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Digital Economy Bill [HL]

I sympathise with the concern that a technical obligations order does not just run and run without any further assessment of its impact or effectiveness. Having a clear expiry date would also ensure that Parliament had an opportunity to assess whether the replacement order was still justified. We would object to ISPs continuing to bear a technical obligation to restrict the subscription of certain subscribers, even when technology subscriber behaviour or copyright law has moved on so as to make it irrelevant. That would be ridiculous, so there needs to be a quick and easy way to remove burdensome regulation when it is no longer applicable. I am therefore slightly disappointed that the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, did not move his amendment. My noble friend’s amendment is rather more detailed. It has the advantage of allowing the rapid renewal of an order to ensure that there is no break in its effect, while still ensuring proper ongoing assessment and scrutiny. I am sure noble Lords will also have noted the inconsistency between the detailed and almost excessive assessment of the impact of Clauses 4 to 8, as laid out in Clause 9, and the complete lack of any such reporting duty on the technical measures. We would not want to insist on three-monthly reports in perpetuity, as Clause 9 does, but some level of reporting is essential.