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Digital Economy Bill [HL]

My Lords, I am afraid that the Minister’s reply has only served to emphasise the concerns that we all have about this part of the Bill. It is the darkest part of the Bill as far as we are concerned. The Minister is fully aware of all the controversy about technical measures. It is the part of the Bill that has caused most concern. The safeguards regarding when technical measures are contemplated and then put into effect are absolutely crucial to every other Bench, as well as to many Members on the government Benches. It is absolutely vital to get this right. The Minister has not been convincing, in respect of either when Ofcom is able to review these matters and recommend technical measures or when it starts preparing for those technical measures. The idea that Ofcom, well before the first report, could even start preparing for technical measures horrifies me. If we are going to talk about proper government process, we must talk about review by Ofcom. In its first progress report it should ask: has the education process worked? Has the initial obligations code worked in terms of notifications, and so on, as it did in Sweden? Or will we have a situation where the Secretary of State can simply click his fingers before any Ofcom report and say, "Right guys, we had the Act and went through it all but the MPA has flown over and expressed a lot of concern. Let’s go to it. Start the preparations: let’s get a technical obligations code drafted and we’ll put it all into effect"? That may be a dark scenario but it is the one that many people are painting. They believe that the kind of two-part structure that the Government have put into effect is for the purpose of show. They do not believe that this is a genuine undertaking by the Government genuinely to look at the evidence. Everything that the Minister has said on this group of amendments and the last has convinced me that the timing between the initial obligations code and the technical measures code is wafer thin. It could be a matter of months—not a year and not two years. It could all happen suddenly. It would be a major denial of the underlying purposes of the Bill and the good faith that needs to be demonstrated as part of it. I urge the Minister to think very carefully about this. If he genuinely wants the Bill to pass and not get lost in wash-up in the other place, he will have to demonstrate that these provisions are copper-bottomed in how they operate. I just give him that warning. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment 144 withdrawn. Amendments 145 to 147 not moved. Amendment 148 Moved by