File-sharing: it's the economy, stupid.

Peter Mandelson took the opportunity of a trip to the BRIT School in Croydon today to defend his new position on file-sharing, saying that new laws alone are not enough, but that new laws and new business models together are needed for the creative industries to flourish, which is "vital for jobs and growth".

Accompanied by culture secretary Ben Bradshaw, he emphasising that illegal downloading is threat to the livelihoods of "talented hard-working people striving to get a foothold" in the creative industries.

He also seems to have tried to calm down some of the more uninformed debate on the topic by emphasising that he is only proposing temporary account suspension, as a last resort and in the most serious cases (although of course it remains unclear how the industry Codes of Conduct contemplated by the new legislation will determine which are the most serious cases).