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Digital Economy Bill [HL]

My Lords, with this amendment we come back to the real strategy here. I declare my interest as chair of Consumer Focus, and on this I speak exactly for it and its policy and not from my personal prejudices. Our preferred strategy is certainly to engage in stage 1. The points that I have been making up to this stage have sought to improve the transparency and accountability of stage 1—that is, that the notification should go out. We then move to stage 2 and the use of technical measures—that is, sanctions—with all the problems of due process which that involves. I will come on to that issue in later amendments. It is a very serious step. It is a step that needs to be taken in the light of all the evidence. A few amendments ago we were talking about what will be included in Ofcom’s reports, and most of us around the Chamber indicated that part of the assessment really needs to assess how effective we have been in developing legal means of file-sharing. That ought to be the objective of the Government, the industry and the right holders. If we are going to do that effectively, we need to pause to see whether stage 1 has worked and we need the facts as to how far the legal market has developed before we take the significant step in stage 2. In the impact assessment produced prior to the Bill, the Government indicated that they thought that 70 per cent of subscribers would desist on receipt of the first letter and that that would lead to a reduction of 55 per cent in the number of illegal downloads. The Government were being a little optimistic there for the reasons we have explored in terms of whether the subscriber actually gets the notification as distinct from the perpetrator. Nevertheless, if we take that figure, we have already dealt with something like half the problem. We then need to ensure that the vacuum that is created moves over to legal providers. There are all kinds of legal providers—Spotify, Skype, Sky Songs and others—operating in the field, some of which are more successful than others, and there will be new business models developed. We want to ensure that that happens in a relatively short period. If the strategy is to get to legal provision which is of a higher quality than individual attempts at file-sharing, which is provided at a reasonable cost and with a reasonable return to the rights holders, we ought to pause at that stage. Two years seems to me about right. I am not hung up on two years—there are some delays built into the process of the Bill in any case—but we certainly need a period of reflection before we move to stage 2. Putting it up front before we move into the second stage in Clause 10 would be a sensible thing to do. I therefore support the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, although I apologise that I was not here to hear him move the amendment.