Digital Regulation: Communications and Digital Committee Report

Lord Vaizey of Didcot Excerpts

Thursday 21st July 2022 Grand Committee

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to take part in this debate and to welcome this report. As my noble friend Lady Stowell knows, I am always here for her, which is why I am here today. I notice lurking in the shadows another former member of our committee who took part in this report, the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson of Balmacara. We wait to see whether he will make a contribution. We note that he has shaved and had a haircut, and that bodes well for some important contribution later in this debate—that did not go down so well, but it was meant in affection.

It has been a pleasure to serve on this committee for the past couple of years. I can say this because I am not responsible for the direction of travel of the committee’s reports, but it seems the committee has a history of leaning into policy and helping to move things along, not least, for example, in calling for the Digital Markets Unit to be set up—which is still a work in progress, but one that is much needed.

It goes without saying—it is a trite thing to say—that everything is now digital, so trying to bring some coherence into how one regulates a world of digital is extremely important. The advent of the Digital Regulatory Cooperation Forum—my noble friend Lady Stowell is quite right that it is a mouthful whether one uses its full title or its acronym—is a welcome development. Anyone who has ever worked with government knows the extraordinary frustration at the way that Whitehall is currently configured, with departments working in silos and with the only co-ordinating mechanism appearing to be the Cabinet or the Cabinet Office. It is extremely difficult to get joined-up government, and it is equally difficult to get joined-up regulation, so anything that moves the dial in that respect has to be welcomed. I often think that perhaps one day we could use technology to abolish all government departments and at last have government by task, where we can mix and match the right people to achieve the right outcomes for our country—but I digress.

The point about the Digital Regulatory Cooperation Forum is that it is here, and this report is a welcome intervention in the beginning of this process to ask how it can be improved and made better. That is the spirit with which this report should be read. It is in no way a criticism of anything, but simply looking at the existing situation and thinking how it could be improved and built upon. In that respect, I hope the Government and indeed the regulators will regard it as something they can keep referring to when they think about the next steps.

The first and most obvious point, given that there are four regulators involved in the DRCF, is how many more regulators should be involved. Given what I said earlier about digital being everything, the list is almost endless, but the report details six or seven other regulators that could have a role in the DRCF. That made me think a bit about the progress of the European Economic Community and later the European Union. At what point does one reach optimal membership? I started to speculate that perhaps in 25 years’ time we might have the head of the Information Commissioner’s Office demanding a referendum so that it could leave the Digital Regulatory Cooperation Forum—but, again, I digress. It is certainly something that the forum has to keep in mind: which additional regulators could and should be members?

The other important point the report makes is that there are additional stakeholders who are not necessarily formal non-departmental public bodies or quangos but which still have huge degree of expertise that they can bring to the debate about digital regulation. One of those cited, for example, is the Internet Watch Foundation, which I used to work with closely and which I think is technically a charity. That is a classic example of something that is not a government body but which nevertheless contains an enormous amount of expertise and takes action in the important area of child sexual abuse.

Given that the DRCF has been established, it again goes without saying that accountability and transparency, which the report touches on, are extremely important. It is important that we know what is the DRCF’s remit, the issues that it is looking at, and its plans for this year and years to come. Again, it is important, given what I said earlier about stakeholders, that even if they do not have a formal role, people can input into the work plan, if you like, of the DRCF and the regulators that sit on it.

It is also important, as the report says, that we have a rigorous process in the DRCF. Its greatest opportunity is to look at conflicts of regulation to try to work out where one regulator’s remit begins and another’s ends—I was going to say “turf wars” but that would be an inappropriate term. For example, I remember bringing together Ofcom and the ICO to discuss the important issue of nuisance calls, which affects the day-to-day lives of many people. Bringing those two regulators into a room to work together provided a much more impactful response to that. However, it is important that one regulator does not go off on a particular campaign without having at least had some engagement with other regulators, who may have locus and expertise to bring to bear, and it is important that those conflicts are resolved.

