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Digital Economy Bill [Lords]

Yes; I was rather taken aback yesterday to hear someone—I think it was the Conservative Front Bencher—say, "Let's just get this Bill through and if there's anything wrong with it, we can put it right." Ten years into being here, I know that if we do things in a hurry and get them wrong, the law of unintended consequences always kicks in. It would be far better to remove clauses 11 to 18 and have a period of reflection. Amendment 34 would place a responsibility on rights holders to inform people whether the infringement that the rights holders have identified was, in their view, done for financial gain or simply because those people decided to infringe. The thinking behind the amendment is that, because the lobby groups that we have talked to have given us a host of what I consider to be rather bogus financial and economic predictions about the effects of illicit file sharing, rights holders and internet service providers should be required to determine whether this so-called online privacy is being done for personal financial gain, or simply because people want to share things that interest them. That would allow us to build up a body of evidence showing the true effects of illicit downloading in the future. I believe that this is a reasonable amendment, and I hope that the Government will consider accepting it. Amendments 32, 34, 30, 31, 27, 24 and 40 are consequential, and deal with definition. We want to get the Bill refocused on P2P file sharing alone.