Digital Economy bill: liveblogging the crucial third reading

Will it pass or will it get derailed? The committee stage/third reading of the Digital Economy bill is due to be debated tonight.

This has two sides going to war - no, not the Tories and Labour, but the "creative industries" (emphasis on "industry") and the digital rights groups (emphasis on "rights").

You can watch it if you like live over at the Parliament site - but then of course you miss everyone's insightful comments.

At present they seem to be discussing the Finance bill - it's all about money for homes and who has a "major interest" in the property. Stephen Timms - who also leads on the Digital Economy bill - is leading for the government at the moment on the bill.

In the chair: Sir Alan Haselhurst, the deputy speaker. They really are rushing this through.

8.53pm: OK, and they're off. Starters orders. A handful of people in the chamber.

8.53pm: And yes it's Stephen Timms leading for the government. He's got a long night in.

8.54pm: Clause 1 being discussed: about importance of getting Ofcom to facilitate investment in broadband. But this is the bit that's under threat. The wash-up really does whizz along. "In order to be helpful to other members.. I'm not moving that clause this evening."

8.56pm: So what does that mean for notspots in rural areas, he's asked. 2megabits per second by 2012 (yawn) and Timms says: "we need the landline levy.... not sadly in the finance bill but will be in the finance bill that we will introduce straight after the election." Some hollow laughter from the Tories...

8.58pm: Don Foster asks why broadband landline tax dropped if there's a majority in both houses for it. Speaker tells him not to ask. (It's the wash-up fix-up.)

Noes have it - clause 1 is dead.
Ayes have it - clause 2 lives.
Ayes have it - clause 3 lives. Democracy in action!

8.59pm: Tom Watson is up. Moving amendments. Can he move the house? "The speed with which we've have to submit amendments has been.. lightspeed." Basket of amendments about definitions and scope of the bill.

Amendment 36 amends subclause 4.1. Oh lordy. About the assumption of liability of people who receive notifications. "Replaced with words of neutral meaning to provide reassurance to .. anyone who shares a network.. so the legislation does not assume guilt." Seems good to us.

9.01pm: Tom Watson still going. P2P filesharing: trying to give a definition that narrowly defines it rather than wide definition of copyright infringement which will "save embarassment".

Points to the Gene Hunt Labour poster..

Sat here watching the proceedings while eating some rhubarb crumble cooked by my wonderful wife, by the way. (It certainly makes me think: yes, MPs do work for you. Especially at this time of night. ) Reporting from home beats sitting in the Parliamentary gallery. Did we even have live Parliamentary feeds in 2005? Certainly gives you an idea of what the wash-up is like - probably rarely seen before.

9.04pm: Intervention from female MP (don't recognise her) who says it's more important to get it right than do it in a hurry. Tom W agrees that it's better to remove clauses 11-18 which is his principal aim overall.

What we can't tell from this is whether the government is just going to steamroller this, or whether Tom Watson's intervention will make some difference.

9.07pm: He's also bravely going to try to define P2P because he thinks the government didn't do too well. And he has a new clause 3. (Didn't that just pass?)

9.09pm: Speaker asks if the amendment be made. This gets support from David Drew. He points out that the bill needs "proper scrutiny" and that he didn't speak in the second reading the other day because he'd hoped that the government would halt it.

"What seemed a technical bill has become quite an emotive and.. dangerous bill."

9.12pm: There's not a huge number of people in the Chamber. Now a Labour member who looks more like David Davis saying the bill needs "proper democratic scrutiny".

Drew again: "this is getting me more of a postbag, and certainly an electronic postbag, than many other things." He would rather get on with the election rather than understanding the DEBill, he says.

9.15pm: three ministers have contacted Labour MP who say that they are deeply unhappy with the wording of the bill, which has become much broader since Lord Carter worked on it.

9.17pm: "Lord Carter would be proud of the new [Tom Watson] clause 3... it's as much carrot as it is stick. It's that stick that Lord Mandelson introduced and which has completely distorted the bill." Lord Mandelson, stick? Perish the thought.

9.18pm: Paul Farrelly (I think), Labour, sating that it should have had pre-legislative scrutiny. In a committee. Line by line. Lots of people agree. But not ministers.

9.19pm: Derek Wyatt saying he had to use the internet to find out what clauses had been removed from the bill rather than the Vote Office (in Parliament), which he finds "upsetting but not surprising".

