Newport Wafer Fab

Lord Robathan Excerpts

Monday 6th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I totally share the noble Lord’s concerns about the actions of the Chinese Communist Party in Xinjiang, Tibet and various other areas where they commit appalling human rights abuses. However, as he will be aware, I cannot comment further on this particular takeover. The National Security Adviser is reviewing it and he will do so on national security grounds.

[Lord Robathan (Con)]

On Chinese takeovers, does my noble friend share the concerns of a great many of us regarding the way that the Chinese are extending their influence—buying their influence—and taking over the Commonwealth, be it in Barbados, Sri Lanka or sub-Saharan Africa? There have been newspaper reports about this. It is a deliberate thing. They are trying to supplant British or western influence and plant their influence in the Commonwealth and elsewhere.

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I share the concerns of my noble friend. This Question is getting more into foreign affairs than it is into business affairs, but I understand what he is saying. I have seen the reports and I share his concern.

Free Trade Agreement Negotiations: Australia

Lord Robathan Excerpts

Thursday 24th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Robathan (Con)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as the owner of a livestock farm in the Midlands. Before I ask my substantive question, I note something that the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, said. I think that sow stalls are still permitted in the European Union; could my noble friend clarify that?

I congratulate my noble friend, and all those in government involved in this, on an excellent start to an FTA that will be to the mutual benefit of the people of the United Kingdom and the people of Australia. Does he appreciate that, whatever carping he may hear in this House against free trade agreements, many here do not want the FTAs to succeed because they want to prove Brexit wrong? We heard that from the Labour Benches. They want to prove that Brexit was a terrible mistake, while the people of the United Kingdom will rejoice at the increased prosperity that this free trade agreement and others will bring them.

[Lord Grimstone of Boscobel (Con)]

My noble friend is quite right: Australian animal welfare standards are in fact higher than those in many other countries around the world, and in some cases higher than those in the EU. My noble friend has given one example. Others include the practice of castrating chickens and the production of foie gras, which are banned in Australia on welfare grounds, as they are in the UK; however, they continue to be permitted in the EU. Australia is marked five out of five—the highest possible mark—in the World Organisation for Animal Health performance survey.

National Security and Investment Bill

Lord Robathan Excerpts

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

[Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted (LD) [V]]

My Lords, there are very wide-reaching powers in this Bill and, to start where I ended my Second Reading speech:

“I am not against the notion of interventions, but the Bill should be more than notion and compulsion, and I hope that it is possible to include more direction and balance.”—[Official Report, 4/2/21; col. 2364.]


That is exactly the aim of Amendment 1. It aims to be positive rather than negative, by defining an overarching objective. One might debate whether it could be slightly different, but the idea is to have an overarching objective to safeguard national security in respect of economic and social harm. “Social harm” is a very broad term. Recognising that broad scope, it specifically lists that the Secretary of State must

“have regard to the effect … on technology investment… the research and innovation environment … and business opportunities for small and medium-sized enterprises.”

I can almost hear the Minister assuring us that the Secretary of State will have regard to a lot of things, and that would be right, but it is also necessary to make sure that there are correct messages given by the Bill—messages that endure and give confidence to the business sectors most likely to suffer, perhaps entirely unnecessarily, from rumours, concern or finger-pointing from competing jurisdictions.

If we take the starting point that the Bill has good intentions, that there are similar moves internationally, that we have perhaps been too slack in the past, and that there are inevitably burdens arising from both notification requirements and notification concern, that will lead to unnecessary voluntary notification. One wonders if there are not more mechanisms that can give an all-clear signal.

Maybe some will become clearer or develop over time but, wherever that is possible, as we work through the Bill, I am mainly looking to see what incremental steps can be made towards certainty. That can be helped right at the start of the Bill by using the combination of broad objective plus a list of the most sensitive “have regard” matters. This appears in various other pieces of UK legislation, not least in the financial services legislation that is occupying both my time and that of the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, on the days either side of this sitting. Therefore, I hope that the Minister sees the advantage of taking that approach here.

[Lord Robathan (Con)]

My Lords, I will disappoint my noble friend Lady Noakes by making a comment that is more a Second Reading comment than anything else. But it is important we see this Bill in context. The genesis of this Bill is, I assume, largely about Chinese influence and the debates we have had about Huawei and so on. I want to raise only one issue on the context; it is the way in which British commerce and the economy are so intricately and deeply linked with China. Is that globalisation? I am not sure.

