Digital Switchover (Disclosure of Information) Bill

I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Howard, will forgive me for intervening. The Minister made as good a fist of it as he could, but his arguments are pretty thin, talking about good old British law and so on. The fact is that once the disclosure has been established as having been made by the individual, the onus is on them to use the defences set out in subsection (5) and so on. That is the point at which the onus changes. The Minister is not at all correct in saying that this is the classical situation; indeed, entirely the reverse. It is all very well to say that Clause 3(2) also creates an offence, but if the Minister accepted the wording of the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Howard, for Clause 3(1), it would also be appropriate to insert it into Clause 3(2). So that is not an argument. What distinguishes this from theft, burglary, assault and heaven knows what else—ordinary criminal charges with the ordinary onus of proof—is inference from behaviour and conduct, which is how it is done in criminal law. It is not particularly difficult to infer from somebody’s conduct or behaviour whether they had knowledge or belief. Evidence is called and convictions are upheld every single day. It seems a particularly lazy way of drafting a Bill in these circumstances, where a particular defence having to overturn the inference of guilt is inserted into a clause like this. We will no doubt have a further discussion about this in the next grouping. I feel quite sure, however—and I do not want to put words into the mouth of the noble Lord, Lord Howard—that we will have to return to this in the future.