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Digital Economy Bill [HL]

My Lords, if I may say so to my noble friend Lord Whitty, we are not discussing "run of the mill"; as the noble Lord, Lord Razzall, indicated in his opening remarks, we are concerned about multiple infringements, which is a serious issue. The problem, as the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, aptly identified—in fact, he summed it up rather better than I am likely to—is how one quantifies the seriousness of the infringement. The noble Lord, Lord Razzall, suggested that the trouble with the concept of the threshold is that there is a question about whether it should mean the number of times or the number of infringements, but, as the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, indicated, once might be enough if substantial sums of money were involved. The Government’s conclusion about these amendments is that they have provoked an interesting debate, and one that will exercise our minds continually throughout the Bill, but the amendments themselves will not do. Surely it is better that we recognise the range of potential infringements that would be serious, and that we have sufficient flexibility to be able to cover all infringements when they are serious, whether they are quantifiable in terms of one, two, 50 or several thousand. The Government’s argument is straightforward: it is best left to the code to provide, effectively, room for horses for courses with regard to the nature of infringement, rather than trying to put figures in the primary legislation when on all sides we are wrestling to identify what those figures would be. Certainly the figures that the noble Lord, Lord Razzall, was identifying will not do. I ask the noble Lord to accept that he has identified an important issue. We all appreciate the fact that we are concerned not about casual infringement but serious infringement. That may be a question of infringement over time, infringement that is hugely costly or infringement that occurred on many occasions by large numbers of people, but it is better that these issues are identified in the code than that we attempt to put figures into primary legislation. That is why I hope he will feel able to withdraw his amendment.