My Lords, I do not wish to detain the Committee, but I wish to thank the noble Lord for his introductory comments and reflect on two points. First, a number of the issues he raises will come up in other amendments and I hope that he will share his wisdom on those occasions as well. Secondly, I must disappoint him in one respect. He suggested that part of what he wanted to say was covered by the Christmas present provided by the additional copyright exceptions and other things that were coming forward and that there might be an opportunity to discuss those in a separate Bill. That will not happen because the Government are, at the moment, choosing to implement those proposals by secondary legislation, bundled in, as the note says, “as few SIs as possible”.
Unless we get a late Christmas present from the Minister, we will have to oppose that because there are very large issues within what has been proposed. Not all of them are unwelcome and we would probably want to get behind most of them. But the way in which it has been done leaves a gap in the expectation outside that there should be a lot of discussion about these things. As has just been said, they affect the very heart of what we are trying to say around our creative economy, how people create and how things are consumed. If we do not get that right, there will be a wave of concern outside. I therefore lay down a small elephant trap for the Minister to fall into then leap out of with one bound later on when we reach that point in the Bill.