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Digital Economy Bill [HL]

I thank the noble Lord for his comment, and I sympathise hugely with what he is saying, but I also feel that the supremacy of Parliament is more important. I also think that it is always possible to fast-track primary legislation. It does not need to take 10 years. Indeed, I believe that the Government want to see this Bill through fairly quickly, and that that will be achieved. I shall comment briefly on my amendment in this group, which was tabled several weeks ago, and a lot of water has flowed under the bridge since then. We were willing to consider the possibility that Clause 17 could be used to implement some steps that the Government were developing that had nearly been completed but were not quite ready to be included in the Bill. The amendment was to give the Government a period of grace to complete any formal stages that such provisions might have been going through, such as a compulsory period of examination at the European level. It has become clear during the past weeks that there are in fact no such provisions. The Government do not know what Clause 17 would be used for, and they have no plans for addressing any other type of online infringement than those set out in Clauses 4 to 16. We are now inclined to the view that Amendment 213 would not be helpful to copyright holders, internet service providers or any other person involved in the industry. It would be actively prejudicial to the interests of Parliament. I shall therefore not be moving it when we reach that point in our proceedings. We sympathise with the ambition behind Clause 17. If the Government could find a way of saying the same thing that did not show quite such contempt for Parliament—we would need to see considerable movement before Clause 17 was in an acceptable form—we might take a different view.