Digital Economy Bill

Debate between Lord Aberdare and Baroness Byford

1st reading (Hansard): House of Lords & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 31st January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Byford]

My Lords, I have two amendments in this group. Amendment 25 suggests leaving out paragraph 3(h) of Schedule 1:

“to interfere with or obstruct a means of access to or from the land (whether or not any electronic communications apparatus is on, under or over the land)”.

As I declared earlier, at the moment we have no such masts on any of our land.

This is a probing amendment intended to ascertain what is meant here. How can it be reasonable, necessary or practicable to interfere with or obstruct access to land—any land as it currently stands, as is stated in the preamble—even when there is no apparatus on, under or over that land? Will this, as the noble Lord suggested, include children’s play areas? Will private citizens return home to find they cannot access their property because there is an unmoving Openreach van across their drive? Will farm animals be denied welfare services because they cannot be removed from their fields? Will emergency services, including air ambulances, be barred from using land where access has been obstructed? Will any obstruction be time limited to, for example, not more than half an hour? Indeed, have the Government given thought to this particular issue?

Amendment 39 deals with the height and clearance requirements of overhead lines. I am not sure why Amendment 40 has been removed from this group but I will speak to it at the same time, if I may. These are probing amendments, though the alternative heights they suggest are not to be regarded as frivolous. Three metres is only 10 feet. Modern agricultural machinery is large and growing larger. Three metres above the ground is likely to mean that combining a cereal crop will be difficult, more costly than strictly necessary and probably more dangerous. Have the Government consulted, for example, the NFU, the Health and Safety Executive and the CLA; and if so, what were their comments?

Two metres is only 6.5 feet. Wires hung in mid-air tend to stretch over time. It is likely that 2 metres will become, in places, 1.6 or 1.7 metres—less than the height of the average man. How will roof repairs, chimney repointing and the installation of solar panels be carried out safely with a wire at head height? Ladders and other apparatus will have to be positioned and lifted over the roof ridge. Who will carry the can and bear the cost if a wire set at 2 metres has lengthened and is damaged? Who will be held responsible if a wire moves suddenly and sharply in a gust of wind and hurts or kills somebody working on the roof? I believe that the height envisaged in this section of the code is from a time when agricultural machinery was much smaller and we did not, of course, have the whole question of electronic communications as we do now. As I said, this is a probing amendment. However, if we are not careful, this section of the code has the possibility to cause difficulty in the future.

[Lord Aberdare]

My Lords, the issues relating to valuation seem to span this and the next group. In a sense, we have not yet examined the horse to which Amendment 23 is the cart. However, I will follow the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, and the noble Baroness, Lady Byford, in covering the area as a whole.

The no-scheme valuation methodology proposed in the Bill is designed to promote greater investment in the development of much-needed communications infrastructure. In doing so, it needs to maintain a fair and workable balance between the range of different interests involved, including that of landowners, infrastructure providers, network operators and, of course, users. Briefings from the CLA, representing landowners, and from APWireless, a land aggregator, argue that this is a market that already works well and has done so for 30 years. They express serious concern that the proposed change could in fact reduce the availability of land for wireless infrastructure development, thereby slowing the rollout of extra capacity. They point out that the Law Commission report on the ECC some years ago, which the noble Lord mentioned, warned that changes along the lines proposed in the Bill would,

“generate an extremely difficult transition, and a consequent overload of litigation; more importantly, the market in sites benefits the economy—not only small businesses in the countryside but also some larger concerns”.

A subsequent report by Nordicity made similar statements.

I am not aware of any evidence that so-called ransom rents are a significant issue under the existing regime. Independent infrastructure providers, such as VVIG and Arqiva, see it as essential that these new powers are used responsibly and only as a measure of last resort. They stress the importance of seeking voluntary agreements first, to retain the support of the landowner community. The undertakings given in the Minister’s helpful letter to Peers after Second Reading, relating to wholesale infrastructure providers and to the treatment of alternative structures such as water towers and pylons, are encouraging in this respect.

A possible effect of the proposed change to a no-scheme valuation may be to generate windfall savings for large mobile network operators whose costs of acquiring access to land will fall. For that reason I support Amendment 23, which seeks to ensure that such savings are at least reinvested in increasing coverage, rather than just disappearing into the coffers of the MNOs. However, I remain concerned that the change, particularly if applied to existing agreements or their renewal, could introduce uncertainty, risk and tension between ECC beneficiaries and landlords—and of course landlord co-operation and good will is key to a sustainable, efficient and well-maintained network. It also seems to represent a fundamental change in the rules surrounding private ownership in this country.

I hope the Minister will be able to explain why this proposed new valuation methodology was introduced into the Bill so apparently unexpectedly, as the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, said, and contrary to what had previously seemed to be the Government’s intention. What provisions does the Minister have in mind to ensure that any savings made on rents are indeed reinvested in communications infrastructure? I apologise if I have jumped the gun in talking about some of the amendments in the next group.