Although I am grateful to the Minister for her robust comments about our amendment, I profoundly disagree with them. I cannot see this agreement lasting and believe that there will have to be a backstop power at some stage. Surely the truth is that if it was necessary in America to introduce legislation to get that system to work, it is bound to be necessary in other places where those with the large rights holdings may feel they can operate in a way that is not necessarily in the best interests of consumers in the United Kingdom. I still think, as the Minister touched on at the end of her peroration, that this is something that we will have to drag the search engines towards, because it is not their business model. Their concern is to make sure that they get as many people coming to them and through them to other portals in other areas that they can get to. Their interest in engaging in that is something we will return to in future legislative arrangements. I think that they will be unable to sustain a position in which they act as neutral transferors of other people’s issues and wishes, because it does not work. They will have to accept that they have responsibility to work to make sure that the worst excesses at the moment are resolved in a way that does not hurt rights holders.
At the moment, it is a “large copyright holders against large search engines” agreement, and on that level it might operate. I do not think it will be effective. I do not think it is sustainable because there will be new people coming in and business models and practices will change—we cannot foresee that. Power will be necessary. If the Government will not seize a gift that is worth a lot of future pain and help them avoid the difficulties they will face in trying to find the legislative time—as the noble Lord, Lord Foster, said—to put this in, we cannot make them do it. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.