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Digital Economy Bill [HL]

My Lords, I will not harry the Minister at this time of night if he is willing to write to me later, but I really want to know what we are in for when it comes to timescales. The notice arrives at the ISP. The criteria for sending a letter are triggered. What are the timescales from then on? How long does the subscriber have to appeal, if they are going to appeal? How long before a second infringement counts as a second infringement, rather than just a continuation of the first? If the subscriber appeals, how long will that process be likely to last? While the subscriber is appealing, are they exempt from the triggering of a second letter, or will that process run concurrently? I understood from what the noble Lord said that there would be a gentle first letter and a heavier second letter and that, if there was a third infringement, the subscriber would be chucked to the wolves. Is that the correct interpretation? The timescale—the time given for education, the process by which education takes place and how appeals fit into all this—is the one thing in this Bill that we can batten on to in making sure that what we are doing is reasonable, so far as the citizen is concerned. We are starting out with 7 million citizens, or thereabouts, who are not following the law that we would wish them to follow. I do not believe that either party wants a substantial number of those people to end up in the civil justice system as it is experienced at present by people who fall foul of the BPI. Some of those people, who have done nothing more than make stuff available for upload, are three years into the civil justice system without knowing what their fate will be. That is not fun for a young person. It is happening on a small scale, but it gives you an idea of the BPI’s policy on these things. It does not let go. It pursues hard. One can expect this policy to be followed as regards people who will get caught up in the process as a result of the Bill. If that becomes a substantial number of people, first, the civil justice system will not appreciate it, but, secondly, there will be stories in the newspapers and on "Your and Yours" every other week about people caught doing something that people regard as possibly on the fringes of legality but entirely ordinary. We have a big education programme ahead of us. We want to succeed in that. The timescale that this process works on—the time that we give ourselves to educate people and the processes that they go through to gather awareness before we pitch them into the civil justice system—is immensely important. I know that this is not the final version, but I should very much like to hear the Government’s thinking on it.