Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)

My Lords, I welcome my noble friend’s comments, which set the context for this interesting statutory instrument. In the process of consultation that led to the final decisions, was there time for the department to begin to implement the Parkinson rule? When my noble friend and I last met some time ago, we discussed how and under what conditions one might be able to allow Select Committees in the Commons and here with expertise in these matters to look at SIs before they are laid. I notice that this was laid on 9 June, which is well after that meeting. Was there time to let the Select Committees see this and were there useful results from that? If not, can she give us some indication of when the department will be in a position to begin to process the Parkinson rule in relation to this? I am grateful to the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee for its very full 29th report, which went through this SI in somewhat surprising detail—we do not normally get four or five pages on an instrument each time, but that tells the story behind some of my concerns about the department’s approach to this. The committee’s first conclusion is that: “The draft Regulations are drawn to the special attention of the House on the ground that they are politically or legally important or give rise to issues of public policy likely to be of interest to the House”. We are grateful to it for doing that. These are interesting and important issues. The committee’s first point for consideration is that it worries whether the regulator, Ofcom, will have the resources to carry out the sort of work envisaged in this SI and the much larger scheme of work that it is involved in. I would be grateful if my noble friend could give some thought to that in her response. I do not think she mentioned it. We understand the basis on which Ofcom makes its funding needs available—there has been notification of that recently around the level of fees to be exercised on the companies in scope of the regulator—but that is not the narrow point raised here. It is more about the question of capacity and scale, and the ability to think more widely about the system it is trying to regulate, than it is just about the money. I would be grateful if my noble friend would say a few things about how the department judges that and how it thinks Ofcom will be able to scale up its current work, which is immense. It is very important to include this activity, which in the Bill was originally intended to be of assistance to Ofcom, although some of the way it has come out does not seem to have delivered on that. Secondly, I recollect that we spent quite a long time on the Bill working out why the Government of the day did not think it necessary to have some form of ombudsman system in place for internet matters. I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, will make some points about this. This was well argued and well thought through in our debates, and we had many meetings offline to try to find a way forward. We did not get what we wanted, but it was a very big Bill and other things perhaps took priority. However, we did get agreement from Ministers, in the Bill, that there would be a review shortly after its implementation— I think within two years—of how the complaints processes for users of IT systems in this country, particularly in new media, were being dealt with by individual companies. Clearly, the expectation is that each company will have its own structure but that, on occasion, issues would be raised across more than one provider. The question was how an ordinary citizen would cope with that if there was not some form of ombudsman system. I strongly believe that there needs to be an ombudsman system for this whole area, and I hope that the review to be carried out by Ofcom within two years will recommend that. This is not referred to in this SI. Will the Minister say a few words about the department’s current thinking on that?