Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill

Debate between Lord Fox and Baroness Stowell of Beeston

Committee stage
Wednesday 24th January 2024 Grand Committee

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston (Con)]

I wanted to intervene briefly. I do not have an amendment in the group, I have not signed my name to any, but I wanted to piggyback on the introduction of the issue of private litigation to ask a question that has been put to me by one of the big tech firms. I thought it was a reasonable question, even though it was not one I felt moved to table an amendment on. I suggest to my noble friend the Minister that he might find it easier to reply by means of a letter to me that he can put in the Library of the House, rather than taking up time.

The question is why, in this Bill, if somebody wants to bring a private litigation, there is no provision for the CMA to be required to give consent before an action can be taken by way of private litigation. In contrast, in the Communications Act 2003, Ofcom’s consent is required before private litigation is taken on a matter that refers to conditions imposed on the various companies that come under its auspices. The relevant part of the Communications Act is Section 104, where claimants must obtain permission from Ofcom to bring private enforcement claims alleging a breach of the conditions that have been set by Ofcom: they cannot simply file a claim whenever they wish. The Act says:

“The consent of OFCOM is required for the bringing of proceedings by virtue of subsection (1)(a)”.


The purpose of this is to give Ofcom a sort of gatekeeping role and prevent overlapping, or private litigation happening while something is being carried out by the regulator.

I thought it was a worthwhile question and I am happy to ask it. The other issue that has been raised with me is that in these private litigations, the contentious countervailing exemption that we discussed in an earlier group is not available to the big tech firms in the same way that it is available to them in the procedure that is set out in the Bill.

I have given the Bill team notice of these questions. I know that they have some very good answers, and I suggest to my noble friend that he asks his officials to convert that into a letter that he can put into the public domain.

[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.

Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill

Debate between Lord Fox and Baroness Stowell of Beeston

Committee stage
Tuesday 25th April 2023 Grand Committee

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston (Con)]

I shall just add briefly a comment before we get to the wind-ups, in response to something that my noble and learned friend Lord Garnier said when he urged us not to overstate the problem of SLAPPs. I just wanted to make two brief points.

One has been made by many people already, which is that in fact, when it comes to SLAPPs we do not really know the scale of this problem, because so many of these cases never make it to a court of law. I wanted to make a second point in response to what my noble and learned friend said about not seeking to overstate the problem, and his questioning my and others’ ingenuity in bringing forward amendments in the Bill. My understanding of the reason for the Bill is that economic crime is a real problem. So, if we are legislating because that is the real problem, and we are aware that some of the most significant perpetrators of economic crime have ways of preventing the evidence that would lead them to be potentially subject to the justice system because they operate in that kind of market, as it were, surely we ought to seek to close that gap. Whether or not the number of them that might qualify under that heading is large or small, there is a gap. As I say, the objective here is tackling economic crime, and our amendments are only about economic crime.

I understand very much that the broader question of SLAPPs will have to be returned to, because the whole issue of SLAPPs cannot be addressed in an economic crime Bill. However, my amendments and others in this group are trying to make sure, in the context of economic crime, that those who may be the most significant perpetrators of it on a large scale have nowhere to hide.

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, this has been a fantastic debate and I will not add any pearls of wisdom and substance, but I would just like to just say something about process in response to the noble Lord, Lord Agnew. In the event that the Government are unable to satisfy what I think is the strong view of your Lordships that something needs to be done, I think we can pledge that the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, and I will work well within our own group to make sure that the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, about pushing this further on Report will certainly have some legs from our point of view.

Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure Bill

Debate between Lord Fox and Baroness Stowell of Beeston

Report stage
Wednesday 12th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston (Con)]

My Lords, just because it is my first opportunity to do so, I congratulate my noble friend on his new role and welcome the noble Lord, Lord Harlech, to his place on the Front Bench.

I do not contribute to this debate with any enthusiasm because, having made my points at all previous stages of this Bill through your Lordships’ House, it disappoints me that we are here where we are. I will repeat some of my points briefly. Like everybody else, I think it is important to emphasise that I, too, wholly endorse fast and full rollout of high-quality broadband to all parts of the UK.

As has been said already by others, my concern is really on behalf of the site owners. It is important for us to keep in mind, particularly if we have not been following this Bill closely, that when we talk about site owners this is not just about wealthy landowners but a whole range of different smallholdings and community property and that sort of thing. A whole manner of different people are involved. They were told that the reduction in rental income would be reinvested by the mobile network operators in delivering the rollout. It seems that there remains a lack of confidence on their part, because there is insufficient evidence to demonstrate how the new code is working. They are expected to engage in negotiations with commercial entities on trust while fearing their loss is at someone else’s gain. We have heard the extent of this in other groups earlier this evening.

