National Security and Investment Bill

Debate between Lord Robathan and Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted

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.