My Lords, I realise that I am something of a fish out of water in this House, as I was in Committee, on the Bill, which is fundamentally flawed in a number of respects, including its approach to governance, which we are discussing today. Having said that, I am generally sympathetic to the amendments proposed by my noble friend Lady Stowell of Beeston. If we are to have a flawed approach, her amendments would improve it somewhat.
However, my approach is rather different and is based on the fairly simple but important principle that we live in a free democracy. If we are to introduce a new legislative measure such as this Bill, which has far- reaching powers of censorship taking us back 70 or 80 years in terms of the freedom of expression we have been able to develop since the 1950s and 1960s— to the days of Lady Chatterley’s Lover and the Lord Chamberlain, in equivalent terms, as far as the internet and the online world are concerned—then decisions of such a far-reaching character affecting our lives should be taken by somebody who is democratically accountable.
My approach is utterly different from that which my noble friend on the Front Bench has proposed. He has proposed amendments which limit yet further the Secretary of State’s power to give directions to Ofcom, but the Secretary of State is the only party in that relationship who has a democratic accountability. We are transferring huge powers to a completely unaccountable regulator, and today my noble friend proposes transferring, in effect, even more powers to that unaccountable regulator.
To go back to a point that was discussed in Committee and earlier on Report, if Ofcom takes certain decisions which make it impossible for Wikipedia to operate its current model, such that it has to close down at least
its minority language websites—my noble friend said that the Government have no say over that and no idea what Ofcom will do—to whom do members of the public protest? To whom do they offer their objections? There is no point writing to the Secretary of State because, as my noble friend told us, they will not have had any say in the matter and we in this House will have forsworn the opportunity, which I modestly proposed, to take those powers here. There is no point writing to their MP, because all their MP can do is badger the Secretary of State. It is a completely unaccountable structure that is completely indefensible in a modern democratic society. So I object to the amendments proposed by my noble friend, particularly Amendments 136 and 137.
4.15 pm
I rise particularly to speak to the amendments in my name: Amendments 218, 220, 221 and 223. This is surely the structure we want, one in which decisions are made by someone who is accountable and are then properly scrutinised by Parliament. My amendments introduce that particularly in respect of the Secretary of State’s powers to set Ofcom’s strategic objectives. This is the purpose of my Amendment 223, to which Amendments 220 and 226 are consequential. It would require that those instructions and directions should be approved by Parliament through the affirmative process. At the moment, the proposal is that they be approved by the negative process, and I think it should be the affirmative process; that is what my amendments seek to achieve. I do not think it requires much argument.
My Amendment 218 relates not to the setting of Ofcom’s strategic priorities but the guidance to be given by the Secretary of State to Ofcom on the exercise of any function. There is currently no parliamentary check on this guidance; it simply has to be laid before Parliament, but there is no procedure for this, neither negative nor affirmative. Surely we should say that this, too, should be subject to the affirmative procedure so that your Lordships’ House has an opportunity to debate and comment on those directions and that guidance, so that we have some of the features of a proper, functioning democracy.
Overall, we need accountable decision-makers, not unaccountable regulators, and we need them to be subject to parliamentary scrutiny. That is the burden of my argument and the effect of my amendments. I hope that they will command the support of the House.