My Lords, that last exchange was incredibly helpful. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Allan, for what he just said and the way in which he introduced this group. I want to make only a few brief remarks.
I have put my name to two amendments in this group: Amendment 202 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, which seeks to ensure that Ofcom will be subject to the same kind of requirements and controls as exist under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act before issuing a technology notice
“to a regulated service which offers private messaging with end-to-end encryption”;
and Amendment 285, also in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, and that of the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones. This amendment would make sure that no social media platforms or private end-to-end
messaging services have an obligation generally to monitor what is going on across their platforms. When I looked at this group and the various amendments in it, those were the two issues that I thought were critical. These two amendments seemed to approach them in the most simple and straightforward manner.
Like other noble Lords, my main concern is that I do not want search and social media platforms to have an obligation to become what we might describe as thought police. I do not want private messaging firms to start collecting and storing the content of our messages so that they have what we say ready to hand over in case they are required to do so. What the noble Lord, Lord Allan, just said is an important point to emphasise. Some of us heard from senior representatives from WhatsApp a few weeks ago. I was quite surprised to learn how much they are doing in this area to co-operate with the authorities; I felt very reassured to learn about that. I in no way want to discourage that because they are doing an awful amount of good stuff.
Basically, this is such a sensitive matter, as has been said, that it is important for the Government to be clear what their policy intentions are by being clear in the Bill. If they do not intend to require general monitoring that needs to be made explicit. It is also important that, if Ofcom is to be given new investigatory powers or powers to insist on things through these technology notices, it is clear that its powers do not go beyond those that are already set out in law. As we have heard from noble Lords, there is widespread concern about this matter not just from the social media platforms and search engines themselves but from news organisations, journalists and those lobby groups that often speak out on liberty-type matters. These topics go across a wide range of interest groups, so I very much hope that my noble friend the Minister will be able to respond constructively and open-mindedly on them.