3rd Reading began, on 15th March, with a strange request from Baroness Royall of Blaisdon that two amendments shouldn't be moved. Lord Whitty, thus, moved Amendment 2, which "I am allowed to move". In general, though, he couldn't stand the majority of the Bill, the part concerning online copyright infringement. It seems that he's not alone, as most people who know about the Digital Economy Bill seem to only know about its effects on online copyright infringement, while anyone who's read my blog religiously will know that it's about much more than that. However, this is clearly the most divisive part of it.

Lord Whitty, surprisingly, thought that the replacement for the dreaded Clause 17 was actually "more draconian" than the original. The Bill, as it stood at 3rd Reading, was "still a bad Bill", and it would've benefited from pre-legislative scrutiny, which Lord Puttnam had already suggested. He argued that it will seem to subscribers that the new system involves people being guilty until proven innocent - which would appear to be the case if people get sent letters telling them of their guilt, and they have to prove otherwise. Lord Razzall came out fighting at accusations thrown at the Lib Dems (regarding their Clause 17 replacement), saying that they had "spent many years trying to wrestle with this problem. I understand that the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, has obviously come to it relatively late". Lord Puttnam piped up complaining about the ISPs claiming to not be involved with the unlawful file-sharing, comparing them to chemists. Funny, the ISPs compare themselves to the Royal Mail (Lord Razzall brought this up later on). Which analogy works best?

The Earl of Erroll was quite harsh on the passage of the Bill, highlighting the fact that it was not going to get amended in the Commons. He called this "dangerous" and "unethical", and "if we were directors of a company we would probably be locked up for failing to undertake proper governance. Parliament should not behave in this way". Lord Young of Norwood Green disagreed with this, of course, suggesting that "a 48-clause Bill that has had about 430 amendments tabled to it seems to me a fair amount of scrutiny". Lord Whitty was still unhappy with the result, and even "angry". He predicted that we'd have to come back in a few years to correct the mistakes brought about by this thing.

A whole chunk of amendments were readily accepted from the government, before Lord Clement-Jones popped up to give his opinion. For some extra fun, however, take a look at Lord Razzall (bottom-left) having a bit of a coughing problem during Lord Clement-Jones' contribution. It make me chuckle, so hopefully it'll do the same for you. Anyway, he obviously fought back at Lord Whitty's assessment that they'd been wasting their time for the preceding three months and the Clause 17 replacement was worse than the original. Lord Lucas made one of his welcome (for me) appearances to point out that what they should be trying to do is not penalise everybody, but to inconvenience the hardcore guys who'll always try to get stuff illegally, and to convince the rest of us that legal services are the right way to go.

The Earl of Erroll, who's involved in a business search engine, brought up the interesting question of whether search engines will get caught up in the file-sharing mess. As it stands, it seems like a rather pertinent question. Lord Lucas did point out, though, that "Google is very good at blocking access to sites; it just relegates them to page 256". He still mentioned that we "must be careful not to start acting like the Chinese Government". There was a bit of debate about the 'wash-up' in the other place, and the Earl of Erroll, as a Crossbencher (not party affiliated), was particularly bothered by the idea that the Commons could undo all their hard work in a heartbeat. He, half-jokingly, said that when he sees "two Front Benches colluding, I usually think that we are in trouble".

With all of Lord Clement-Jones's worries about the wash-up, Lord Davies of Oldham finally cracked and argued in favour of the wash-up process. He said "to the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, he might not like it but the alternative is that every Bill that has not completed all its processes would utterly and totally fall. I am quite sure he would regard that alternative as even more unacceptable than the concept of wash-up". Perhaps, but why didn't the government start the Bill a year earlier, when these laws are long overdue?

Nevertheless, after a whole bunch of other amendments, the Bill was finally passed in the Lords, to be sent to the Commons. We're all very much aware that it didn't get any meaningful scrutiny in the Commons, but having watched every second of debate in the Lords, I'm inclined to agree with the Labour front bench that it's had a satisfactory amount of scrutiny in the Lords alone. However, of course, there is the constitutional principle here, that a Bill without proper scrutiny in both Houses shouldn't become an Act, but that's something we'll all have to live with. We can always go through this dance one more time under the coalition government to get it right. Not ideal, but that's life.