My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for his very kind words to everybody, particularly my Front Bench and me. I also wish him a speedy recovery from his recent illness, although I was less sympathetic when I discovered how much he has been “managing upwards”—in the words of my noble friend Lord Knight—and achieving for us in the last few days. He has obviously been recovering and I am grateful for that. The noble Lord has steered the Bill through your Lordships’ House with great skill and largely single-handedly. It has been a pleasure to work with him, even when he was turning down our proposals and suggestions for change, which he did in the nicest possible way but absolutely firmly.
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As has been mentioned, the original Green Paper was a response to the consultation on internet safety that the noble Lord mentioned, which started in October 2017. We are fast approaching six years later.
A commitment to legislate has appeared in all the party election manifestos since then, but there have been changes in approach. That is not surprising given the turnover in Secretaries of State and junior Ministers, not forgetting that there has also been a change of department in that period. However, nearly six years on, it is gratifying to see that the bones of the original approach, albeit modified by the White Paper, are still in this version of the Bill.
Government processes can be cumbersome, but on this Bill they have worked very well. The Green and White Papers, and the government response to many of the consultations, all helped to set out thinking, clarify the approach and give early notice to companies likely to be in scope of the Bill. It was a very smart move to select Ofcom as the regulator early on and to fund it to prepare and scale up. That will prove to be a very good investment in future years.
Adding the pre-legislative joint scrutiny committee, which the noble Lord mentioned and which had five Members from this House, was a very important step. Damian Collins MP, who perhaps does not get the credit that he should, was a very good choice as chairman. The noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, kept us fully briefed on the report as we went through the various stages—he probably has a copy in his hands as we speak and may well want to quote from it even more. That so many of those recommendations are now in the Bill shows, as the Minister says, what can happen if we pool our efforts and pull together for a common aim.
Given that there was broad political agreement and that the key principles of the Bill were right, at Second Reading in your Lordships’ House I called for us to work together across party lines to ensure that we got the best Bill that we could out of what was before us. I was touched that so many colleagues from across the House agreed with my approach and went out of their way to offer their support. It was really good to see colleagues working together across the House, ignoring party lines, in pursuit of a better Bill. We are all Cross-Benchers at heart, or Bishops—perhaps not.
We got off to a slightly rocky start in Committee, with virtually everything being dismissed with a very superior form of words—usually that we had not foreseen the unforeseen consequences of our amendment being accepted—but it is good to see a lot of those amendments trumping back into the Bill now. But the debates themselves were useful and built a consensus around several key areas. It was clear that this collaborative approach can be very effective. Indeed, this way of working has shown parliamentary scrutiny at its best. We had debates of high quality, generating real insights on the Floor of the House. To be fair, by the time we got to Report, the Government rose to the challenge and responded with nearly 200 amendments that are going forward to the Commons. If you think about it, this is all the more remarkable given the intense partisanship that has characterised our public life during this time.
While a few significant issues still need to be resolved, there have been big changes and developments in the last few days. Following discussions with my noble friend Lady Merron, Sir Jeremy Wright and the noble
Baroness, Lady Morgan, the Government have offered to bring forward amendments at the Commons consideration of Lords amendments stage next week. But, as the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, said, we need to see those and to be clear that they are going in the direction that we have been told they will. We want to make sure that the Government will deliver what they have offered in these outstanding points. If they do, we can look forward to the strong possibility of completing parliamentary processes on the Bill by the end of this September sitting.
I thank the Bill team for all the work they did throughout. It was particularly good that the Minister mentioned them by name, because they have given a huge amount to us. I do not think that any holidays or time off have been allowed over the last few years, as they have worked through the various changes we have proposed. Their willingness to share their thinking has been absolutely fantastic. Taking us into their confidence on the policy issues that were still not finalised within government was difficult for them, and of course runs counter to all the usual approaches. I have been on Bills when we have had no information at all about the thinking. It was better here when we were talking about these things, having meetings that looked at the options and thinking about the ways in which they might be taken forward. I am sure it gave us the chance to make better decisions about when to settle, and as a result I hope that the Bill team will agree that the Bill is now in much better shape than it was.
Of course, the Opposition are at a considerable disadvantage to the Government in the support we can command when trying to take on legislation and give good scrutiny, as we wish to do. Dan Stevens in our office has done a magnificent job for us, despite having several other policy briefs to deal with. We would have struggled to deal with this Bill without his calm and measured advice and administrative skills. I think we should put it on record that we have also had a lot of support from the Public Bill Office. It is very hard to get amendments that say what you want, in language that will be accepted and allows them to be debated. Its staff often say that they are not parliamentary draftsmen or lawyers, but they make a pretty good job of what they have to do.
I also pay tribute to the All-Party Group on Digital Regulation and Responsibility, chaired by Sir Jeremy Wright, which has tracked the progress of the Bill throughout its many stages, organised meetings and circulated briefings, which has been incredibly useful. I think all of us involved in the Bill have benefited from the expertise and knowledge of the Carnegie UK Trust, led on this occasion by one of its trustees, William Perrin, who, with Professor Lorna Woods, was key to the initial development of the duty of care approach, and who, together with Maeve Walsh and others from the Carnegie team, supplied high-quality briefings and advice as we went through the various stages.
Finally, I thank my noble friends Lady Gillian Merron and Lord Jim Knight, who have supported me throughout this period despite having significant responsibilities in other areas, have taken the strain when needed without complaint, and have indeed won
improvements to the Bill that I perhaps would not even have thought of, let alone obtained. It has been a real team effort, a joy and a pleasure, and a most enjoyable experience.