One of the other interesting aspects of the report is how one constitutes the DRCF formally. It now has a well-respected chief executive who comes from industry but it does not have a board, and the report recommends an independent non-executive chair and a number of other non-executives. I note that your Lordships’ House has provided Ofcom with a fantastic chair, and no doubt it will be able to provide the DRCF with a superb, independent, non-executive chair in the months and years to come—a process, of course, like the previous one, that will be completely free from political interference and which will simply seek out the best candidate.

It is also important that the DRCF provides an opportunity for regulators to share information. When I had a briefing from the DRCF before we even started our report, one of the things that I was struck by, which is a lesson that I have taken elsewhere with other organisations I worked with, was the idea of joint hiring, which struck me as a brilliant albeit obvious opportunity—although obvious only once it has been explained—in the world of technology. Hiring people who know about and can work with technology, who can therefore command pretty high salaries from technology companies, is very difficult for regulators, who are quite rightly constrained by public sector pay restraint. However, the opportunity to hire highly talented people who can work across those regulators is obvious. With that naturally flow other ways of co-operating, such as joint regulation and joint powers explicitly set out. However, as the report makes clear, that needs to be set out potentially in legislation.

Finally, the report is quite right to focus in its opening paragraphs on the opportunity for this forum to be an organisation that does horizon scanning—that looks at what is coming down the line. I noticed that the Government, for example, published yesterday their plans to support artificial intelligence in the years to come—I think I only noticed it on a tweet; I must sign up for the DCMS emails. Those kinds of reports coming out of DCMS are extremely valuable and important. However, it struck me that, with the DRCF in place, here is a perfect opportunity to involve the regulators on the ground floor, as it were, when DCMS is doing this kind of work, looking at particular sectors of technology. Getting regulation right is just as important as getting right government financial support, fiscal support, skills or whatever. A great regulatory climate is just as important when we are leaning into technology.

As my noble friend Lady Stowell outlined in her excellent speech, it is quite right as well that there be a parliamentary Joint Committee to scrutinise the work. It could bring together the heads of the various Select Committees that have a place in talking about digital regulation, so that they can meet regularly, scrutinise what is going on and compare their knowledge and information.

This is an incredibly useful report on a pretty niche and narrow issue that fascinates a few of us but not necessarily a general audience. Nevertheless, it is the kind of thing that can really make an extraordinary difference to UK plc—to use that terrible phrase—in creating a forward-looking, dynamic regulatory climate for technology and digital in this country.

My noble friend the Minister will no doubt cover this brief for many years to come. I know that he has been asked to tell us about the progress of the Online Safety Bill, about which I will be extremely interested to hear. I will leave him with one final thought: the DRCF also could be a prompt to the Government to shine a light on the plethora of digital bodies and committees that now exist to supervise technology policy in government. Many of them are excellent individual bodies in themselves, but there appears to be no particular coherence in how they work together. Just as with the regulators, there appears to be no clear road map of where one research or grant-giving body’s remit ends and another one begins. I know that my noble friend never puts his feet up, so I urge him to turn his mind to that work over the Summer Recess, which might save the Government some money and give them much more bang for their buck.

[The Earl of Erroll (CB)]

I shall speak in the gap; I am sorry that I did not get my name down early enough to speak properly. I have one or two quick comments. First, I welcome this useful and excellent report, which will be a useful step forward if something happens about it. I notice that DCMS has responded to it but, actually, regulation involving digital issues runs across all departments, so it almost ought to be a joint response from every single department. That is something that we miss; “divide and rule” in the Executive is very dangerous.

From the summary, I picked out references to

“unnecessary regulatory burdens which could limit the benefits of digital innovation”—

that remains very true—and

“a lack of overarching coordination and oversight of regulatory objectives.”

That is also extremely true, and I have hit it several times. Paragraph 9 states:

“The solution was not to be found in more regulation, but in a different approach to regulation, with a coordinated response across policy areas.”


