Perhaps the noble Lord will allow me to make my point. I really welcome the government amendments in this group. I thank my noble friend the Minister for bringing them forward and for listening hard to the debates that we had at Second Reading and in Committee. I am very pleased to see the removal of economic policy and the burdens to business as one of the reasons that a Secretary of State could issue directions. I firmly believe that we should not be putting Secretaries of State in the position of having to trade off safety for economic growth. The reality is that big tech has found it impossible to make those trade-offs too. People who work in these companies are human beings. They are looking for growth in their businesses. Secretaries of State are rightly looking for economic growth in our countries. We should not be putting people in the position of trying to make that trade-off. The right answer is to defer to our independent regulator to protect safety. I thank my noble friend and the Government very much for tabling these amendments.
I also support my noble friend Lady Stowell, as a member of the Communications and Digital Committee that she chairs so ably. She has brought forward a characteristically thoughtful and detailed set of amendments in an attempt to look around the corners of these powers. I urge my noble friend the Minister to see whether he can find a way in the specific issues of infinite and secretive ping-pong. Taking the secretive, my noble friend Lady Stowell has found a very clever way of making sure that it is not possible for future Governments to obscure completely any direction that they are giving, while at the same time not putting at risk any national secrets. It is a very thoughtful and precise amendment. I very much hope that my noble friend the Minister can support it.
On the infinite nature of ping-pong, which I feel is quite ironic today—I am not sure anyone in this House welcomes the concept of infinite ping-pong right now, whatever our views on business later today—friends of mine in the business world ask me what is different about working in government versus working in the business world; I have worked in both big and small businesses. Mostly it is not different: people come to work wanting to do a good job and to further the objectives of the organisation that they are part of, but one of the biggest differences in government is that doing nothing and continuing to kick the can down the road is a much more viable option in the body politic than it is in the business world. Rarely is that for the good.
One of the things you learn in business is that doing nothing is often the very worst thing you can do. My worry about the infinite nature of the ping-pong is that it refers to a technical business world that moves unbelievably fast. What we do not need is to enshrine a system that enables government essentially to avoid doing anything. That is a particularly business and pragmatic reason to support my noble friend’s amendment. I stress that it is a very mild amendment. My noble friend Lady Stowell has been very careful and precise not to put unreasonable burdens on a future Secretary of State. In “Yes Minister”-speak, the bare minimum could be quite a lot. I urge my noble friend the Minister to look positively on what are extremely constructive amendments, delivered in a very thoughtful way.