Digital Economy Bill [ Lords]

Part of Business of the House – in the House of Commons at 5:26 pm on 6 April 2010.

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Photo of Don Foster Don Foster Shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport 5:26, 6 April 2010

I want to make progress and deal with the issue of site blocking. When we got rid of clause 17 in another place, we acknowledged that although two thirds of the illegal activity was peer to peer, one third involved people accessing illegal websites. We believe that action should be taken. In another place we proposed, at very short notice, an amendment that we thought would deal with that. [ Interruption. ] The Secretary of State laughs. The amendment became the subject of major debate, as he well knows and as he said-I acknowledge it-in my party at our party conference, and among many other people as well.

As a result, attempts were made to improve the amendment, but the Government assured us that they would introduce a new clause that would solve all the problems. I welcome the fact that it includes the super-affirmative resolution. However, if one looks at the details of the new clause 18, it is clear that it still contains many significant faults.