled the amendment, for raising this issue. It will be appreciated by the Committee that we are not talking about an exact science with regard to the allocation of costs. A great deal of consultation and more work have to be done on this. We will be able to debate these issues further on subsequent occasions. As the Committee will appreciate, both noble Lords made reference to the fact that we have made available a draft statutory instrument under Clause 15, which we hope will give a sense of how we consider the contributions from copyright owners to the costs of ISPs, as well as the other costs arising from Clauses 4 to 16, might be calculated. We will have plenty of time to discuss these issues later. The noble Lords pressed me on when we will reach a position. We will need to consult in preparation for the statutory instrument, which needs to be delivered in the spring, so we have work to do. Noble Lords have rightly seen from the draft that it is our view that the majority of the costs should be borne by copyright holders. Our working assumption in the draft is that copyright holders should meet 75 per cent of the costs and others should meet 25 per cent. As I say, this working assumption is the basis on which we can take the issue further. A number of amendments are already tabled for later in the Bill and it is clear that there are areas in which the issue of costs needs to be debated further. I hope that in our response noble Lords will see that we are seeking to advance the debate, but we have not reached a final position yet. The debates that are bound to obtain later in Committee will develop the issue further. On that basis and with those assurances, I hope that the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw his amendment.