Digital Economy Bill [HL]

My Lords, when Clauses 4 to 17 were discussed by my honourable friends in the other place at Second Reading, they were broadly supportive of the provisions but made it clear that their support would be conditional on three additional conditions which they believed needed to be put in place and which became apparent after the Bill’s passage through this House. The first was the subject of this amendment: that we needed the super-affirmative procedure to ensure that the next Parliament could properly scrutinise any proposals to include technical measures, which we believe should be introduced only as a last resort based on clear evidence of the need for them. Therefore, we welcome the amendment. However, we still believe that other provisions are needed in relation to Clauses 4 to 17. My honourable friends said that they needed to resolve the serious problems faced by universities, schools and wi-fi cafes to ensure that they did not fall foul of this legislation, given that they often have one IP address and a very large number of users. In addition, my honourable friends said that we needed to address the timescale within which the initial obligations code was produced by Ofcom. They argued that it could not possibly be given full justice if it were done within a six-month period, given that three of those months have to be spent in consultation with our European colleagues. All that illustrates yet again the poor process that this Bill has undergone in its latter stages. It would have been relatively straightforward for the Government to accede to those requests if a proper consultative wash-up process had taken place, or indeed if any Committee days had been allocated and certainly if Second Reading had taken place straight after the Bill left this House. In that context, we welcome one-third of the additions that we believe are necessary to make sure that Clauses 4 to 17 are acceptable.