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Digital Economy Bill [HL]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his reply on those amendments. We are making some progress. The Minister’s reply was a deal more informative than it was last time. There is still a problem with the boundary being set where it has been placed, but if the Minister is saying that duties are going to be different depending on the ability of the subscriber to control the activities of the individuals using the service, then we are making some progress. He has acknowledged that it is probably more difficult for a university system to control what their users do than it is for a library in a fixed position, so to speak. The local government example is fraught with difficulties and I look forward to seeing what the Minister’s letter says. I suspect that it will become more and more difficult to distinguish between the different types of service that are provided and to come up with different types of duties depending on whether it is proportionate or not for that service to take a particular action. It will be so ad hoc that it will be impossible for the administrators of these services to gauge whether what they are doing is reasonable in those circumstances. That is what worries me; this will be a precautionary block on the expansion of these services, particularly the kind of municipal service that the noble Lord, Lord Maxton, talked about. That is what some of us fear. We want to see a flourishing of these services, not a constriction. Little by little, we are teasing out more information from the Minister. He says that he is doing more research into how universities block access or are able to control the activities of their users. I hope that he will come back with more in his letter. He will also address the issue of local authority services, which is an important factor as well. All in all, we await his letter with bated breath. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment 184 withdrawn. Amendment 185 not moved. Amendment 186 Moved by