Electronic Trade Documents Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd and Lord Holmes of Richmond

Lords Special Public Bill Committee
Monday 20th February 2023 Other Business

[Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd (CB)]

I, too, will add a short word in relation to this point. First, I thank the Minister for making so clear that the purpose of the Bill is consistency and interoperability with the MLETR, and I hope that the message to the Law Commission and to draftsmen in the future is to put that in the Bill.

During our evidence sessions, we spent some time, as the noble lord, Lord Lansley, has so eloquently explained, looking at legal techniques, particularly those employed in Clause 3(1). The technique employed in the Bill enables electronic documents to be possessed, in contradistinction to the legal technique of using exclusive control as the equivalent of possession, as was done in Singapore. It is essential to stress that, for all practical purposes, the result will be the same. Both techniques ensure interoperability under the common legal regime to be established by the MLETR.

We were lucky in both the oral and the written evidence that we received, particularly from the judge in charge of the Commercial Court, Mr Justice Foxton; from Mr Andrew Taylor in his submissions on behalf of the UK branch of the Comité Maritime International, which has done so much to ensure uniformity of maritime law; and from a large body of distinguished academics, including Professor Sir Roy Goode, Professor Louise Gullifer, Professor Miriam Goldby, Professor Alex Mills, Professor David Fox and Professor Andrew Steven, who effectively gave evidence to the same effect: that there was an advantage in the continued use of the concept of possession for electronic trade documents, in contradistinction to simply adopting exclusive control in its place.

Here, trade documents are in a different category from other forms of control over electronic documents and digital assets. The two advantages can be summarised as follows. First, retaining the concept of possession more easily enables the law relating to electronic trade documents to be developed by building on the established law relating to paper documents so carefully developed over the centuries and with worldwide applicability.

Secondly, although in my view this is likely to be of only minimal practical significance, and I certainly hope that it is, there could be an exceptionally rare case in which the requirement of an intention to possess—I would prefer to stick to the English rather than to “animus possidendi”—arising from the continued use of the concept of possession might permit a court to deal in a just way with a case in which something unanticipated has unfortunately gone wrong.

There are those two advantages, but I stress again that the fact that Singapore has chosen a slightly different route to that adopted in the Bill is, for all practical purposes, immaterial to interoperability.

[Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)]

My Lords, in many ways, this went to the heart of our discussions in the committee—understandably so, because it is so central to the Bill. In many ways, possession is 9/10ths of the Bill. The position of possession in English law is why it is critical to enable full understanding in this country for those who will seek to avail themselves of this new law when it comes into force with all good speed. It is just as important internationally to enable understanding of why the Bill was constructed around the concept of possession.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd (CB)]

I will first say a word of thanks to the Law Commission, and to Professor Sarah Green in particular, for the excellence of its work. It is also right to thank those who submitted evidence in writing to us and those who gave oral evidence at quite an early hour on a Thursday morning. We were fortunate about the timing, in that we had the opportunity to request written evidence with the hiatus of Christmas. Although that may have made some people spend more time over Christmas on the interesting subject of bills of lading than they would have liked, it enabled us to start our oral evidence with a very firm body of written evidence. Having to compress it all into the usual 28-working day period may not have been to anyone’s advantage. I hope that the opportunity will be taken to think again about the procedure for written evidence; we certainly found the accident of what happened highly beneficial.

However, that benefit would not have been achieved without the great diligence of our clerk, George Webber, and his assistant, Louise Andrews, who laboured mightily to get the evidence in and to make so many phone calls in a very short period to ensure that we had a full book of evidence. I also thank them for organising all the transcripts and other documents. A special thanks is due to them both. I am sure I speak on behalf of everyone in saying how grateful we are.

Having said all that by way of thanks, I ought to temper it by saying that the work of the Law Commission, diligent and hard-working though it was, is the easy part of the process with which this Bill is engaged. Our part in this very agreeable committee has been very easy. As experience always shows, it is easy to change the law. The difficult bit is getting people to use it and move. It is important to stress that the formidable task lies ahead: changing the habit of centuries. However, there is a huge prize here and I am sure that we will get there.

First, I am confident that His Majesty’s Government will do all they can to publicise to other Governments the move that the United Kingdom has made to adapt its law so as to be based on interoperability under the MLETR. I was greatly encouraged by the evidence we received on what other states are setting about doing, and by discussions I had with another major trading state last week on the steps it has taken and the benefit it has had from seeing what we are doing. The UK has set an excellent example of the way forward and we should not be reticent and hide our light under a bushel.

Secondly, banks and others engaged in providing finance need the utmost encouragement to assist in the use of electronic trade documents. I am again encouraged by the position taken by one bank, Barclays, whose letter to us after the evidence session made clear its wish to encourage the use of digitalisation. I should add that that is not the message I have received in respect of all banks, so HMG have a great deal of work to do.

