I thank the Minister for her very clear introduction. This is a very interesting regulation—for aficionados. As she spoke in detail about it, that introduces the country of origin principle for discussion. I understand completely what the draft SI is meant to do. I expect that somebody in DDCMS woke up in a cold sweat and suddenly realised that there was quite a backlog of criminal offences in Scotland and Northern Ireland that needed to be brought within the scope of the e-commerce legislation. Such cold sweats can occur, even in the best-run government departments. We should not impede the passing of this SI simply because some of the offences are rather ancient. We are not dealing just with 2015 offences.
Of much more interest for those who are currently debating the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill is the whole question of the future application of the country of origin principle. After all, starting with the e-commerce
directive, the EU Commission aimed to create an effective single market, particularly in the field of online retail. It is extremely pertinent to what is going to happen next. The current law is set out in the EU electronic commerce directive 2000, implemented into UK law in 2002. The regime covers almost every commercial website and is not restricted to online buying and selling but covers any service provided for remuneration at a distance using electronic means. On top of that, we have EU-derived distance selling and cookie regulation.
Much e-commerce law is implemented largely through secondary legislation, which will be preserved after Brexit takes place. However, the EU is obliged to revisit the directive every two years, so a divergence between the EU and the UK is possible. Therefore, the question arises as to whether we are going to need some sort of adequacy ruling for country of origin, rather in the way that we will probably have such a ruling for data protection. Indeed, is country of origin going to be available to us in the first place? Does the e-commerce directive fall away post Brexit? As I am sure the Minister is aware, country of origin principles applied to broadcasting will fall away unless there is a special deal which breaks through the normal cultural exceptions put into free trade agreements. So I am a little pessimistic about that.
Then, of course, the wagon rolls on. The consumer protection co-operation regulation was adopted by the Commission in December 2017. A regulation on addressing unjustified geo-blocking was adopted this February. There are two legislative proposals on the supply of digital content, and on online and other distance sales of goods, which the Commission proposed in December 2015 and are currently under negotiation in EU institutions. What are the Government’s intentions in respect of the new EU digital single market developments? Does they intend to stay aligned with e-commerce law in the EU? If so, how? If not, what will the consequences be? I would be extremely interested to hear from the Minister.