Baroness Neville-Jones (Con)

Can I ask a couple of questions and make one comment? The more we hear about the conversation that is taking place on the Bill, the more anomalous the factors that have been chosen or included in the scheme become. Let me give the example of space. Plenty of us now receive our internet connection via satellite. It is inevitably an intimate part of the networking system of cyber security. What we appear to be told is that some parts of the telecoms and internet world are going to be governed by the Bill, but other parts, which are equally integrated and important, are going to be covered separately by a special different arrangement—they are not included. For example, as I understand what the Minister said about space, it is not going to be included in this Bill. With the greatest possible respect to the Minister, it does not make sense. My question is: in the period ahead of us, could the Government have another look at the whole question of the scope of the Bill? This seems to be one of the problems that lies between us. As a result, Members are now trying to shove into the Bill all sorts of things on the grounds that they are essential services—some of which clearly need to be there, but for others it is arguable that they do not. I heard what the Minister said about the action plan. I have read the action plan, and it is a good plan, but it lays a heavy responsibility on a department that no longer exists—DSIT. The function is set out so well and is important to keeping government departments up to the mark, which is going to be done separately. Where is that responsibility now going to sit? It will require a very considerable degree of expertise on the part of those conducting this system of keeping people up to the mark. How is that going to be done? It seems to me that local government requires something of the same. Government is a whole thing. It is not that some things can be done in central government without regard to their implementation by local government or vice versa. Are the Government going to extend the system that is being mapped out in the action plan for government to local government as well, in order to get the same standard of performance and integrity of systems?