National Security and Investment Bill

Debate between Lord Vaizey of Didcot and Lord Callanan

Committee stage
Tuesday 9th March 2021 Grand Committee

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Lord Callanan) (Con)]

I thank all noble Lords who have contributed to this very useful short debate. I welcome the amendments proposed by my noble friend Lord Vaizey. Taken together, as numerous speakers have said, his amendments would exempt UK investors and investors from other particular countries from the Bill’s mandatory notification regime. As it stands, both the mandatory and the voluntary notification regimes provided for by the Bill are both actor and nationality-agnostic. The mandatory notification regime is based on the risks posed by acquisitions of target entities due to those entities’ activities, rather than the risks posed by the acquirers. The risks posed by acquirers are then considered on a case-by-case basis by the Secretary of State as part of the particular national security assessment.

My noble friend is right to suggest that, in many cases, acquisitions by UK nationals and UK-based companies, or those based in like-minded countries, are less likely to give rise to national security concerns, even in relatively sensitive sectors. Such acquirers, if their proposed acquisitions do not give rise to national security risks, will find their acquisitions cleared to proceed by the Secretary of State, following assessment or following call-in, should that be necessary, for further review.

However, an acquirer’s nationality cannot tell the Secretary of State everything he needs to know about that acquirer’s intent. For example, it is possible that a UK acquirer may be paid by a hostile actor or otherwise have strong links to hostile actors based outside the UK. A similar rationale follows for the amendment’s reference to other like-minded countries. So, excluding purely on the basis of nationality could create a loophole to exploit.

The particular approach of the amendments in this group also raises some practical challenges. For instance, the references to nationality appear not to deal with the issue of dual nationality; nor is a change of nationality covered. Key considerations in designing this regime have included ensuring that it is not discriminatory, and that it upholds our World Trade Organization and other international obligations in this regard. It is not clear that these amendments would achieve this.

None the less, we wish to consider over time how we might temper and adjust the regime to take account of areas of lower risk. Under Clause 6, the Bill gives the Secretary of State the ability to make exemptions from the mandatory notification regime based on the “characteristics” of the acquirer. This may include nationality if this is judged appropriate and the various issues that I have highlighted can be resolved.

We will of course monitor closely how the regime works in practice to determine through detailed further work and carefully assess whether any such exemptions should be introduced. Any such regulations would be subject to appropriate parliamentary scrutiny through the affirmative procedure.

I welcome the opportunity to discuss the impact of nationality on the regime with my noble friends and to set out our thinking in more detail. However, for the reasons I have given, I cannot accept my noble friend’s amendments. Before I conclude, I can confirm to the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, that the Government will engage with a number of stakeholders on the voluntary and mandatory notification forms. Therefore, given the points I have made, I wonder whether my noble friend will consider withdrawing his amendment.

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend the Minister for his response. Never have I seen so many noble Lords and noble Baronesses arraign so uniformly against an amendment, so the mood of the Grand Committee is clearly against me. In fact, through the powers of my advocacy I think that I even persuaded the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, to move from being a supporter to an opposer of my amendments, if I followed her speech correctly.

I am not sure that the issue of media ownership threw much light on the power of my amendments. However distasteful we might find the antics of media owners in this country, the British ones are just as guilty as any foreign ones of potentially challenging our democracy.

My noble friend Lord Lansley was correct to say that I included New Zealand along the lines of the Five Eyes, although I notice that he said that the US regime could be helpful to UK businesses if the UK was exempt from the equivalent provisions in the US. That was the purpose of my amendment.

Fundamentally, the point I was trying to make with these amendments, which did not really shine through, is that I seek not to hide any transactions from the national security regime but simply to avoid an overwhelming number of mandatory notifications for the department. Of all the speeches that I heard, the Minister’s was the most supportive. I noted his very welcome comments that the door remains ajar, as the regime develops, to put in place provisions to ease the bureaucracy and the number of mandatory notifications.

Finally, I was inspired by my noble friend Lord Leigh of Hurley’s speech to potentially draft a new amendment as we progress—perhaps the pub amendment, whereby the only transactions that can be notified in a mandatory fashion to the Government are those that can fit into my noble friend’s local pub. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

National Security and Investment Bill

Debate between Lord Vaizey of Didcot and Lord Callanan

Committee stage & Lords Hansard
Tuesday 2nd March 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

Yes, but we are arguing it should be declared void by automatic obligation of statute, rather than it being a power the Secretary of State could exercise. I have just explained that.

