My Lords, I am becoming a single-trick pony, as I think it is called. I am going to ask again about free content and I hope that the Minister can give me some solace on it. We on this side are still worried about whether free digital content, generically, can be brought within the requirements of providing quality, fitness for purpose and conformity with description. I am still unclear about how this will work in practice, because of the problem in consideration. Maybe that will be covered in the letter she has promised to write to me.
I have an additional worry about this, which is that there are often contracts for delivery of services that might fall into the type caught by the amendment which may be from a manufacturer rather than from a particular provider of software. I do not wish to accuse any particular manufacturer, but will take a well known brand which has a connection with fruit. If its terms of use were such that they were going to cause significant detriment to consumers, would it be possible for the Secretary of State, in extreme circumstances, to make an order specifically addressing the terms of use that were generically produced and always clicked into by people without, I suspect, ever being read? I am a little uncertain about how this bites—sorry about the pun—when we are talking about generic material which will probably be running hidden and not even ever recognised by a consumer, and is possibly free or has at least been delivered free of any additional charge, perhaps because it is an update or a
fix. Is there something that could be done on this? I quite understand that it might take time to generate a response and I would be happy with a letter.