As of 6:14pm on Monday night, the Digital Economy Bill has completed Report Stage. It is now bound for its final stage in the House of Lords, Third Reading, on Monday.
Debate in the House covered Clauses 31 to 42, and the Government agreed to consider in principle two amendments tabled by Viscount Bridgeman, Baroness Buscombe (Conservative) and Lord Clement-Jones (Liberal Democrat) to Clause 42, concerning the representation of creators by extended collective licensing bodies. As the Minister, Lord Young, said, “The Government have always intended that extended licensing schemes should be run by representative licensing bodies. We therefore agree to consider Amendments 155A and 155B and will bring our proposals to Third Reading.”
According to Cabinet Office Guidance, “The principal purposes of amendments on Third Reading are to clarify any remaining uncertainties, to improve the drafting and to enable the Government to fulfil undertakings given at earlier stages of the Bill. Amendments are restricted to technical points to tidy up the Bill. An issue which has been fully debated and voted on or negatived at a previous stage of a Bill may not be reopened by an amendment on Third Reading. Notice is required if any Member of the House wishes to move an amendment to leave out a clause or schedule on Third Reading, just as it is on Report.”
Finally, a new copy of the Bill as amended in Report has been made available, for those of you wishing to follow the latest changes to the Bill.
Last night the Bill had its second day in Report in the House of Lords. The Government’s amendments on Online Infringement of Copyright were well-received, and we were pleased to accept a number of improving amendments from others, including amendments to Clause 28 from Baroness Bonham-Carter and Lord Puttnam. In accepting these the Government makes clear that quality and impartiality are of primary importance in appointing providers of regional or local news.
The Government opposed an amendment put forward by Lord Clement Jones (Liberal Democrat) and Lord Howard (Conservative). However the House of Lords supported the amendment, the result of which was to replace clause 17 with provisions regarding “Preventing access to specified online locations for the prevention of copyright infringement”. The amendment passed by the House of Lords raises significant issues which will need to be addressed as the Bill progresses through Parliament.
Debate came to an effective end at 7.40pm, having reached Clause 30. We had hoped to make further progress, but business scheduled in the dinner-break ran on and sitting was adjourned before we could return to the debate.
We look forward to resuming the remaining clauses at our next day in Report on the 8th of March.
The Bill had its first day in Report Stage in the Lords last night – we’re on the front page of the Parliament website here (the page has links to Hansard records, and a host of other useful Parliamentary information about the Bill). We finished at 10:52pm, having reached Online Infringement of Copyright – we’ll pick up where we left off on Wednesday afternoon.
As you may have noticed, in the lead-up to Report we’ve been busy. In the previous ten days we tabled a wide range of Government amendments - around 120 in total – and drafted a slew of new factsheets and letters to parliamentarians, which we’ve now uploaded to this website. Please have a look at the letters and factsheets sections for the latest, including explanations of the recent amendments proposed by the Government.
You may also be interested in the Parliament Web Centre’s recent experiment with presentating a Bill online – they are investigating a range of innovative ways in which Bills might be presented, including hyperlinking to existing Acts to be amended by a Bill, and interleaving the Explanatory Notes for the Bill with the legal text itself. Have look and see what you think – I know the Parliament web team would be grateful for feedback. (Please note that this version currently uses the Bill as introduced in the Lords, and doesn’t feature the amendments that have been made since.)
As Big Ben chimed 11 last night, the Digital Economy Bill completed its final day in Committee Stage in the House of Lords. We have worked through more than 400 amendments over 7 sessions since early January. For full transcripts of each day of Committee, please see Parliament’s website here.
There is an obligatory 14 day interlude between Committee and Report stages, which coincides neatly with Parliamentary Recess. We will therefore return to Parliament after the 22nd. There are no fixed dates at present for Report Stage, but we will update this blog when they become available. Click here for an explanation of Report Stage and how it works.
In the meantime, an amended version of the Bill, reflecting the amendments made in Committee is available on the Parliament website, here.
** Update – official dates for Report now announced: 1st and 3rd of March.
It’s been a busy ten days since our last post, and we thought this would be a good opportunity for a final update before 2010.
The main thing that has been keeping us busy has been preparation for Committee – we now have dates for four days in Committee.
As is the custom with Bills, we’ve been receiving a series of amendments from peers who want to hear more about the Government’s thinking behind the Bill. We received 94 new amendments last night, bringing us to a total of 237. The amendments tabled thus far are here; more information about amendments can be found here.
Parliamentary Recess having now officially begun, we’ll be back in the New Year with more updates. Until then, season’s greetings or, as they say across the pond, “Happy holidays!”
