Digital Switchover (Disclosure of Information) Bill

moved Amendment No. 28: 28: After Clause 5 , insert the following new Clause— ““Commencement This Act shall not come into force before the digital switchover scheme is published and laid before both Houses of Parliament.”” The noble Lord said: I realise that the Minister has not been very sympathetic to sunset clauses, but I hope that he will be entirely sympathetic to a sunrise clause. The amendment reflects the uncertainty surrounding the scheme, which have been debated and discussed throughout today. It has been interesting to see how much the interventions of Members of the Committee such as the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, and those on the Opposition Benches, have uncovered how little we know about much of this scheme—not only its essence but its costs. This extends to looking not only at the costs of the scheme and specification of equipment. The Minister talked about the possible narrowing of the required information, so even the exact extent of the information is not known. The agreement between the Secretary of State and the BBC under clause 39 has clearly not yet been agreed or promulgated. We do not know which organisation will be running the scheme—the scheme contractor. Will it be a hybrid, a joint venture or outsourced from the BBC? There are a number of imponderables. One of the Bill’s problems is that it just provides a framework. We know a little about the help scheme from the website, but we do not know enough to make a judgment on the Bill as a whole. Either the Government come forward with more detail at this stage so that the Bill can move forward—that would be my preference—or we must put something in the Bill to give us the opportunity to discuss the full scheme at a future date. That is a less preferable way of going forward, but if details of the scheme are not available now, it seems the only course. Otherwise we do not have an understanding of the detail when we debate this Bill. We are in a difficult position. The sunrise clause is designed to stop the Act coming into force until we have had a proper debate about the scheme. If the Minister can reassure us that we will get full details by Report stage, for instance, we would be satisfied. Ministers have certainly not held out any prospect of that today, however. In a sense, this amendment therefore sums up a lot of the sentiment around the Committee today. We need to know more before we can make a proper judgment. This is a skeleton on which to hang a scheme, not the scheme itself. I beg to move.