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Digital Economy Bill [HL]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lords for tabling this amendment. The effect of the amendment would be to require notifications sent to subscribers to include information about the protection of electronic communications networks from malware. I understand and sympathise with the reasons why they have tabled the amendment. With such malware it is possible for others to hijack connections for malicious purposes and for the subscribers to be ignorant that it has happened. Receiving a notification about something which, on the face of it, had nothing to do with the subscriber may cause confusion and doubt, and the possibility that such an infringement may have happened via the subscriber’s connection without their knowledge will need to be taken into account. However, while agreeing with the principle of the amendment, I think that such an addition is unnecessary. The notification will already be required under new Section (5)(f) to offer advice about protecting the home network of subscribers and I see that as very much incorporating advice about the sort of threats that this amendment is addressing. We believe that we have this covered. We are again providing an explicit assurance that in the initial letter we will need to offer people advice to enable them to protect their networks. That will definitely be done—I do not think that I can make that more explicit—and it will be covered in the code. As both these points are adequately covered by the existing text, and given my explanation, I hope the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw the amendment.