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Digital Economy Bill [HL]

My Lords, I support the amendment wholeheartedly, especially the part concerning the emergency services and spectrum for the critical national infrastructure. Sometimes we forget that the utilities such as electricity and water, on which we are totally dependent, rely on telecommunications for their infrastructure and that, as sophistication increases and control systems get better, they, too, will need a larger bandwidth. If we do not start reserving this at a strategic level, it will get sold. The big challenge at the moment concerns the huge shortfall in finance at government level. Whichever party, or perhaps coalition, is in power after the next election, one easy way to try to raise money will be to sell a full spectrum quickly. However, this is not a vote-catching issue. As the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, said, we will wake up at some point in the future to find that, instead, we are faced with a huge expense because this spectrum, under the guise of efficiency, market forces and so on, has been sold off. I, too, have received letters saying that the Government’s approach to this at the moment is totally inadequate. I hope that the Government will listen and include something at Third Reading or when the Bill goes through the Commons in order to protect with absolute certainty the spectrum that will be needed for international co-operation, for our emergency services and for our critical national infrastructure; otherwise, one morning we may wake up to find that there is no electricity.