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Digital Economy Bill [HL]

I promised the last time I spoke that I would not delay the Committee on this issue, but I want to assure the noble Lord, Lord Howard, that I am not remotely interested in impinging on the dignity of the House or of Parliament or on the processes that we use; I am trying to draw attention to the fact that, in a very fast-moving technological area such as this, there is sadly a discontinuity between the speed of change and the matters that we must address and the processes that we currently utilise in Parliament. I hear what the noble Lord says about pushing through legislation quickly, but in my experience it is very difficult to do. I know that the super-affirmative procedure is clumsy—we do not pretend otherwise; it was the only means that we could find to raise the issue—but Parliament has a duty to itself to look at the nature of the threats, the problems, the pace of change, and its own processes, and to try to pull these things together. I think that that is what the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, is referring to. It would be good if the House as a whole could come to that conclusion. We may not be able to crack this problem, but pretending that it will not come back and haunt us time and again is not doing ourselves justice. I hope that those on the Liberal Democrat Front Bench will agree and bend their very fertile minds to possible solutions. The present situation is a mess, and it is foolish to pretend that, somehow or other, primary legislation is the way through. It is not.