We all know how much we buy now comes from China on the one belt, one road programme or elsewhere. The interdependence between western consumers and economies and the Chinese economy is extraordinarily deep-rooted. I am going to use a little example—a silly one, you may say. Old-fashioned fellow that I am, I try to buy British if I can. Looking for a butter dish online, I bought quite an attractive one from the English Tableware Company. I thought that was pretty safe, until the moment it arrived. I turned it over and found it was made in China, which seems quite strange to me. I took it up with the company, and it came back to me saying its products were all ethically sourced and it had checked the suppliers. Of course, we have no idea about the working conditions or possibility of slave labour in Chinese factories.

National Security and Investment Bill

Lord Robathan Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 4th February 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Robathan (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I welcome the Bill. It has been a long time in coming. I intend to look at the context of the Bill and its genesis. Over a decade ago, when I was working in the MoD, we saw newspaper reports that 90% of cyberattacks on the UK came from one house in Shanghai. This Bill is largely about Chinese influence being embedded in our critical national infrastructure and that is why we should concentrate on China. I wish the Chinese people well but the Chinese Communist Party is pursuing a policy of hegemony and aggrandisement. The noble Lord, Lord McNally, agreed that this has been generated by China.

I will cite a few examples. The Chinese have been building military bases on reefs built out of concrete on islands in the South China Sea, which they now claim to have territorial waters around. The belt and road initiative, which is eight years old or thereabouts, was welcomed by the media and, seemingly, western Governments. But, in fact, China has been buying up Africa, Sri Lanka and elsewhere with its belt and road initiative. I was in Ethiopia 15 months ago, where there is a brand new airport in Addis Ababa. Ethiopia may find that some of these debts do not get repaid but that is for another day. Over a decade ago, we knew about Chinese reverse engineering whereby they get hold of sophisticated technology and military equipment, work out how to build the stuff themselves and then use western secret technology against us. I hope we understand that now the scales have fallen from our eyes at last. Charles Parton of the Royal United Services Institute, speaking to the Commons Committee on the Bill, described the Chinese Government as pursuing a policy of “civil-military fusion”. That sums it up.

As we can now see, we can believe reports about Chinese treatment of the Uighurs, which perhaps we denied for some time. There are BBC reports today about systematic rape. We know about organ theft [Inaudible] million people. We can see what is happening in Hong Kong, where the Chinese are breaking the terms of the joint declaration, a legally binding international agreement. We can see the military threat to Taiwan and, I fear, the chance of war. We can see Chinese moves to building a military and commercial empire, and using threats and economic muscle against, for instance, Australian wine exports after that country dared to criticise the Chinese and suggest that the virus came from Wuhan.

I support the Bill for those reasons because our national security is under threat. The Government have got the message rather late—Huawei being excluded from 5G is a particular point that I raise—but it is not six years since Xi Jinping was entertained here and declared the UK to be the best Chinese partner in the West. Indeed, George Osborne said that this would be

“a golden decade for the UK-China relationship”.

Today, Manchester University has cancelled an agreement with a Chinese electronics technology company because of that company’s involvement in surveillance in Xinjiang. Ofcom has—again, this day—revoked the licence of Chinese broadcaster CGTN because the company is

“ultimately controlled by the Chinese Communist party.”

Although Cambridge University has helpfully sent us all a briefing paper saying how important Chinese money is to it, I should have thought that the exposure by the noble Lord, Lord Moore, of Jesus College and others in Cambridge and their close ties with China would have shamed it a little, at least.

Surely nobody can doubt any more the unfriendly intent of China. The genocide amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Alton, two days ago showed that the House of Lords understands that the behaviour of the Chinese needs, at the very least, close examination. Sadly, the EU has just signed a huge trade agreement with China, which is regrettable. Yes, we want inward investment, as my noble friend Lady Noakes said, and economic growth. We want to trade with the world, including China, but we need to protect ourselves and peace first, and the Bill goes some way towards doing that. I know that Governments do not always get legislation right, so we will watch the progress of the Bill, and amendments will certainly be needed as it progresses, but its spirit is correct and I support it.

Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (Obligations of Hospitality Undertakings) (England) Regulations 2020

Lord Robathan Excerpts

Friday 9th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Robathan (Con)]

My Lords, another day, another set of restrictions. Of course, they are all as plain as day and not confusing at all, which is why we are discussing an amendment to the regulations about singing and dancing laid only nine days after the original.

I am sure that all noble Lords, when they were about 10 or 11 years old, had a teacher who could not keep order in class. At my school it was a he. He would stamp his little foot and say, “If you don’t do as you’re told, I will keep you all in for a detention.” I say to my noble friend on the Front Bench, first, hard luck being dealt the hospital pass of defending all these regulations. Secondly, I see that the Government are now blaming the people, and that is really not a good idea. We have these new measures, which, as we know, the Prime Minister finds confusing. I find them contradictory, draconian and very difficult to enforce.

