Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill

Debate between Lord Fox and Baroness Harding of Winscombe

Committee stage
Wednesday 24th January 2024 Grand Committee

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, the hyperactive pen of my noble friend signed up to this amendment as well. It is a great pleasure to support the noble Lords, and particularly to get cover from the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson—it is not usually like that. I am very happy to support this amendment, or the principle of this amendment: if not these words, some others.

Just to emphasise, when I was speaking to the last group of amendments, I set out a group of the major tech companies and said that in 2022, they had a revenue of nearly £400 billion, which is twice the size of the Ukrainian economy. That is the scale of the opponent that we are asking citizens to take on. To deny them the opportunity to band together, which in itself would still be a formidable challenge, is really to deny them justice. It is unrealistic to expect any individuals bar a few—and they are probably the ones who own the companies in the first place—to have sufficient resources to take on businesses of this scale. I would like the Minister at least to acknowledge that point. Perhaps we can go away and work out the best way to enable the reality of individuals being able to bring cases, because at the moment it is merely an idea; it cannot possibly happen.

[Baroness Harding of Winscombe (Con)]

I will just add a couple of questions to the ones that my noble friend Lady Stowell just posed, and I am sorry that I have not been organised enough to share these with the Bill team in advance. Both relate to the importance of the collaborative nature of this legislation and how important it is that the tech companies are actually incentivised to work with the CMA as they go through this process. I too have had a couple of questions posed to me, in addition to what I would describe as the Ofcom-model question that my noble friend raised.

First, should the legislation require courts to avoid judgments that conflict with the DMU’s existing decisions? Otherwise, I think there is potentially a risk that you get two jurisdictions coming to contradictory conclusions. Secondly, how can we avoid litigation undermining existing DMU resolutions and therefore just extending and delaying any implementation? In both cases, there is a risk—although I defer to the huge expertise in the Committee on the need for the civil proceedings. We have to make sure that we do not undermine the very principle of trying to incentivise the SMS firms to engage in constructive dialogue through the process.

Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure Bill

Debate between Lord Fox and Baroness Harding of Winscombe

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Committee stage
Wednesday 29th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Harding of Winscombe (Con)]

My Lords, I apologise. I rise to speak to Amendment 18 in my name, and I thank my noble friend Lord Vaizey, the noble Baroness, Lady Merron, and the noble Lord, Lord Fox, for putting their names to it. I apologise—I am slightly breathless, as the noble Lord, Lord Fox, gave us a little bit of disinformation about today’s Order Paper.

[Lord Fox (LD)]

I beg your Lordships’ pardon—the moving of the Statement on the Metropolitan Police was not communicated to several of us.

[Baroness Harding of Winscombe (Con)]

Many apologies. I also thank my noble friend Lady Stowell, who I was not expecting to see, but who has been extremely helpful already this afternoon. I promise I will be brief. The aim of this amendment is to address an issue that other noble Lords and I raised on Second Reading: ensuring that the Bill enables the sharing of pre-2017 poles on private land without requiring an additional wayleave, just as it does for ducts on private land. This may sound very detailed—it is—but will substantially speed up the rollout of full-fibre broadband, on which we are all agreed.

There are an estimated 1 million-plus telegraph poles on private land. Access to them is particularly important in accelerating fibre rollout in rural England and urban Scotland. As with ducts, these poles are regulated under Ofcom’s PIA mechanism. That means that any operator is able to access those poles, so extending the provision to pre-2017 poles on private land would allow all operators to speed up their rollout equally. Without this, operators will have to dig up streets or put up new poles, which will slow down the rollout in the very parts of the country that suffer some of the slowest broadband speeds, based on copper.

There is clear consensus across the industry that the Bill needs to make this possible. I understand that the Digital Infrastructure Minister recently received a letter from all the major operators and trade bodies, asking that this issue be resolved and clearly stating the public benefit that doing so would bring. There is cross-party support for the amendment, and at Second Reading my noble friend the Minister was clear that he was keen to look into the matter very closely. However, as drafted, the Bill does not actually solve the problem. There is no explicit right in the Bill to access the pole or install equipment on it. My amendment is relatively simple and seeks to set that straight. It is limited in scope.

By extending the rights granted under the existing paragraph 74 of the code, these powers would be a code right and therefore apply equally to all operators. That is a really important principle in maintaining the Government’s pro-competition policy. By explicitly including the right to carry out

“works to install, maintain and keep such lines and other reasonably associated apparatus”,

this amendment ensures that there is a right for limited works only and apparatus that is associated only with flying lines between poles. It will not allow large, unsightly or unassociated apparatus to be put on the poles, so there would be very limited visual impact. In fact, it is important to remember that technology is getting smaller all the time; a number of these telegraph poles already have equipment on them, so this would most probably reduce the visual impact rather than increase it.

This amendment also protects the rights of landowners. It grants limited additional rights for operators on how they use the poles. It does not give operators additional rights to get to the pole in people’s back gardens. Landowners would still need to give their consent—that could be a simple verbal agreement—to allow an engineer to enter the property. This amendment does not intend to change that.

With over 1 million poles on private land today, this small and straightforward amendment would significantly increase the rollout of full fibre, on which we all agree. I ask my noble friend to tell us that he agrees that the Bill must be amended to do this. I am not precious about the specific wording or the exact amendment. I understand that DCMS lawyers have some concerns about whether the wording achieves our aim of going up the pole and putting the necessary equipment on it, but I have not seen any alternative proposals. I hope my noble friend will take this amendment in the constructive way in which it is intended. If he has concerns about the specific wording, I hope we will be able to work together between Committee and Report to bring back an amendment that delivers the outcome that I believe we all agree on.