Digital Switchover (Disclosure of Information) Bill

I completely agree with my hon. Friend, whom I have also known for many years. As the desk officer in the Conservative research department, I did my best to prevent him from being elected to Parliament—not deliberately, but unwittingly, due to my incompetence. Talking of my incompetence, I must tell the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Mr. Simon) that his confusion arises only due to my incompetence. Let me reiterate my points. New clause 3 would insert a regional sunset clause in the Bill. I am not sure whether such an approach has ever been attempted, so the measure is pioneering stuff. The intention is that given that switchover will proceed around the country—starting in Whitehaven and the borders and ending in London—and because the Bill allows the BBC to access sensitive data, the Bill should cease to have effect in any region in which switchover has been achieved. If the new clause were accepted, the BBC would not be able to request sensitive information from the Department for Work and Pensions about people living in the borders after switchover had been completed in that region. We have had the perfectly legitimate ensuing debate about whether it is right to have regional switch-off. Several hon. Members have asserted that it would be better for assistance to be available to everyone throughout the country for six years, because if there were only regional assistance, which is the present proposal, there would be an anomaly whereby someone from London who moved to Whitehaven after that area had switched over would not be eligible for assistance. As I said, new clause 4 is a double whammy—a twofer for the Minister, as they say in America. It would allow him to choose the date on which the Bill would come into force. The Department is still negotiating with the BBC and we are not even at the point at which the t’s are crossed and the i’s are dotted, so it would be careless to put a measure on the statute book giving such power to the BBC before switchover had even commenced. I work on the principle that Bills should go on to the statute book only when the Government are ready to go. The new clause also offers a general sunset clause providing that after switchover has been achieved throughout the country, the Bill will cease to be, and it will be a dead Bill, a late Bill—I cannot remember the rest of the parrot sketch.