Online Safety Bill [HL] — Committee

Part of the debate – in the House of Lords at 11:00 am on 11 December 2015.

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Photo of The Earl of Erroll The Earl of Erroll Crossbench 11:00, 11 December 2015

Being realistic, I suspect that the Minister’s timetable in the real world is probably very sensible. You can legislate hastily but then there will be huge arguments about it. It is a bit like the Digital Economy Act, which was rushed through. The measures in that to try to prevent people unlawfully downloading copyrighted material were not going to work in the real world. They caused a lot of chaos and, as a result, nothing happened because it was not possible to produce sensible regulations that would work and satisfy the courts and everyone else. Eventually, something got going but it is not brilliant, and it took the pressure off everyone to produce something that might have been a little better. Therefore, the Minister is probably being very sensible on this.