A quick note for everyone: I've just gone through every post and put tags on them. It'll make it easier to search through them all (though there aren't that many at this point, really). I'll continue to put tags on every post, as it's a good idea. Should've done it before, really.

Now for the Committee Stage of the Digital Economy Bill. A quick explanation: the Committee Stage for this Bill had seven sittings, and many, many amendments discussed. To make things nice and simple, I'm going to organise my posts by grouping the amendments together as each clause, rather than each amendment. That way I can just ignore any debate that doesn't get anything done.

We begin with the first section, General Duties of OFCOM, which was debated on the 6th and 12th January 2010. It has three clauses, and today, I'll just cover Clause 1.

Clause 1: General duties of OFCOM. The Tories kicked up a fuss about Clause 1, which baffled several members of other parties. The debate kicked off with an ultimately fruitless exchange that went on for over an hour. The main point of the argument was to say that Ofcom shouldn't be both a helper and a regulator, which is what the Clause seems to do. A second important point suggests that if blogs and other web-based content isn't governed by Ofcom, most of this is meaningless. Highlights included Baroness Howe making a rather odd statement: "Enough gigabytes need to be available so that the level is acceptable right across the country. I fear that we did not have enough gigabytes in the first place so that we could compete with countries such as Japan and so on". Erm, what? Besides that, we had Lord Lucas waxing lyrical on how great Apple are, insisting that it's "becoming impossible to see how, if I had the choice, I would wish to buy a Windows computer again". Baroness Buscombe used the word "otiose" to describe the Clause, which I had to look up (she means that the Clause will have no real effect on anything, I think). In the end, Amendment 1 was withdrawn, as it was obviously only suggested to provoke debate rather than to get anything changed.

Amendment 3 was the Tories' attempt to attack public service broadcasting, and, by extension, Ofcom. Lord Razzall (for the Lib Dems) said that "all Whitehall departments must accept a very serious haircut if the Tories get into power" (according to David Cameron), and Ofcom is on a list of 'quangos' for the potential Tory government to have a look at. He also made a reference to the Communications Act which made somebody giggle (not sure who it is).

More highlights: when you're not really listening to what people are saying, just watch the guys in the background, like this guy who has a finger problem. Funnyman Lord Lucas insisted that he doesn't necessarily agree with his Tory companions, and that "the Stalinist discipline that the Liberals apply to their Back-Benchers" is the explanation for this confusion. Lord Howard of Rising also noted his pleasure at listening to Lord Davies of Oldham, "especially when he is not being horrid to me".

In the end, no amendments were accepted, but a good few people voiced concern over the exact wording of the clause, debating the meaning of words like 'efficient' and 'wherever possible'. Nevertheless, the question of whether Clause 1 should stand part of the Bill, unchanged, went to a vote. There was a lot of opposition (presumably from mainly Tories, but there's no way I'm checking all the names), but the Clause passed with 106 'contents' to 55 'not contents'. All that talk for nothing...

Clause 1 passed - no amendments

Next time, I'll deal with Clause 2. See you then.