Communications Act 2003 (Maximum Penalty for Contravention of Information Requirements) Order 2011

Lord Clement-Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 5th July 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Clement-Jones]

My Lords, I understand the purpose of this order; the reasons for it were very cogently set out by my noble friend. European directives in the telecoms area have been extremely important in making sure that we have a level playing field in telecommunications across Europe. I doubt anybody would deny that the European framework is extremely important. However, this is only one part of the implementation of the changes to the European framework of directives. The question that occurs to me is: why are we not dealing with all the other aspects of the changes at the same time? One could then see the full context in which those changes are being made. I wonder whether I may have missed three statutory instruments this month, which is easily done, especially in this House. I may not have missed them—they may be coming down the track—but it would seem convenient for us to deal with them and this rather draconian order at the same time. The impact assessment that comes with the Explanatory Memorandum deals with the whole slew of other changes being made to the European framework and the other five directives that are part of it. Therefore, it would have been convenient to deal with them at the same time.

As the Minister says, the consultation broadly supported raising the level of the sanction to £2 million. However, “dissuasive” is, on the face of it, quite a subjective word. I wonder whether the Minister could define “dissuasive”—a word she used three or four times in the course of her excellent introduction. For instance, what is dissuasive about a penalty of £2 million as opposed to £1 million? I wonder whether this is less of a legal definition and more of a value judgment. I am perfectly okay with it being a value judgment, but we need to accept that it is and that it is a judgment made by the Government, who are not really objective in the circumstances.

I fully understand the nature of the changes being made to the authorisation directive in terms of specific sanction. However, I find parts of the impact assessment confusing. Looking at the impact assessment that deals with the authorisation directive, policy option 1 is:

“Implementation of the Authorisation Directive—articles for which there are no options in implementation”.

Then we move swiftly on to policy option 2, which is:

“Preferred implementation of the Authorisation Directive—articles for which there are options in implementation”.

Which option have we chosen? It is not clear to me from this impact assessment which option we have chosen. I assume that we have chosen policy option 2, but there was no explanation of that in the Minister’s introduction. It would be extremely valuable if she could explain which of the policy options has been adopted. Indeed, perhaps I was not even looking at the right impact assessment; that is always a possibility.

[Lord Moynihan]

My Lords, my intervention on this will be very brief. I echo my noble friend’s comments about the Minister’s excellent introduction. I should like the Minister to give us a little more clarity, if possible, on the consultation outcome. The rise from £50,000 to a maximum of £2 million, based on a value judgment, is large. Descending on the £2 million is the issue that I shall focus on. Could the Minister, in replying, let us know a little more about the level of response to the consultation exercise which was supportive of the figure of £2 million? The Explanatory Note includes a breakdown of small groups and groups that took different views, but I should be grateful if the Minister could tell us whether there was overwhelming or significant majority support for the proposal that she has brought to the Committee today.