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Digital Economy Bill [HL]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Razzall, for moving the amendment in the terms that he did. We are concerned to move the debate on. As the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, identified, the Government agree that copyright owners, as the main beneficiaries of the legislation, should pay the bulk of the costs. The draft SI that we have made available sets out our working assumption that copyright owners should meet some 75 per cent of the costs, with ISPs meeting the remaining 25 per cent. We are not wedded to these numbers and plan to consult on the whole of the draft statutory instrument, but they give a clear indication of our thinking, as I mentioned earlier. We believe that this approach is right because it will give both sides the right incentives to keep the costs down and the processes efficient, as well as encouraging both sides to continue to look for commercial solutions to the copyright infringement problem. I believe that the Bill already provides a mechanism for that. The draft SI begins to show which costs will be included and sets out the need for an audit of those costs. Therefore, we are making progress towards identifying these issues. Amendment 108, however, looks at a different aspect of the costs and seeks to ensure that subscribers do not incur any costs in meeting their obligations under Clause 4. I assume that this refers to the costs involved in appealing against copyright infringement reports or in being included within a copyright infringement report list. Although I appreciate the wish to ensure that there is no disincentive to use the appeals mechanism, I do not think that we want to circumscribe too much how the code will deal with this aspect. I would not expect the appeals process to be expensive, but there may be merit in a low fee for accessing the mechanism, which would be refundable if the appeal was successful. I do not see it as something that should be constrained on the face of the Bill, nor do I think that this is an extravagant cost, but we usually seek to deter superficial and unnecessary appeals against decisions, and a small cost for accessing the mechanism seems to us to be entirely reasonable. We had a debate on the whole issue of costs earlier today and I gave an indication of the Government’s thinking in relation to both the earlier amendments and these. I hope that the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw his amendment.