My Lords, I will not disguise the fact that I am not happy with the Minister’s reply. But I would like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, for his support and I particularly thank my noble friend Lord Lester, who himself is a master of judicial review. I take very seriously what he has to say on the subject. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, who raised a number of pertinent points. He is obviously a very good client when taken to Chambers. I was hoping that the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, was going to take part in the debate, as then a ruffle or a jabot of QCs would have emerged; I do not know what the collective noun for QCs is.
Quite seriously, I am afraid that the Minister and the Government have bought not just the Ofcom line, but the hook and the sinker as well. We have an interesting conjugation: “I make my case, you lobby”. That seems to be the construction put on Ofcom’s behaviour. So Ofcom’s decisions are entitled to respect and “a margin of appreciation”. We are talking about the appeals process for an immensely powerful regulator. I do not think that that is an appropriate form of words. Of course, decisions are entitled to respect, but the rights of those who are investing in the telecoms industry are entitled to respect as well. This is an argument about the appropriate form of appeal.
I did not touch on whether this new clause is in line with European law. It may be academic because we might be out of the stable, so to speak, before we have to test the proposition as to whether the use of JR in these circumstances conforms to the framework directive. But that is an important matter. Ofcom has clearly been vigorous in its lobbying and certainly vigorous in
its lobbying of noble Lords. I am glad to say that many of them have resisted in the circumstances. The Minister went through the nature of the amendments in a perfectly proper fashion, but he did not really make a particularly good case about why they were not appropriate. He did not really address my argument about other regulators. At the outset, I took the Minister through a number of economic regulators, none of which have JR as the fundamental point of appeal, so that requires an answer.
My purpose in tabling the amendment is to make sure that there is an effective challenge to Ofcom. We have swung way too far with Clause 75. We are serving the interests of the regulator far too much. I do not believe that all the propositions that Ofcom has put forward are valid and we need to keep kicking the tyres further on this particular clause until we find a better solution. We may have to make express reference in Clause 75 to the EU framework directive, which might be one way of dealing with this. But I guarantee that we will return to this at a future date. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.