Therefore, the Government’s response—they are not down as saying that they actually want this to happen—really worries me. I thoroughly agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, when she said that we should set out the principles in what we do sometimes. We cannot control complex systems using rules, as they start conflicting and alter in unpredictable ways; there is a lot of theory around this. We have to realise that we must set out the objectives and principles behind them.

Paragraph 62 is about “power to resolve conflicts”. Someone needs to have that power. I will illustrate that with a real example. Among other interests, I have been involved in the whole thing about age verification for many years, going back to Bills on ID cards and things like that—although that was not so much about age verification. One of the challenges is that the civil servants who know all about it tend to move within a year and a half to two years, so you lose your expertise the whole time. All those who worked on Part 3 of the Digital Economy Act—we had to get them up to speed—have gone. I do not know where; they are probably desperately hiding somewhere else.

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

They have gone to the metaverse.

[The Earl of Erroll (CB)]

Exactly—we will never see them again. This is the big problem. I chaired the British Standards Institute’s publicly available specification—PAS—1296 on anonymous age verification; we solved the problem, and it is out there. The sad thing is that this is now being elevated to international standards used by Europe, but I do not know whether we still recognise that it exists. In 2020-21, the French started implementing the protection of children in legislation—I am not up to speed on exactly where they are—so it is actually happening there. But what have we done? We have said that we will stop it in the Online Safety Bill, repealing the part that was going to work in the Digital Economy Act. This is complete lunacy and, in fact, goes against the principle of the supremacy of Parliament—but I will not go into constitutional issues.

Looking forwards, the benefits and potential risks of AI will not be a single-department thing; this will run across all departments, because it involves everyone and everything. A lot of people mean different things when they say “AI”, so this is huge.

Finally, yes, we need some horizon scanning, but we do not want to get bogged down in trying to anticipate futures that may not exist. As someone said, a lot of other people are doing this. If you have knowledgeable people in the committee and in the Lords, they can help to spot where things are coming from and go from there. I welcome this report.

Channel 4: Annual Report

Lord Vaizey of Didcot Excerpts

Thursday 21st July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, we want Channel 4 to continue what it is doing in terms of commissioning from the independent sector. The difficulty is that, because of the global streaming giants driving up the costs of our thriving and very successful independent production sector, Channel 4 needs access to larger sums of money in the decades to come. That is why we want to ensure that it is able to raise that private capital and continue to compete in the global market.

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

My Lords, I refer to my entry in the register of interests, including my work with LionTree. When I was Minister, I would regularly review the reports and accounts of the bodies that I oversaw and we regularly had huge rows, mainly because there were not enough photos of me or sections detailing my excellent work as a Minister. Is it not the case that while the Government own Channel 4 they are perfectly entitled to see a draft of its report and accounts and perfectly entitled to have a grown-up discussion with Channel 4’s very grown-up board, which of course includes my wonderful noble friend Lord Holmes?

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My noble friend is right. I have been looking through the annual reports of many arm’s-length bodies that it is my responsibility to lay before Parliament. The Government are entitled to make representations to Channel 4 as its current owner. Of course, if it were privately owned, we would not have that role. We cannot force it to change things but we are perfectly entitled to disagree. In this instance, Channel 4 laid the annual report it had originally drafted.

Gambling White Paper

Lord Vaizey of Didcot Excerpts

Wednesday 20th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

I take the opportunity to pay tribute to my honourable friend Chris Philp, who led a lot of the work on the preparation for this White Paper. There will be a new Prime Minister in place in a matter of weeks, and we want to ensure that the hard work that has gone into the review sees its speedy publication. We have not waited for the review to take action where it is needed to address the sorts of harms that the noble Lord points to. For instance, we have banned gambling on credit cards; tightened restrictions on VIP schemes; strengthened the rules for how online operators identify and interact with people at risk of harm; and updated the advertising codes of practice to make sure that content that has a strong appeal to children is banned.

