Lord Mandelson will say today that he intends to press ahead with controversial measures to cut off the internet connections of people caught downloading pirated music, films or television programmes.

The Business Secretary plans to introduce legislation to ensure that serial pirates will have their home internet services “suspended” for short periods as the flagship measure of next month’s Digital Economy Bill.

It is understood that a service would be disconnected only after a series of offences, with initial breaches incurring warning letters and subsequent contraventions penalised by “throttling” internet connections to reduce download speeds.

Lord Mandelson’s intervention — to be made in a speech this morning to creative industries executives — comes after months of pressure from the music industry, led by Lucian Grainge, chief executive of Universal Music.

Should the measure pass through Parliament, a suspension penalty would mean that parents could be at risk of losing their family internet connection if their children repeatedly used it to violate copyright. Concerns about the impact on families meant that the sanction of disconnection was initially dropped when considered in the run-up to the Digital Britain White Paper.

However, weeks after Digital Britain was published, Lord Mandelson decided that the piracy crisis was so severe that he put disconnection back on the table in August.

His speech comes on the last day of the three-day Cabinet conference, which has heard repeated calls from media company leaders for ministers to take a hard line on internet pirates. The French parliament recently passed a law that would sanction the disconnection of a households’ internet connection if the subscriber had been caught illegally downloading music, television or film three times.

Jean-Bernard Levy, chief executive of Vivendi, the Paris-based owner of Universal Music, said that it was imperative that Britain mirrored the French “three strikes” law.

Elio Leoni-Sceti, chief executive of EMI Music, said that Britain needed to introduce a system that mirrored the system of speeding penalties for motorists. “It should be like a penalty on your licence the first time you get caught and on the second time you would be at risk of getting your licence taken away.”

Referring to the disconnection of internet services, Gail Rebuck, the UK chief executive of Random House, the publisher, said: “As a content provider, I am all for the ultimate sanction.”

However, the plan has to navigate opposition from BT and Carphone Warehouse, the internet service providers, which have complained about the costs of implementing the scheme and any other technical measures, and say that it would be almost impossible to enforce because technology makes it possible for serial pirates to disguise their online identities.

Next month’s Digital Economy Bill will also focus on digital radio, the regulation of computer games and Channel 4 — with clauses giving the Pan-European Game Information (PEGI) age-rating system for computer games a statutory basis for the first time, legislating for changes to Channel 4’s remit and outlining the procedure for radio’s migration to a digital format, which could result in FM radio being switched off by 2015.

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