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Digital Economy Bill [HL]

It might benefit the House if that question were dealt with. Perhaps I should first make my point on Amendment 15, which the Minister can deal with quite easily. I asked for Amendment 15 and my other three amendments to be degrouped from the others—the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, has already spoken to my grouping—because I wanted them to be taken as a specifically different point. The point is slightly different and the amendments are very specific and targeted. There is a challenge for search engines. It became apparent after new Clause 18 was inserted into the Bill that most of the large search engines were worried they would be caught by it. This arose from the words, ""to prevent copyright infringement content"—" which is not really grammatically correct— ""being accessed at or via that online location"." They were automatically caught by that. It does not really matter what the Minister may say—there is nothing there about producing regulations to define things more tightly; it is for the courts to decide later. It therefore seems important for this House to state whether or not we intend that general purpose, bona fide search engines should be caught by the clause. If they are to be caught, so be it, but it will affect Britain’s ability to take part in a global economy. I tried to produce something that would do with a lawyer who kindly volunteered his services pro bono. It was an extremely difficult task to perform at short notice, but we tried to do it by inserting two references that go back to the Electronic Commerce (EC Directive) Regulations 2002, which largely deal with the issue. I also put in a bit that says, ""in the case of online search providers, the extent to which inclusion of, or access to, copyright infringing content is incidental to the main purpose of the search service"." In other words, anything that was deliberately intended for the purpose of giving indirect access to copyright-infringing material would be caught. That is not excepted by this. The provision is supposed to exempt only the main search engines. Many people want to know what the House intended. Did it intend to cause problems for large search engines, or are these being caught inadvertently? It is difficult to define the boundary between them and a site which provides access to an indirect route or to an index of a whole load of copyright-infringing sites. The Government need to specify the provision far more tightly than they have done in their amendment. Will the Government be giving us a provision that neither House of Parliament can consider and amend? It would be useful if the Minister gave us a statement on the Government’s attitude to search engines. I suggest that they should use the super-affirmative procedure, as proposed in Clause 17, if they intend to come back with a provision that will be active after the general election but which we will not have debated properly. I beg to move.