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

I congratulate my noble friend the Minister on his appearance at “My Fair Lady” last night, indulging his passion for musical theatre. It was a great pleasure to see him. I also congratulate him on the real progress that he has made in publishing the Government’s response to the call for evidence on loot boxes. I congratulate the Government on adopting a light-touch regulatory but vigilant approach on the use of loot boxes in video games—and could he tell me when the video games body mentioned in that response will be established?

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

It is always a pleasure to see my noble friend at cultural events. To quote the musical:

“Every duke and earl and peer”


was there last night. We are committed to ensure that video games are enjoyed safely by everybody, and we undertook the call for evidence to look at loot boxes. We believe that the games industry can and should go further to protect children and adults from the risks of harm associated with loot boxes. If that does not happen, we will not hesitate to consider legislative change. As my noble friend points out, we will pursue our objectives to get better evidence and research and improved access to data through the technical working group led by DCMS and through the development of a video games research framework.

Broadcasting Sector White Paper

Lord Vaizey of Didcot Excerpts

Monday 11th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

I congratulate my noble friend the Minister on staying in his post; he is a sea of calm amid a frenzy of turbulence. I also congratulate the Government on the broadcasting White Paper; I know my noble friend the Minister had nothing to do with it, but it is a truly excellent piece of work. I thought I would be dramatically changing the subject, but the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, already raised the importance of radio. I point out that radio is one of our most successful creative industries, so can my noble friend the Minister update us on the progress of digital radio, where Britain leads the world?

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

I am conscious that I still have many years to go to equal my noble friend’s length of tenure in office. The Government remain committed to legislating to give effect to the conclusions of the 2017 consultation on radio deregulation as soon as parliamentary time allows. We are also very keen to continue the co-operation between the BBC and both commercial and community radio, as the digital radio and audio review encouraged.

Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure Bill

Lord Vaizey of Didcot Excerpts

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

[Baroness Harding of Winscombe (Con)]

Many apologies. I also thank my noble friend Lady Stowell, who I was not expecting to see, but who has been extremely helpful already this afternoon. I promise I will be brief. The aim of this amendment is to address an issue that other noble Lords and I raised on Second Reading: ensuring that the Bill enables the sharing of pre-2017 poles on private land without requiring an additional wayleave, just as it does for ducts on private land. This may sound very detailed—it is—but will substantially speed up the rollout of full-fibre broadband, on which we are all agreed.

There are an estimated 1 million-plus telegraph poles on private land. Access to them is particularly important in accelerating fibre rollout in rural England and urban Scotland. As with ducts, these poles are regulated under Ofcom’s PIA mechanism. That means that any operator is able to access those poles, so extending the provision to pre-2017 poles on private land would allow all operators to speed up their rollout equally. Without this, operators will have to dig up streets or put up new poles, which will slow down the rollout in the very parts of the country that suffer some of the slowest broadband speeds, based on copper.

There is clear consensus across the industry that the Bill needs to make this possible. I understand that the Digital Infrastructure Minister recently received a letter from all the major operators and trade bodies, asking that this issue be resolved and clearly stating the public benefit that doing so would bring. There is cross-party support for the amendment, and at Second Reading my noble friend the Minister was clear that he was keen to look into the matter very closely. However, as drafted, the Bill does not actually solve the problem. There is no explicit right in the Bill to access the pole or install equipment on it. My amendment is relatively simple and seeks to set that straight. It is limited in scope.

By extending the rights granted under the existing paragraph 74 of the code, these powers would be a code right and therefore apply equally to all operators. That is a really important principle in maintaining the Government’s pro-competition policy. By explicitly including the right to carry out

“works to install, maintain and keep such lines and other reasonably associated apparatus”,

this amendment ensures that there is a right for limited works only and apparatus that is associated only with flying lines between poles. It will not allow large, unsightly or unassociated apparatus to be put on the poles, so there would be very limited visual impact. In fact, it is important to remember that technology is getting smaller all the time; a number of these telegraph poles already have equipment on them, so this would most probably reduce the visual impact rather than increase it.

