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Digital Economy Bill [Lords]

I agree that what we are doing on infringement must not undermine our efforts to ensure that there is good public access to broadband and to rich content. Everybody will agree that that is important. We should not act to make commercial provision something that coffee shops, pubs or hotel chains will have to think twice about. We need to put the provisions in context. It would not be right to introduce a large and growing loophole in what we are doing. If we did so, there would be serious consequences for providers. We need to keep that concern in mind. Universities tend to take tough action against students or staff found infringing copyright, not just because it is unlawful, but because it clogs up valuable resource—bandwidth needed for legitimate use, including file sharing of research. However, I agree that libraries, universities and the rest need to be sent appropriate advice on reasonable steps that they can take to protect their networks. I agree that there might well be a case for such institutions to be subject to a different threshold than other subscribers. It would be rather silly—it would not make sense for anyone—if a big hotel faced the same threshold as an individual before being added to an infringement list. I said on Second Reading that we would not approve any code that did not take full account of the needs of such subscribers. I repeat that now, and I think that it is the reassurance that the hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Foster) said that the Government gave in another place. No amendment is needed to give effect to that. The code will require the consent of the Secretary of State, and I am happy to confirm again that we would not give consent to any code that did not properly take account of the position of libraries and educational establishments.