My Lords, I agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Grade, has just said and want to deal briefly with a procedural point. I had the privilege of chairing the Joint Committee which gave pre-legislative scrutiny to the Bill between July and December 2013—in fact, I am so fed up with it that I am bored stiff. However, this measure was not in the Bill. Therefore, I would argue from Parliament’s point of view that it did not have the scrutiny that such an important issue would justify, being put in in the Commons, being done in Grand Committee in this House and then being dealt with now.
It is almost a mirror image of the argument that we have just had on the counterterrorism Bill, where an attempt was made to make a change when it was known that inquiries are going on with a deadline next year for that matter to be properly dealt with, and the noble Lord, Lord King, therefore withdrew his amendment. This is exactly the same. As we have just heard, the licence fee is fixed—in writing, as it were—from 2010 to 2017. I do not want to see people in prison for debts—it is a complete waste—but the risk to the BBC of what might happen if this amendment is not carried is so substantial because of the forces charged up against the BBC in other guises. I declare an interest: I do not have Sky because I discovered that Rupert Murdoch is still alive. So I do not have these sorts of conflicts, but the fact is that those forces are lined up. There should be a proper duly considered argument in Parliament, maybe with differentials, after the review and in the context of us all knowing that a big discussion is going on, rather than its being dealt with in the Bill, which does not give this issue the scrutiny that it justifies because of the way that the Bill has gone through Parliament. I will support the amendment if it is pushed to a vote.