Says that "we will chase around endless ISPs just changing our email address" if they're disconnected. That it's pointless.

9.23pm: letter from the BPI and the Creative Industries saying they've waited four years for legislation against online piracy. "But.." from the Tory side, points to the idea that information needs to be spread around. "I think there may be an element of not only uncertainty but even impossibility in restraining..." And that there should be proper pre-legislative analysis.

So basically everyone who has spoken since Stephen Timms has been against what's being proposed in the bill. "I think it's a bad bill in the sense that it's being rushed through, and because the Prime Minister has set out in his five pledges ... to rush this through.. and there are paper amendments coming down from the Lords... this calls for proper scrutiny.."

9.26pm: "This is not the Dangerous Dogs bill. This is a very very different bill."

Yet another MP: "The proposals in this bill would never pass a house committee." Is there anyone in there who's favour of this?

Phooey. I'd like to tell you who the MPs are, by using the BBC Parliament feed, but it's showing the Lords. Why, BBC, why?

Another older member notes: "I've had a lot of representations, mainly by email which is a bloo-- a nuisance. And from young members of the Labour Party who say their peer-to-peer connections are going to be clamped down on and get them into trouble."

9.30pm: Austin Mitchell rises (I think he was just speaking): the danger is that filesharing, p2p, is going to endanger the connection for the whole family. "I'll have to give way to another silver surfer."

9.32pm: "What happens if you have a young band of transcendent genius like... Stiff Little Fingers who are denied their intellectual property rights?" From an old, balding MP.

Mitchell replies that it can be done by altering the provisions of the bill with proper scrutiny.

9.34pm: John Hemming - member of the BPI, PRS, has run e-commerce for 10 years - says "this bill is a complete mess". Most people using these systems are young, so the money to be gained is small.

"First problem is trying to deal with a very very very very very complex issue in the wash-up. Appreciate the industry had to wait four years but that's not a reason to do it in one night. Drop clauses 11-18 and look at them in next Parliament."

"Look at Wikileaks." (He's been reading our stuff.) "It holds government copyright material. They would want to apply to have Wikileaks banned in the UK. That's clearly in the bill as it stands."

9.37pm: John Hemming: "I do a little bit of computer programming in respect of my casework system.." Blimey. Geek MP. "Just as with code, for laws we have scrutiny. Although these amendments are to be welcomed... Wikileaks is a good example to be looked at, websites that give freedom of information... sure that the government doesn't want to do that. But don't put through new clause 1, or 18 - I understand 18 won't be moved." It won't?

9.39pm: Ahh, thanks Twitter - the BBC Parliament feed is showing the Commons feed. http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/playlive/bbc_parliament/. Caption-arama! Although of course it is going to require Flash. Or HTML5 video for you iPhone users.

9.40pm: Bill Cash (Cons) says that they need to go after people who are doing it professionally. (Strange how when you can't see the names that the MPs seem much more reasonable.)

Nick Palmer for Labour saying that when he had a video game that it got pirated. It's like the geek parliament tonight.

9.44pm: Ed Vaizey, shadow culture media sport minister, says it's pathetic for Labour to complain about lack of scrutiny - that they've had loads of chance. So now he gets challenged to explain why they would do.

Political knockabout ahead.

9.45pm: Vaizey says that Conservatives support the bill in principle and says to Labour MPs that it's all their own fault. Nyah. Gets challenged by Chris Chope (Cons) to say what he would put in place.

Which he then declines to answer. Tom Watson says that Vaizey is a friend but that that's "intellectually disingenuous."

Vaizey says he should have had a word with Gordon Brown, who's a close personal friend of Watson's.

9.47pm: Stephen Timms stands up - first time in an hour or so - and says he will want the House to "resist" Watson's amendments.

Tries to make it all sound not too evil - just sending letters to people.

9.48pm: Don Foster for the Lib Dems says that it should also be part of the bill that industry must make it easier for people to get access to material at a fair price.

Timms says yes, of course, sure, mm-hmm. "My sense is that there is a pretty broad acceptance across the house... that legislation is appropriate for dealing with it. There is definitely significant harm to the creative industries... estimated at £400m for the music, film and TV industries in the impact assessment of the bill... this is a very serious problem."

9.51pm: Bill Cash again. Making a vague point about just stopping the pirates making money.

