I am grateful to the Minister for his full response to the group of amendments. I shall look at it carefully in Hansard before we come back on it. Concerns were expressed in other Committee sittings about the burden placed on charities and SMEs, many of which will find the costs they are now required to pay an additional burden—we have seen some figures suggesting that there will be quite a big drag on some smaller companies. The consultation should at least have identified that concern and the Government will be aware of it. If the three-tier system is to be capable of looking at volumes—the implication of what the Minister said is that big international companies will pay more because the volume of the data they process is much greater—there will be equity in that. We will look at how that progresses, but we seem to be on the right lines.
By and large, the thrust of what I was trying to say is that there needs to be a modern response to this system in terms of what is available out there in the marketplace. If a company is paying Ofcom for the
regulatory function it provides, it should be not be that different if it is also paying the Information Commissioner for what services it provides, because they are two sides of the same coin. On the DPRRC amendment, I note what the noble Lord said and look forward to his further discussion with the Committee on that point. On the broader question about the ICO, there were two points that were not responded to, but perhaps we can look at that again offline.
The great advantage of the new type of regulator exemplified by Ofcom—there are many more examples—is that it is trusted, not just by government but also by industry, to set its own fees and charges in a businesslike way. Indeed, we get responses all the time about how well Ofcom does in satisfying what is required. Of course, if there is a problem about fees—and the Minister said he is on to it—one solution is to ensure that the ICO has that freedom to set the fees and charges appropriate for the work that needs to be done. I think she is probably in a better place to do that than anyone else.
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As an example, because I do not think we can read too much into individual letters, Ofcom currently has 795 staff on core business and its core costs are just over £116 million, whereas the ICO has 434 staff and costs of £23 million. We are talking about quite a big gap in terms of what can be done. Of course money does not mean everything, but I think there is a difference in scale which we may need to come back to. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.