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Digital Economy Bill [HL]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Buscombe for her relevant and pertinent remarks, although I am now rather worried about the Minister’s health. He seems to be looking all right; I just hope he will make it through the rest of this evening—perhaps even for the rest of the debate. It looks as if we have a long hard road ahead in this Committee, and I would hate to think that he would not make it. I am glad to hear the reluctance from the Benches opposite to create new bodies and quangos. I am sorry that the Minister thought my remark unfair, but he must admit that quite a few have been created in the past few years. I do not see how removing the option to have various other bodies would be more effective. Surely the most effective method of doing something is to use the body—in this case, Ofcom—that already has the expertise to carry out the job and already has an overhead, offices and everything that is required to do this, rather than to set up any new body, or bodies, as my noble friend Lady Buscombe pointed out. The explanation that the Minister gave has not really answered this point. He commented that the remit would be limited, but frankly that is even less reason to set up a new body. I do not know if he would care to comment on that before I withdraw the amendment.