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Digital Economy Bill [HL]

My Lords, we are fully aware of the need to give a domain name registry enough time to consider properly any notification by the Secretary of State of serious failure by the registry and to formulate any representations it wishes to make to the Secretary of State. I am therefore grateful to the noble Lord for giving me the opportunity of clarifying the position. In practice, a registry will have been well aware that the Government were concerned about a serious failure of that registry long before receipt of formal notification by the Secretary of State. Informal approaches to the registry will have been attempted and exhausted before any decision to exercise these powers. Furthermore, before the Secretary of State can notify a registry of a serious failure he must have prescribed the specific practice or requirement that constitutes a failure. In the normal course of events, a full consultation will have taken place prior to prescribing practices or requirements under Section 124N(3). Therefore the registry should be well aware of the serious failure long before it receives a notification from the Secretary of State. Noble Lords will understand that a serious failure of a registry will need to be addressed as soon as possible. We do not want to restrict the ability of the Secretary of State to stipulate a period of less than three months for a registry to make representations where the circumstances are such that a shorter period is warranted. The Secretary of State must of course act reasonably in setting the period for representations, taking into account all relevant circumstances. I hope the noble Lord will recognise that he raises an important point but safeguards are there and notification will be adequate. Therefore, I ask him to withdraw his amendment.