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Digital Economy Bill [HL]

My Lords, in Committee, the Government moved amendments to make the code that needs to be drawn up by Ofcom, if the stakeholders do not agree among themselves, no longer to have a time limit. Subsection (2)(b) of new Section 124D of the Communications Act 2003, "Initial obligations code by OFCOM in the absence of an approved code", refers to, ""such longer period as the Secretary of State may specify by notice to OFCOM"." The Minister was fairly cogent in terms of describing why a longer period was needed in terms of the standstill required by the technical standards directive and the standard Ofcom 12-week consultation period. It would appear that the whole process would take six months and, therefore, it was probably unreasonable to specify that the whole code could be produced within six months. However, what appears to be a good argument for having a longer deadline fails to justify what the Government’s amendment in Committee did, which was potentially to remove the deadline altogether. That does not appear to be justified. There is considerable concern among some stakeholders involved that this process could be extended unreasonably and could prevent Ofcom getting code discussions moving on the ground that basically there is no longer a time limit. It seems sensible to reintroduce some form of deadline, which this amendment attempts to do. I beg to move.