As I have said before, the benefit of rollout relies on the willingness of site holders to participate; when we rely on people to succeed, they deserve to be heard and listened to. When their concerns are about fairness, they cannot be ignored. I am concerned about not causing any delay to rollout, but the arguments and evidence we have heard today is that ignoring the concerns of site owners is doing just that.

In Committee, I said I would support an amendment—it was Amendment 50 in Committee—that simply required the mobile network operators to report annually and transparently to Ofcom on a range of performance measures, including their overall investment into mobile networks alongside a range of other things. This amendment, ably moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Merron, goes much further and includes a review, as we have heard, and the potential for the type of reporting requirement I have just described to be an outcome of it.

In my view, the Government have to move from their current position if they are to bring all site owners on side—and we need them on side to get the rollout. In the absence of any willingness on the Government’s part while the Bill is in Parliament, the case for Parliament imposing this independent review is compelling. That said, I hope my noble friend will have given the points made in this debate full consideration, and I will listen carefully to what he has to say.

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Merron, on her presentation of this amendment. It is an elegant composite of the discussions we had in Committee, and that is why I was very happy to put my name to it. We have heard some compelling speeches and I suggest to the Minister that they have come from 360 degrees in this Chamber, which generally indicates a klaxon for any government Minister. This really is an issue.

Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure Bill

Debate between Lord Fox and Baroness Stowell of Beeston

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

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, while we were debating the previous group, the Government seemed to be getting ready to embrace an influx of court cases by going from two judges to 100. The intention of the large number of amendments here is to avoid that eventuality. If the Government Front Bench is not happy with the words, it should be happy with the spirit of driving the alternative dispute resolution process. It would be good to have some acknowledgement from the Government, when we get to their response, that this ADR process will be central to avoiding the sort of things we were talking about in the previous group.

Amendment 39 is intended to force operators to give greater weight to Ofcom’s code of practice, which it is currently obliged to prepare under paragraph 103(1) of the ECC. Amendments 40, 41 and 42 aim to address non-compliance with Ofcom’s code of practice, and Amendment 44 deals with building safety. That could have been separated out into another group. I will speak specifically just to Amendments 42 and 44, because they are in my name.

Amendment 42 requires that Ofcom include in its code of practice guidelines on when operators must pay compensation to those affected by the operator’s failure to adhere to the code of practice. This compensation is limited to 100% of the total value of the contract to which the dispute relates. We do not expect that this would be the standard award and we have intentionally left it to Ofcom to draft guidelines on this issue. In fact, as my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones set out, Amendments 40, 41 and 42 work together with the aim of promoting consensus-based agreements, and to have a market that works effectively and is not stuffed up with disputes—which comes back to my first point.

In a gear change, Amendment 44 focuses on building safety, raised by the noble Earl opposite in the context of a previous group. The amendment would place a duty on network providers to ensure that any work done on communications infrastructure does not compromise building safety. Specifically, we are concerned about the interaction of digital infrastructure installation with the findings of the Hackitt report into building regulations and fire safety, which followed the dreadful Grenfell Tower tragedy.

As the Minister will be aware, in her report on the Grenfell disaster Dame Judith Hackitt recommends that the

“creation, maintenance and handover of relevant information”

should be

“an integral part of the legal responsibilities on Clients, Principal Designers and Principal Contractors undertaking … work on”

high-rise residential blocks. This matters because when a telecoms operator runs internal cabling in blocks, each hole is potentially a breach of a firewall. It seems to us that installation of gigabit-capable cabling is one of the most likely modifications a multi-residence high-rise block could face, and operators need to be obligated to meet safety requirements. If the Bill remains in its current form, digital contractors will have access rights that exceed those of the blue-light services, so where do they sit regarding their obligations to the Building Safety Act and in fulfilling the aims of the Hackitt report?

The purpose of Amendment 44 is to probe where telecoms and broadband contractors sit in the new environment of the Building Safety Act. I understand that, as a consequence of that Act, statutory instruments would be brought forward to compel certain actions from utilities contractors. My understanding is that the Government do not regard digital infrastructure as a pure-play utility function. Therefore, will there be a statutory instrument specifically to target digital infrastructure? In responding to this, the Minister may want to explain what statutory instruments are expected, with reference to which bits of which Act.

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend the Minister will remember from my remarks at Second Reading that my main concern is about the sense of unfairness that exists between the site owners and the mobile network operators. Because of that, I hope the Government will agree to look at making some changes to the legislation. We will come to the economic impact assessment later this evening. I have some sympathy with the suggestion of a mandatory alternative dispute resolution in the way it is described in Amendment 35. As I say, this is just a general gentle expression of warmth towards that as a way of signalling to people who at the moment feel a sense of some unwillingness on the part of the Government to recognise that there needs to be some change. I look forward to hearing what my noble friend has to say.