My Lords, to be honest, this debate has been an incredible relief to me. Here we have been taking a step away from some of the high-level conversations we had about what we mean by the internet and safety, looking at the far horizon, and instead looking at the moment when the Bill has real traction to try to change behaviours and improve the environment of the internet. I am extremely grateful to the Minister for his fulsome reply on a number of the issues.
The reason why it is so important is the two big areas where enforcement and compliance are going to be really tricky. First, there is Ofcom’s new relationship with the really big behemoths of the internet. It has a long tradition of partnership with big companies such as ITV, the radio sector—with the licensed authorities. However, of course it has licences, and it can pull them. I have worked for some of those companies, and it is quite a thing to go to see your regulator when you know that it can pull your licence. Obviously, that is within legal reason, but at the end of the day it owns your licence, and that is different to having a conversation where it does not.
The second class is the Wild West: the people living in open breach of regular societal norms who care not for the intentions of either the regulator, the Government or even mainstream society. Bringing those people
back into reasonable behaviour will be a hell of a thing. My noble friend Lord Grade spoke, reasonably but with a degree of trepidation, about the challenge faced by Ofcom there. I am extremely grateful to the Minister for addressing those points.
Ofcom will step up to having a place next to the FCA and the MHRA. The noble Lord, Lord Curry, spoke about some of the qualities needed of one of the big three regulators. Having had some ministerial oversight of the MHRA, I can tell your Lordships that it has absolutely no hesitation about tackling big pharmaceutical companies and is very quick, decisive and clear. It wields a big stick—or, to use the phrase of the noble Baroness, Lady Merron, big teeth—in order to conduct that. That is why I ask the Minister just to keep in mind some of the recommendations embedded in these amendments.
The noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, mentioned illegal content, and I appreciate the candour of the Minister’s reply. However, business disruption measures offer an opportunity to address the challenge of illegal content, which is something that I know the Secretary of State has spoken about very interestingly, in terms of perhaps commissioning some kind of review. If such a thing were to happen, I ask that business disruption measures and some way of employing them might be brought into that.
We should look again at enforcement and compliance. I appreciate the Minister saying that it is important to let the regulator make some of these decisions, but the noble Lord, Lord Allan, was right: the regulator needs to know what the Government’s intentions are. I feel that we have opened the book on this, but there is still a lot more to be said about where the Government see the impact of regulation and compliance ending up. In all the battles in other jurisdictions—France, Germany, the EU, Canada, Louisiana and Utah—it all comes down to enforcement and compliance. We need to know more of what the Government hope to achieve in that area. With that, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.