Digital Economy Bill [HL]

My Lords, although I share with the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, some of the reservations about additional safeguards, I welcome these two amendments. Indeed, I could hardly do otherwise as I moved a similar amendment at an earlier stage of the Bill in the Lords. However, they do not go as far as I would like. As noble Lords who have been following this debate know, I should have preferred this whole section to be withdrawn in the wash-up, with our coming back to it at a more considered rate in a new Parliament. I regret that this, my last, speech in this Parliament sounds critical of the Government, but in fact it is critical of the totality of the political establishment. All three Front Benches here and in another place have adopted a wrong-headed and unworkable approach to the problem of unlawful file-sharing. Above all, they have failed to grasp that it is an approach that will not yield returns to the creative artists whom these procedures are supposed to protect. I appreciate that there are noble Lords who do not have the technological grasp of the internet that my noble friend Lord Erroll has, nor of the intricacies of copyright law. I was seeking a way to illustrate this to noble Lords who have participated and, although we are at the fag end of the Session, I shall use an historic analogy which I came across over Easter. There was once a beautiful and sublime piece of music which, by papal decree, was allowed to be performed only once a year in one chapel in Rome. That restriction lasted for nearly 100 years, until, one day, among the tourists who squeezed in to that closed, single recital, was an early teenager from Austria. He listened to the music and, in today’s parlance, he downloaded it to his memory. Back home in Salzburg, Wolfgang Amadeus—for it was he—downloaded it again from his memory and format shifted it onto paper. Through his social network, he made that format available to the other musical centres of Europe. That piece of music, as many noble Lords will know, was Allegri’s Miserere and, as a result, it has been made available to millions. What is interesting is not what happened to Mozart, but what happened to the Pope. The Pope saw that his ban was unpopular and totally unworkable. Instead of trying to impose restrictions, he made it available to all the churches in Rome and the papal states for a very small and proportionate donation to the collection plate. In other words, he found an alternative, workable and acceptable business model. The analogy is not 100 per cent accurate because by Mozart’s time, Allegri’s work would have been out of copyright, although only just. However, I think the Government and the other political parties should learn from that. The Pope recognised reality, but the danger here is that the political leadership is beginning to appear, particularly in relation to the message from the music industry, more protectionist and less pragmatic and less entrepreneurial than the 18th century papacy. However, these amendments from the Commons allow us to get round that and to think again before we move to the imposition of the sanctions. We have had very widespread scrutiny in this House, although participation has not been high, and I pay particular tribute to the Minister for his patience and forbearance in dealing with those periods of scrutiny. In the likely event of his reappearance at the Dispatch Box after the election, I have no doubt that he will look forward to another session when, through the affirmative resolution procedure that these amendments provide, we shall discuss the whole situation again. During the intervening period and the drawing up of the secondary legislation, I hope we rethink this whole prospect and that we start again, recognising that a broader and a longer-term approach would be more appropriate. Luckily, I think these two amendments from the Commons, at a minimum, give us the opportunity to do that. Therefore, I support them.