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Digital Economy Bill [HL]

I shall speak also to Amendment 180. The Government have already made certain concessions on the process to be adopted for technical measures in their response to the Delegated Powers Committee, but I do not think that they have done so on the matter covered by my Amendment 177. We believe that a chance must be given for the initial obligations code to bed down before any new measures are adopted. Earlier, we tabled an amendment about waiting until Ofcom had issued its first annual report. This is very similar in import. I should be interested to hear what assurances the Minister can give. We certainly do not believe that it would be appropriate to act hastily in this respect. It would be an extraordinary set of circumstances for the situation to have got so bad that the Government felt that they had to introduce technical measures within a year. A year and then an assessment seems about right.