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Digital Economy Bill [HL]

My Lords, I speak to Amendment 191, which was ably referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Howard. I thought that he made the point entirely appropriately that in some cases of parliamentary drafting the word "may" means "must". It is perfectly reasonable not to have a great debate about the use of those words. But in this case, there is an important point to be made about the contents of the code. It is important to get certainty from the outset. When we talked about the initial obligations code, we talked about what needed to be included and Clause 13(4) is an important element of that. The signpost should be "must" rather than "may". If no provision for the payment of a penalty to a person is specified in the code and there are no provisions requiring a copyright owner to indemnify an internet service provider or for postponement in the case of appeal, the code would be extremely deficient. Although this amendment is innocuous on the face of it, it is significant and I look forward to the Minister’s reply.