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Digital Economy Bill [HL]

My Lords, I thank my noble friends Lady Buscombe and Lord Lucas for their support and for making my point rather better than I did. I am also grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, for making a very valid point about the importance of being able to measure what is happening. If you cannot measure what is happening, you do not know what is happening and you do not know whether what you have set out to achieve has been achieved. In that context, I cannot really see how the cost to Ofcom would be so great as to be relevant, as my noble friend Lord Lucas pointed out. If copyright owners are able to tell what is happening in the private sector by subscribing to various services, how is it that Ofcom cannot also see what is happening? I should have thought that any organisation that can afford to have its own bottled water would not find that cost too significant. If the Government cannot know what the starting point is and what will happen later on, they will have no method of knowing whether the Act is successful or unsuccessful. I do not know whether the Minister cares to comment on that.