My Lords, I just want to reinforce what my noble friend Lord Bethell said about the amendments to which I have also put my name: Amendments 237ZA, 266AA and 272E. I was originally of the view that it was enough to give Ofcom the powers to enforce its own rulings. I have been persuaded that, pace my noble friend Lord Grade, the powers that have been given to Ofcom represent such a huge expansion that the likelihood of the regulator doing anything other than those things which it is obliged to do is rather remote. So I come to the conclusion that an obligation is the right way to put these things. I also agree with what has been said about the need to ensure that subsequent action is taken, in relation to a regulated service if it does not follow what Ofcom has set out.
I will also say a word about researchers. They are a resource that already exists. Indeed, there has been quite a lot of pushing, not least by me, on using this resource, first, to update the powers of the Computer Misuse Act, but also to enlarge our understanding of and ability to have information about the operation of online services. So this is a welcome move on the part of the Government, that they see the value of researchers in this context.
My noble friend Lord Moylan made a good point that the terms under which this function is exercised have to have regard to privacy as well as to transparency
of operations. This is probably one of the reasons why we have not seen movement on this issue in the Computer Misuse Act and its updating, because it is intrinsically quite a difficult issue. But I believe that it has to be tackled, and I hope very much that the Government will not delay in bringing forward the necessary legislation that will ensure both that researchers are protected in the exercise of this function, which has been one of the issues, and that they are enabled to do something worth while. So I believe the Minister when he says that the Government may need to bring forward extra legislation on this; it is almost certainly the case. I hope very much that there will not be a great gap, so that we do not see this part of the proposals not coming into effect.