The question has to be: are the regulations working? Leicester, near where I live, has been locked down for over 100 days, but infections have gone up. Is the policy working? I understand that Calderdale, which has been locked down for 10 weeks, has seen infections rise fivefold. “Let’s blame the people; it’s all their fault.” In Bolton, infection rates have risen tenfold. Should we blame the people? I suggest that we should blame the policies. We should go back to first principles—a reset, as has just been said. We should find out how many people are dying, what good the policy is doing, and work from there, rather than from what we are getting far too much of at the moment.

I was in a Zoom meeting with Matt Hancock just now. He has told us that more than 200 people are dying from the virus a week, but over 11,000 people die every week. I heard Professor Van-Tam say that these are the biggest restrictions that we have seen in peacetime, but this is not a war. I urge the Government not to double down on failing policies but to look at the evidence and not deal with scare stories in the media, scientific modelling that does not work or opinion polls.

Environmental Projects

Lord Robathan Excerpts

Thursday 2nd July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan]

I cannot give the noble Lord specific commitments on Bombardier’s role in this, but it is a world-class aeroplane manufacturer. This is an extremely optimistic long-term goal that the Prime Minister has set out, but we are totally committed to making progress towards it. It will be a tremendous achievement by Britain’s scientists and engineers when we achieve it.

[Lord Robathan (Con) [V]]

My Lords, there is a great deal to welcome in this policy, but I am concerned that any large development inevitably impacts on trees, ancient woodland, wildlife and biodiversity in general. Like my noble friend Lord Randall, I am concerned about some of the measures mentioned. The statement says that the Government will

“set out further measures as part of its green agenda”.

Can the Minister perhaps give us any pointers as to what these further measures might be?

[Lord Callanan]

My noble friend will understand that I cannot go into too many details on this until those announcements are made, but we believe we can get the balance right between protecting our environment on the one hand and cutting out many of the unnecessary delays in our planning system on the other.

China: Supply Chains

Lord Robathan Excerpts

Wednesday 1st July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grimstone of Boscobel]

At the moment, trade between China and the UK amounts to around £80 billion a year. It is a very important trading partner for us, but I repeat that we are very clear-eyed about this. We take good care as to where our national interest lies, and we will not hesitate to intervene in any areas where we feel that it is jeopardised.

[Lord Robathan (Con) [V]]

I too welcome my noble friend the Minister to the Dispatch Box. We know that China ignores World Trade Organization rules. He mentioned our attitude towards the belt and road initiative, but should we now see it as a means of spreading Chinese economic power and influence while expecting deference or even subservience over any Chinese misbehaviour? I think particularly of the ban on Australian beef, tariffs and threats of more sanctions against our Five Eyes ally, Australia. Should we not act accordingly on Chinese trade and the BRI?

[Lord Grimstone of Boscobel]

My Lords, I do not think that subservience is a safe way to conduct policy with China. I have a very strong belief that mutual respect is the way forward and, I repeat again, it is mutual respect while having our eyes wide open. We recognise that some countries have had a difficult experience with BRI projects, including regarding debt sustainability, transparency and negative local impacts. We are much engaged in dialogue with China to make sure that all investments of that sort benefit the world rather than just China.

UK Net Zero Emissions Target

Lord Robathan Excerpts

Wednesday 12th June 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, the noble Lord will remember that the idea of a five-year review was part of the original 2008 Act—which I am sure he supported, because the Act was introduced by a Government of which he was probably part at the time. We will continue with this idea, but we can review matters further if there are changes and developments as we commit. We are bound to review every five years but could do so earlier.

[Lord Robathan (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome this aspiration—that is what it is. I notice that air travel was not mentioned, although it leaves a particularly big carbon footprint. Can my noble friend help me: which of this country’s political parties does he think will put in its next manifesto that it will stop the good people of this country going on holiday to the Costa Brava or Florida, or, indeed, flying back first-class from Los Angeles to take part in demonstrations in this country? That is contributing greatly to the carbon in the atmosphere.

[Lord Henley]

I can give my noble friend an assurance. If he had listened carefully to the Statement, he would know that our plans cover net zero for the whole economy, including aviation and shipping. Emissions from domestic flights and shipping are covered by our existing domestic legislation. The Committee on Climate Change accounts for international flights in its advice on setting our interim carbon budgets. This will continue to be the case for the more ambitious target.