Thirdly, we can be very confident that the ICC will continue to play a prominent role. We have been particularly fortunate in the UK because of the work done by Chris Southworth, but I have also learned that people are hard at work elsewhere. It is also encouraging that moves are under way to establish a trade digitalisation taskforce, involving His Majesty’s Government, the ICC and banks. I wish it well.

However, despite all of these encouraging signs, the task is formidable. The Government must lead with great determination and energy to ensure that the UK’s leadership in getting the Bill enacted is carried through to leadership in getting those engaged in international trade to adopt electronic documents through a common legal system based on the MLETR. The prize is enormous, and it was interesting to see that even net zero is shown to benefit from getting rid of paper in this enterprise. So although the task for the Government is huge, a lot of favourable winds are behind it.

[Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)]

My Lords, like the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, I thank everyone involved in getting the Bill to this stage, not least Professor Green and her team at the Law Commission, our clerks and team here in the House and everyone who has been involved. As a committee, we benefited hugely from the expert and excellent chairmanship of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, with all his legal experience in this space, not the least of which was an interesting case, which he recounted to the committee, involving a large consignment leaving the port of Bordeaux. All the committee members’ ears pricked up at that point, only to prick down, if ears can do so, when it turned out that the consignment was grain, rather than any product from the right or left bank of the Gironde that may perhaps have been of more interest.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, set out the point absolutely clearly: that the Bill demonstrates what we can do when we combine common law with our new technologies. It is right that we conceive of blockchain, distributed ledger technology, AI, machine learning and all the new technologies as tools. They are incredibly powerful and may be incredibly positive, but they are still tools that we humans have to determine how to deploy.

The Electronic Trade Documents Bill is a trade-enabling, trade-empowering Bill, through the potential of electronic trade documents. In reality, however, it is at its heart a new technologies Bill—new technologies in combination with English common law, brought to bear in the area of international trade in this instance.

As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, pointed out, the most important stage is after Royal Assent, when the hugest sales job must, rightly, be done on the Bill to get traders in this country, banks and other people involved in the international trade business, like insurers, to very much get behind and use electronic trade documents. Rightly, the Bill is permissive rather than mandatory. That is quite correct, but it means that this sales job must be done.

Secondly, this sales job must be done, rightly, through His Majesty’s Government in all the international fora —through bilaterals, trilaterals and all means—to demonstrate to other nation states the benefit of incorporating MLETR into their domestic legislation. To put it plainly, what purpose would the UK passing the Bill have if other nations have not taken MLETR into their legislation and enabled that international trade, which can be done in seconds rather than days?

As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, perfectly pointed out, the benefit to the environment and net zero should not be missed in any sense here. Currently, in trade, it may take seven to 10 days for a bill of lading document to be transferred to enable a shipment to move. This was illustrated so clearly during Covid, when the planes were grounded at London Heathrow with the trade documents on board and the ships queued up outside the Port of Singapore, unable to move for want of that physical document, which is so painfully papery. The Bill perfectly addresses that, enabling not only settlement in seconds but all that carbon, which would have been wasted in flights and timing, being wiped away through the implementation of the Bill.

Can my noble friend the Minister therefore say whether he will ensure that there is real cross-department and cross-Whitehall consideration not just of what we have learned through the Electronic Trade Documents Bill process but of how we can look to every possibility, in every potential context, to combine common law with the new technologies available, for the benefit of citizen and state alike?

Financial Services and Markets Bill

Debate between Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd and Lord Holmes of Richmond

Committee stage
Wednesday 1st February 2023 Grand Committee

[Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 74 in my name, but before I do so, I give my wholehearted support to the amendments in the name of my noble friend Lord Lilley and those in the name of my noble friend Lady Noakes, particularly Amendment 72, which is excellent.

My Amendment 74 can be summed up in one word: proportionality—simply that—no more, no less. Disproportionality does not reduce risk or increase consumer protection, and it certainly has nothing to say about optimising the resources of any organisation. Amendment 74 seeks to simply insert the proportionality concept, as does Amendment 72 in a broader sense—rightly. I hope my noble friend the Minister will respond positively when she comes to sum up.

[Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd (CB)]

My Lords, I will make three brief observations. First, in this context, we are looking at the mandate that we are giving the regulator. One obviously could look at rules by some ex ante supervision, but that is not how this will work. Leaving it all to accountability after the horse has bolted is not the right way to proceed. It is very important that we give attention to the scope of the mandate.

Secondly, there is an obvious illustration as to the scope of the mandate in the proposal from the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes: proportionality. I would be astounded if anyone disagreed with that proposition, because only a fool would argue that you should make disproportionate legislation.

It seems to me that, in looking at this, we ought to know how the people given the mandate by Parliament intend to operate. Do they intend to produce consistent and predictable rules? I would imagine that they do intend to. They may agree with many of these objectives, but it is very important for the Committee to know the Government’s view of the form of regulation—the mandate—before we decide on what should happen. We also need to know how they are going to do it, because you always ask your agent how they will do something. If we were informed, there might be much less dispute.