GKN/Melrose Takeover: Update

Lord Jopling Excerpts

Tuesday 27th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jopling (Con)]

My Lords, surely one of the most worrying aspects of this matter is the suggestion that a company whose business is very much concerned with national security could be bought and held for only five years by a company whose business seems to be a quick turnover on selling and buying businesses. In five years’ time, as I understand it, the business could then be passed on to China or almost anybody, which has severe implications for the five-year term. I notice that the five-year issue was not in the Minister’s Statement. It seems a crucial, central aspect of the issue. Can we know why the Government were not frank enough to put it in the Statement?

[Lord Henley]

Again, I am not sure that I can take my noble friend much further than I did earlier when I talked about the advice that my right honourable friend needs to receive from the Ministry of Defence. Under the 2002 Act, there are limited grounds on which the Secretary of State can intervene in matters of this sort, one of which is on grounds of national security. He needs to take advice on that and, if appropriate, he can then act; but as I said earlier, he needs to act in a quasi-judicial manner. If the other two reasons for intervening do not come into play, my right honourable friend would not have the ability to intervene because national security would not be affected. It would be for my right honourable friend to take that advice and come to a decision, but these matters have to be decided in a quasi-judicial manner and I therefore do not want to say anything that might damage his ability to do that in any way.