This amendment also protects the rights of landowners. It grants limited additional rights for operators on how they use the poles. It does not give operators additional rights to get to the pole in people’s back gardens. Landowners would still need to give their consent—that could be a simple verbal agreement—to allow an engineer to enter the property. This amendment does not intend to change that.

With over 1 million poles on private land today, this small and straightforward amendment would significantly increase the rollout of full fibre, on which we all agree. I ask my noble friend to tell us that he agrees that the Bill must be amended to do this. I am not precious about the specific wording or the exact amendment. I understand that DCMS lawyers have some concerns about whether the wording achieves our aim of going up the pole and putting the necessary equipment on it, but I have not seen any alternative proposals. I hope my noble friend will take this amendment in the constructive way in which it is intended. If he has concerns about the specific wording, I hope we will be able to work together between Committee and Report to bring back an amendment that delivers the outcome that I believe we all agree on.

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

My Lords, a cup of tea lies gently cooling in the tea room, unpaid for as I sprinted to move my amendment—and failed to arrive in time. It would never do for me to blame the Liberal Democrats for the mess that I find myself in; I take entire responsibility for not following with due care the moving of the Statement on the Metropolitan Police. Although the finely crafted Amendments 17A and 17B will not be debated, I have the chance to address at least some of the issues they raise in my response to my noble friend Lady Harding’s excellent exposition of Amendment 18.

We are talking about the ability to upgrade telecoms infrastructure. It is worth taking a step back to think about what the Bill is about in its focus on telecoms infrastructure and reform of the Electronic Communications Code. As I pointed out at Second Reading, when I was a Minister I had the opportunity to change the Electronic Communications Code, and I freely admit that I did so after extensive representations from infrastructure providers of all kinds who made the point that the rents that they were being charged by landowners, both in the countryside and on buildings, were extremely high and were affecting their ability to invest in infrastructure. The time had come to redress the balance so that the rents charged were proportionate to the investment being made in infrastructure. However, in the Bill we are trying to revise it further so that the infrastructure can be upgraded much more easily. We find ourselves in a slightly invidious position where, every time a telecoms provider wants to upgrade the existing infrastructure, in theory it has to start all over again on how it negotiates the rents.

Amendment 18, and, had they been moved, Amendments 17A and 17B, address essentially the same issue, which is existing infrastructure and the ability to upgrade it with as little fuss as possible. All of us in this House know that telecoms infrastructure is constantly being modernised and changed. Indeed, sometimes political issues come into play: for example, the decision to remove Huawei from our telecoms infrastructure will require a great deal of changes to existing infrastructure.

It is quite clear that all the infrastructure providers and indeed the Government support some kind of amendment that will allow infrastructure providers to upgrade infrastructure on telegraph poles. That is without dispute. The question we face is whether we can craft a suitable amendment that balances the rights of landowners and infrastructure providers to allow that to happen as smoothly as possible. What I find strange is the fact that multi-dwelling units do not attract the same support. However, I think I understand why telegraph poles are uncontroversial and multi-dwelling units controversial. That is because of a perceived monopoly of Openreach in multi-dwelling units but not telegraph poles. As my noble friend pointed out, telegraph poles fall under the public interest infrastructure access regulations, which means that a telegraph pole that is, as it were, owned by Openreach but on somebody’s land can still be accessed by a competitor, whereas a multi-dwelling unit cannot be accessed where Openreach has its infrastructure.

I ask the Minister again to take a step back and think about the purpose of the Bill and what he and his colleagues are trying to achieve in terms of the £5 billion subsidy to support the upgrading of infrastructure to full fibre, particularly in rural areas. As I said on Second Reading, this is all about planning, not about technology. It is trying to remove as far as possible all the obstacles that exist when it comes to planning. The Minister must ask himself: what is the reality on the ground? It is that Openreach is indeed present in many premises where its competitors are not. There are something like 1.5 million multi-dwelling units in this country that are at risk of not being upgraded because people cannot get access. Openreach tells me that there are something like 620,000 flats to which it has not been able to gain access and 165,000 flats where it has had no response from landlords at all for six months. Those flats will be left out if we do not consider the position of multi-dwelling units. That is not the subject of this amendment but I posit that it is exactly a parallel case.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Fox (LD)]

I want to again apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, for causing him not to be here—and I will of course pick up the cost of his cup of tea.