Timms says this part is about the particular problem of P2P "which is at the moment the lion's share".

What about Hemming's point about Wikileaks? Timms hasn't dealt with that at all.

"The house needs to recognise the strength of feeling on the other side of the debate, in terms of the number of people who are affected." Well, OK, but why don't they have MPs pinging their side in the house, voting down Watson's amendments?

9.54pm: How will it work? Copyright owner -> ISP, ISP -> letter to person in charge of that account. "I challenge anybody to suggest that it is not a proportionate response to have a letter sent."

Amendment 36 (Watson?): Timms says we should get the person in charge of the internet access to make sure it isn't used for unlawful access. Clearly these two sides aren't going to agree - the MPs have pointed out the flaws and it hasn't meant a thing.

9.57pm: Tom Watson says that the amendment tries to get people to say whether infringement is for financial gain - so that industry gets an idea of how widespread commercial piracy is, and whether there could be a fair use clause in copyright reform.

9.59pm: Tom Watson looking unhappy at Timms avoiding dealing with the question.

Now Timms gives way to John Randall (Cons, Uxbridge) MP who says they had a case in his constituency where the IP wasn't unique and the ISP wrote to someone who had nothing to do with it. So there's possibility of innocent people being accused.

Timms says there is question with mobile networks. But that at this level of the bill - this clause - it's about a letter being sent. Hemming asks about the IP again. Timms says, clearly not familiar with this, that it is clear which service provider has provided the connection... the ISP gets the information... the ISP does know who is responsible for that account.

Mark Todd, of Derbyshire South (Lab) asks why the test is an "apparent" copyright breach. "Demonstrating precise copyright ownership isn't as straightforward as might be assumed."

10.04pm: And once more Timms says it's about a letter being sent.

Text of the amendments being put forward:
One set

10.06pm: And now they're on to the 'sending letters' clause. Tom Watson on his feet with his amendments.

And here's a second set of amendments for the bill.

It's almost impossible to understand how these things work unless you're a lawyer or an MP, I think....

10.10pm: Always fabulous to see what's going on in the background. Bloke behind Tom Watson looks like he's doing the crossword, though I suspect it's much more about trying to figure what the amendments will do to the bill.

Mark Todd again: how are they so sure that they'll be able to demonstrate their copyright ownership?

Why is it that nobody is in favour of this bill apart from the government minister? Even Ed Vaizey, for the Tories, effectively washed his hands of it.

Oh - the MP who referred to Stiff Little Fingers is Stephen Pound, Labour. Nice one Stephen. He is speaking up, asking about copyright protection. So he's in favour of the bill, I guess.

10.14pm: Don Foster, Lib Dem culture/media/sport, moving his amendment. "Having spent over 1 hour debating 1 clause of a 50-clause bill with one hour for all the rest... it's frankly disgraceful".

10.16pm: "There will be no time to discuss clause 43" - bad luck photographers - "or to ask the government why it's backing down in independently-funded local news consortia". Yup, wash-up isn't good for much.

10.19pm: Don Foster is talking about a super-affirmative resolution. Wasn't that a track by Muse?

10.22pm: Stephen Timms back again. On the Don Foster amendments. "There will not be technical measures imposed until Ofcom has concluded its report." (90 days? Not clear.)

On the point of his concern about undue power to a future secretary of state.. "it would be controversial... so he has to have regard to Ofcom's recommendations.."

"But I think he has made a telling point.. Parliament should have the opportunity to scrutinise the order... allows a superaffirmative procedure, which is quite unusual". OK, what is a superaffirmative resolution? Does that nice Mr Google or Mr Bing know?

In case anyone hasn't noticed this in the comments, we do love this comment from Twitter:

"RT @graphiclunarkid: Oh how I wish Parliament had a Twitterfall screen set up above the Speaker's chair. #debill "

10.26pm:
Clause 4 goes through.
Clause 5 goes through.
Clause 6. Amendment 15, 49, 23, Don Foster on his feet.

Interesting point from stardancer69 in the comments:

The technology is already way ahead of [the lawmakers] and can easily circumvent the strictures which they at the behest of the music and movie industries are seeking to impose. Check out virtual private networks on Google. Giganews already offer it for free on their top package. Not only will it disguise from your ISP what you might be doing with your internet connection, it will also allow you to appear to be operating from an IP address in a totally different part of the world! And it is all strongly encrypted.

