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Digital Economy Bill [HL]

Amendments 175 and 176 focus on the reasons that the Secretary of State may give for imposing a technical obligation. They raise a number of points so, while being as brief as I can, I shall try to set out my concerns as clearly as possible. Amendment 175 was intended to highlight the fact that by allowing paragraph (a) or (b) to provide justification for the imposition of technical obligations, the Bill in fact allows the Secretary of State to avoid any assessment by Ofcom. This is clearly not desirable. I hope that the Minister will agree with me that it would be irresponsible to impose such potentially drastic demands on ISPs without a proper assessment. No order should be made under this section without Ofcom being asked to undertake that necessary preparation. Unfortunately, Amendment 175 is not sufficient as currently drafted and I apologise for this. Since putting it down, I have realised that the phrasing, ""assessment carried out or steps taken"," would allow once again for no assessment to be undertaken. Indeed it seems possible for the Secretary of State to direct Ofcom to start the necessary steps under new Section 124G and then to use that direction as the reason why an order needs to be made under new 124H. Surely this is not the Government’s intention, so we look forward to the Minister’s explanation. Amendment 176 is very much a probing amendment, I hope that the Minister will be able to give us rather more detail about the intention behind paragraph (b). By putting down this amendment I do not mean that I am entirely opposed to the inclusion of a similar paragraph. After all, the Secretary of State should be able to take into consideration any relevant circumstances that might not be covered by an assessment. However, as drafted, this paragraph makes the entire section completely meaningless. At the very least, the section surely needs to be tightened up to ensure that an assessment is not merely an option but must be undertaken before an order is made. Furthermore, I think it would be extremely helpful if the possible circumstances that might be considered relevant, but which would fall outside an assessment, were made clear. I beg to move.