My Lords, this has been a good little debate with some excellent speeches, which I acknowledge. Like the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, I was looking at the Joint Committee’s report. I concluded that one of the first big issues we discussed was how complicated the categorisation seemed in relation to the task that was being set for Ofcom. We comforted ourselves with the thought that if you believe that this is basically a risk-assessment exercise and that all the work Ofcom will subsequently do is driven by its risk assessments and its constant reviewing of them, then the categorisation is bound to fall down because the risks will reveal the things that need to happen.
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As we have been through the process in our discussions in Committee, we keep coming across issues where proportionality seems to come around. The proportionality that I worry about is that which says, “If only a small number of people are affected by
this, then obviously less needs to be happening at Ofcom level”. We debated this earlier in relation to the amendments on children and seemed to come out in two different positions.
I believe that there should be zero tolerance on whether children should be accessing material which is illegal for them, but the Bill does not say that. It says that all Ofcom’s work has to be done in proportion to the impact, not only in the direct work of trying to mitigate harms or illegality that could occur but taking into account the economic size of the company and the impact that the work would have on its activities. I do not think we can square that off, so I appeal to the Minister, when he comes to respond, to look at it from the other end. Why is it not possible to have a structure which is driven by the risk? If the risk assessment reveals risks that require action, there should not be a constraint simply because the categorisation hurdle has been met. The risk is what matters. Does he agree?