Works for the Chinese to route around the Great Firewall..

10.29pm: It's basically Tom Watson and Don Foster against all the rest of them. They could have a fight, I suppose. Diane Abbott seems to be waiting for a turn to speak, or perhaps she's just going to livetweet this.

Watson making the point that for people running a small business from home that disconnection isn't proportionate.

10.30pm: Denis MacShane, ex-president of the NUJ, says that if you create something it shouldn't be given out free on the internet. I'm watching him free on the internet, but let that pass - we paid for it with our taxes.

Tom Watson slaps MacShane down: "he's just wandered into the chamber and expressed his astonishment.... our constituents who may lose their livelihood as a result of this being bounced through in an hour."

MacShane says he's been following it closely. "I have honourable friends who say others do not have the right to protect what they have created ... because of concerns about open Wi-Fi." OK, so MacShane is speaking up for the content side. "I welcome this explosion of content provision.. but must not deny the creators... "

10.33pm: Stephen Timms agrees that commercial provision shouldn't be something that coffee shops etc have to think twice about. But that there shouldn't be a "large, potentially growing" loophole in what is being done.

Thanks to @cmsdengi in the comments who's found what a superaffirmative procedure is:

First, the Minister lays his regulatory reform proposal before Parliament "in the form of" a draft order together with a full explanatory document. Following the 60 day period of Parliamentary consideration, during which time the proposal is referred automatically and simultaneously to the Committees appointed by Parliament for the purpose, the Committees make their first report to their respective Houses. If the reports are favourable, the next stage is for the Minister formally to lay a draft order in each House, along with an explanation of any changes made compared to the earlier proposal. If the Minister is minded to accept any changes that are proposed to the draft order by the Committees or others between this stage and the final vote on the order, he must formally take up the draft order he has laid and replace it with another which incorporates the changes.

OK? Clear as.. er.

Just to help @jacktatum in the comments, who wants a summary of what's gone on so far: as I understand it, clauses 1,2,3,4,5 have gone through. Looks like 6 is going to go through.

Clause 6 being voted on. Goes through without amendment.
Clause 7, again with some Don Foster amendments.

10.38pm:
Clause 7 goes through.
Clause 8 has some amendments to be debated. Except they come from the government. "What we're doing is removing the clause 18 text that was inserted [in the Lords]. New clauses 1 and 2 introduce an amended clause 18."

Clause 18 is quite a tangle but it's about the measures that can be taken against websites which infringe copyright.

Timms says government doesn't want to block freedom of speech.

OK, but how do you stop the US government applying to block Wikileaks, as John Hemming asked earlier?

10.42pm: Weirdly, it's the Lib Dems who are being the opposition in this: the Conservatives briefly had Ed Vaizey - can't see if he's still there - and Adam Afriyie, but they've not taken part in the debates at all apart from an aggressive grump from Vaizey where he told Labour MPs that if they didn't like it they'd have to lump it.

Don Foster, Lib Dem shadow culture/media/sport, says the amendment has "many faults". Too wide-ranging. "Puts sites such as Google at risk". Sites which have infringed copyright "or are likely to". And doesn't cover all ISPs - so people could just switch provider. Lib Dems will vote against.

Ooh, Adam Afriyie must have seen me typing. He's speaking.

10.46pm: However Afriyie only seems to want to make a political point that it was the Lib Dems who included it in the Lords. (Err, it was the Conservatives with the Lib Dems, Adam.)

10.47pm: Amendment 2 gets a bit shout - and so it goes to a division. "Clear the lobbies!" shouts the clerk. Everyone goes off for some coffee, I think, or something stronger. Lynne Featherstone limps off. She it was who said earlier that it was important to get it right, not to rush.

OK, brief break then.

10.49pm: It will take about 10 minutes for the division to be completed and counted. As it's crucial to the bill - it's the government trying to make its clause work - the outcome now could be the beginning of the end, or the beginning of a new beginning.

As Matt Wells points out in the comments, "Ben Bradshaw is on Newsnight now... Paxman says he will have to 'go to a vote' soon. Don't be fooled by low numbers in the chamber, the government will get their guys and gals out of the bars and TV studios when the division bell rings and this bill will be forced through..."

10.56pm: OK, are you all doing a sweepstake on the voting here, like the Grand National?

