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Digital Economy Bill [HL]

My Lords, it is time for me to wind up. This has been a very serious debate and I thank all noble Lords who have taken part. I thank particularly the Conservative Benches, both Front and Back, for their support for the amendment. It is greatly valued. The debate between the noble Lords, Lord Fowler and Lord Puttnam, was extremely important. It is not invalid for a Minister to repent, and certainly not for him to draw on his experience in these matters. One key case against Clause 17 is the fact that an order cannot be amended in these circumstances. Having myself been the victor by the narrowest of margins against an order for the third time since the Second World War, I know how squeaky those debates can be. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, will look seriously at the amendment. It provides a clear remedy for the creative industries. It is not a blanket like Clause 17: it is designed to assist the very people for whom he is such a powerful champion. Primary legislation need not take two and a half years. If the amendment goes through, the creative industries will have the remedy that it provides rather more quickly than two and a half years. I will deal with some of the issues that the Minister raised. First, I will say, in response to his passionate speech—it was none the less welcome for that—that Section 97A of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 provides similar remedies to that in proposed new Section 97B. It is vaguer and less explicit, and states: ""The High Court (in Scotland the Court of Session) shall have power to grant an injunction against a service provider, where that service provider has actual knowledge of another person using their service to infringe copyright"." I could go on with the rest of the provision, but I will not. That is in legislation now as a result of the e-commerce directive. This is not a new, speculative tour de force being proposed by these two Benches, but a realistic new clause building on existing Section 97A. I say again to the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, whose contributions in Committee and on Report have been extremely valuable, that this is not directed against consumers. This is directed against ISPs that allow copyright infringement to be hosted on Russian websites. I have seen demonstrations from the creative industries, and it is hair-curling how the business models—