As unemployment looks set to soar in the months ahead, quangocrat and soon to be outgoing head of Ofcom Lord David Currie appears to have discovered a cunning plan to find jobs for tens of thousands. The time for regulating the internet is nigh – and Ofcom could be the body to do it.

In fairness, Lord Currie seems merely to be recognising a change in political direction. Until very recently, the government approach to internet content was mostly hands off. This is no longer so, as recent initiatives on terror, suicide and porn all indicate.

Answering questions from the floor at the Royal Television Society conference in London last month, Minister for Truth Andy Burnham said:

"The time has come for perhaps a different approach to the internet. I want to even up that see-saw, even up the regulation [imbalance] between the old and the new."

The idea that the internet was "beyond legal reach" and a "space where governments can't go" was no longer the case.

In his final annual lecture for Ofcom last week Lord Currie expressed a belief that tighter regulation was coming. He said: "Ask most legislators today and, where they think about it, they will say that period [of forbearance] is coming to an end."

His comments are not so much a call for a new role for Ofcom as a recognition that such a role may be coming. A spokesperson for Ofcom added that decisions would need to be taken by the government, particularly as to where any new regulatory responsibility would lie.

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