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Digital Economy Bill [HL]

My Lords, the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, is extremely important. We have to be balanced. If we are going to require certain things of the ISPs, then the other side—or the other party involved—must also have the duty to provide them, otherwise the process is hugely imbalanced. I take this opportunity to say to the Minister that this is not a "them and us" situation. One is not trying to be against the copyright holders. I endorse entirely what the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, said about the last amendment. These last three groups of amendments have been about trying to ensure that Ofcom and the Secretary of State have sufficient information to make a properly balanced decision. The challenge on the first group was that the Minister said, "You don’t need Ofcom to have this information because the Secretary of State will take it into consideration after he sees the report". On the second group, we heard that Ofcom was going to advise the Secretary of State primarily, so that what Ofcom says will be hugely important and it should be doing the wider, earlier investigation; if it does not, a report will be produced that is rubbished by the Minister and the Government will get egg on their face. The Minister should take all this back and think about what will inform the decision of the Secretary of State to go further into the technical measures. It is when the technical measures start getting implemented that whichever Government are in charge will have a huge outcry from the general populous. If widespread technical measures are put in place, businesses will react and possibly relocate out of the UK and there will be huge effects on the market. If that does not happen, then all well and good, but I would rather look on the gloomy side than say, "We just hope people will respond". We have to work out whether Ofcom will produce a complete report, in which case we need the provisions of the earlier amendments, or whether it will be the Secretary of State, in which case we can downplay the importance of the Ofcom report. Either way, Amendment 170 is essential for us at least to get balance at this stage in this requirement.