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con) [V]]

Although I mentioned it at Second Reading, I refer noble Lords to my entry in the register of interests. Also, as noble Lords have done throughout Committee, I thank all the trade bodies that have been so helpful in advising noble Lords on some of our amendments and, particularly, for me, Veronica Roberts at Herbert Smith Freehills. Just for the record, may I also say how delighted I am that it is the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, responding on my amendment rather than the noble Lord, Lord Grimstone? I had a touch of the noble Lord, Lord Grimstone, on my previous amendment, and now, to have the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, frankly, my cup runneth over.

I thank all noble Lords who have supported my amendment. Without wishing to pick any winners, I thought that the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, put it most succinctly when she spoke of the automatic voiding penalty. She channelled her inner football commentator by saying the automatic voiding was a “massive penalty”. I think that is right. I also point to the noble Lord, Lord Leigh, who has been very good at introducing me to the mysteries of Lords amendments and has marshalled me extremely well. These amendments pose an unanswerable question to the Minister, because if they are accepted and a transaction can be made voidable, it can, by definition, be voided. It is just not automatic. It ensures voiding can apply where the Government think that is the only solution with a transaction that has not been notified.

In the real world, it is unlikely that a mandatory notification would not be made. The tenor of most of the speeches that have been made during the passage of this Bill is that the Government should expect far more notifications than they have estimated so far. The Minister is quite right to say that anyone transacting in the midst of a mandatory area is likely to have some high-powered lawyers advising them.

What I would say in response to the Minister’s excellent response to this debate is that there are certain points that I feel have not been addressed. One is obviously going back to the massive penalty phrase. If you void a transaction where it is part of a wider transaction, how do you go about unwinding it? Would there not be other, more suitable punishments than simply voiding the entire transaction? Indeed, as the Minister indicated, there will be plenty of people—shareholders, for example—who will be unduly punished by the automatic voiding provisions. Surely there must be alternative punishments.

However, by definition, given that you can effectively retrospectively apply to the Government if you have failed to comply with the mandatory notification requirements, you are, as my noble friend Lord Leigh pointed out, effectively making your transaction voidable. You are giving the Government the chance not to void the transaction, yet by introducing an automatic voiding penalty, the Government have precluded themselves from punishing the parties who failed to comply with their requirement for mandatory notification. Giving themselves flexibility by allowing themselves potentially to void a transaction also gives them the flexibility to impose other punishments.

There are other dogs that have not barked in this debate. In other amendments that we have been debating, previous legislation has been cited as an example that has guided the Bill—but there is no similar sanction, as far as I am aware, in any other business-facing legislation in this country. I hope the Minister will not mind me teasing him a bit at the end because I suspect I know—I think I am right in saying—where his sympathies lie in terms of the great debate of the past decade between Brexit and remain. Is there not an irony in him citing the great example of the French and the Germans but ignoring the far more practical Anglo-Saxon common-law tradition evidenced in the US, Canada and Australia? I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Uber: Supreme Court Ruling

Debate between Lord Vaizey of Didcot and Lord Callanan

Monday 1st March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I never thought I would hear the noble Lord say that he agreed with my noble friend Lord Blencathra, but there we are. I make absolutely clear that the Supreme Court judgment is final, and Uber will of course need to align its business model to comply with it. Employers have a duty to automatically enrol qualifying workers into workplace pension schemes. This already extends to engagers of agency workers and those on temporary, fixed-term and zero-hours contracts.

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

I refer to my entries in the register of Members’ interests. I proudly declare myself a user of Uber’s services, as well as those of home-grown, UK global companies such as Deliveroo. I congratulate the Minister on his thoroughly Conservative—indeed, three-Shredded-Wheat—response to the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra. But why has the position of the Director of Labour Market Enforcement, previously occupied by the distinguished Matthew Taylor, been left vacant, despite his offer to carry on until a replacement is found? It is an important role, given where we are.

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord for his support. In my view, it is all about choice in the market. Those who wish to use services such as black cabs are free to do so, as are those who wish to use Uber or other home-grown services. That to me is the essentially Conservative thing; it is about choice and competition, which produce better standards for all. In answer to the noble Lord’s question, we will be making an announcement shortly.