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Digital Economy Bill [HL]

My Lords, I move Amendment 168 on behalf of my noble friend Lady Miller. I shall speak also to Amendment 174. In the course of our debates, the Minister has reassured us that the technical measures will not be imposed without demonstrable failure of the initial obligations and that there will be a graded response. The question is: what will be the empirical evidence that the initial steps have failed to cure what is clearly an issue? I am not at all at odds with what the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, had to say in that respect. We wish to see the proper upholding of copyright, but it has to be done—to use the word that the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, has almost but not quite resiled from—in a "proportionate" way. On what basis will that be done? We do not believe that it should done purely on the basis of the Secretary of State’s decision. Pure whim, the length of thumb of the Secretary of State—we have talked about this in earlier debates. It should be done on the basis of a proper report by Ofcom, whether a regular report or a special report. That applies to both Clause 10 and Clause 11. I hope that the Government will look again at this aspect because, in order to create confidence, technical measures are an important step. As we know, and to repeat what I said earlier, they have caused a great deal of controversy, but if they are to be introduced then that must be on the basis of proper evidence that the steps taken to date have been a failure. The only institution that will carry confidence and will be regarded as being sufficiently objective in those circumstances is Ofcom. That is the reason for Amendments 168 and 174. I beg to move.