10.57pm: OK, here we go. Ayes - 197. Noes - 40. So that's the Labour and Tories whipping through their amendment.

10.58pm: Clause 8 as amended, 9, 10 be part. Yup, they're in.

Clause 11 with 44,45 amendments. Yup, that's in.
Clause 12-14. All passed.
Clause 15 .. with amendment 3.
Clause 16 and 17 ... go in.
Clause 18. Ayes. Government says no. Noes have it.
Clauses 19-28. Blimey, this is wrapping up like that.
Clause 29. No.

11.00pm:
Clauses 30-42 stand part. Yup.
Clause 43: No. Bad luck photographers.
Clause 44-48. "The ayes have it, the ayes have it."
Clause 49, as amended (by government): ayes have it.
Clause 50, clause 8 amended.
This is zooming through.

New clauses 1 and 2 added to the bill.

11.02pm: From the division, it has simply been thrown through.
All the schedules except for 2 go through.
Amendment 10 goes through.

Ooh, the mace is out. "I beg to report that the committee has gone through the bill...." Huge uproar. "Question is that the bill now be read a third time." Aye from the government, huge shout of "Nooooo!!!" from the Lib Dem benches.

That big shout of "Nooo!!!" could have been a thousand souls crying out as one at the sight of the government shoving through 41 clauses of a bill. The third reading is the final step that brings it to the end.

11.05pm: So they now go to a division - the formal vote. Expect a result in about 10 minutes' time.

So, briefly, to the question of amendments getting put down and then withdrawn. As I understand it, MPs realise that they won't be able to get time to have a division (formal vote) on every amendment that they put down, so they have to choose the battles that they fight carefully. If they feel that the government is going to listen to them enough to shade or tweak the implementation of the bill, then they withdraw the amendment. Though perhaps a passing MP would like to clarify. There's only been two divisions on the whole procedure here tonight - on the government amendments (it won easily) and the third reading which would mean it has passed (it's expected to win easily because it will have Tory support).

So I was wrong - I've been saying for months that the government wouldn't have time to implement the Digital Economy bill. Of course I was working in my naive way off the usual timetables that bills go through - which includes a line-by-line committee stage. That didn't happen here.

And we still don't know whether Wikileaks would be safe from the "copyright infringement" clause that is now part of the bill.

Five more minutes to the conclusion..

11.11pm: OK, here we go. Vote result imminent.

Time for a quick Twitter quote from @bpiboycott: "You are now watching 100 MPs about to vote on something they haven't been following but will vote how the whips have told them to. #debill" (thanks @nothingelseis)

11.13pm: And so it comes to this.
Ayes - 189
Noes - 47.

So some people changed side. "Oh dear" comes a voice. So that's the bill passed and into its third reading and done.

Some more explanation on those dropped amendments from Tom Watson on Twitter: "If you push a vote it takes 20 minutes. I'd have lost all of them so using limited time to make points instead."

Tom Watson also says on Twitter: "First time i've ever broken the whip in the chamber. I feel physically sick." So we know where one of those 47 came from then.

OK, we'll move to our own wash-up (of rhubarb-crumbly plates) once I've figured out whether clause 18 was removed, or just tweaked.

OK, people have been confused, I think, by the fact that clause 18 wasn't included in the bill. This doesn't mean that there isn't a blocking clause.

On this page, Ben Bradshaw moved: "'(1) "The Secretary of State may by regulations make provision about the granting by a court of a blocking injunction in respect of a location on the internet which the court is satisfied has been, is being or is likely to be used for or in connection with an activity that infringes copyright."

That's the one that Don Foster got so angry about (see the 10.42pm paragraph) because it's too wide-ranging. That's the one that the first division (and really the crucial division) was about. Which the government won.

So this is how it ends: not with a bang, nor even a whimper, but a wash-up fix-up. As one MP - Bill Cash? - said, "This is not the Dangerous Dogs bill. This is far more important." However we're going to have to adjust to it.

The lack of engagement by the Tories - and Ed Vaizey's taunting of the Labour benches - may come back to haunt them if they win: it's going to cause all sorts of roadblocks for the digital economy. And it may come back to haunt them if there's a hung Parliament, since this won't be popular with the Lib Dems.

11.29pm: So thanks all for reading and commenting. Let's hope we don't have to do that again, though. Signing off to write a blogpost rounding it up.