He brought up the changed landscape of altnets, and we need to remind ourselves as we talk through the amendments that the old picture, as we looked at the telecoms market as it was—the copper world of a huge company and nothing much else—has passed. The fibre sector is a different sort of market. The fixed and full-fibre network infrastructure supplied by the independents, the altnets, reaches about 11.5 million premises with, at the end of 2022, an estimated 1.5 million live connections. That is separate to Openreach and Virgin, so there really is a big change in that market supply, to which I think the noble Lord was alluding. Had the noble Lord finished, by the way, or did he give way to me?

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

I was giving way to an excellent intervention to save me from the poor quality of my speech.

[Lord Fox]

I am sorry; I suddenly saw the look on your face and thought you were finished.

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

The whole Committee stage debate has already become surreal, and we are only about 20 minutes into it.

If I can take noble Lords back to the tea room, where I was this morning, we were discussing the lack of intervention in debates in the House of Lords, which is apparently seen as a Commons trait and discouraged in your Lordship’s House. In fact, I was told by a very senior chair of a committee—who is in the Chamber—that on no account was one to take an intervention at Committee stage. But I felt that as the noble Lord, Lord Fox, had already transgressed so badly in detaining two eminent Conservative Peers in the tea room, I would simply allow him to continue to flout convention and break the rules. I also felt that my speech was going so badly that, just as I used to do in the other place, giving way at an opportune moment to gather one’s thoughts was sensible.

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston (Con)]

I am very grateful to my noble friend for giving way. I shall make just two points to him and the rest of the Committee. Of course it is permissible—indeed, it is encouraged—for us to engage in interventions during debate, but they should be brief and to the point. I take this opportunity to also remind my noble friend that his amendments have not been moved and we are in danger of debating his amendments, instead of the amendment which another noble friend moved—or indeed, which I moved on her behalf, and she then expanded on my introduction.

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

I take the comments from the chair of my own committee in good heart. Clearly, I am on a learning curve in a very public way.

I simply reiterate that this Bill is about making planning as simple as possible, balancing the interests of landowners and infrastructure providers. The mood of this House is that we support Amendment 18, to allow the upgrade of telegraph poles. We understand that the Government will also support such an amendment if it is appropriately drafted. We look forward to the Minister’s comments on why this is a sensible way forward.

I merely add as an aside that the purpose of the Government’s funding and broadband rollout is to bring broadband to as many premises as possible. We all know from our own experience where the altnets are going. Quite understandably, they want a return on their investment, so they are going to cities and laying fibres in areas where Openreach is already present, where they know that they can get a return. There will be many other areas of the country where, understandably, they will not be able to afford to put in infrastructure. For the Government simply to turn their back on thinking hard about how to upgrade the many multi-dwelling units in different parts of the country simply because it is perceived to be an Openreach problem and not a problem for all telecoms providers is a missed opportunity.

[The Earl of Lytton (CB)]

My Lords, I cannot follow the amusement factor of the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey. As this is my first contribution on the Bill, due to force of circumstances, not least because on our first day in Committee I could not attend due to disruption on the rail system, I declare my interest as a chartered surveyor—still practising, just—with about 47 years’ experience in the public and private sectors. I hope that I can bring some of that to the debate.

As I understood it, in addition to being able to attach things to existing telephone poles, Amendment 18 would provide a right to create new overhead facilities of one sort or another. As a person who, from time to time, has occupied heritage property, I have a particular aversion to overheard telephone lines and to generations of cables being stuck to the outside of buildings—new ones are added but nobody ever removes the old ones. That is the first point that I would question.

The second point goes beyond this amendment but begins to address some of the points mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, on the use of existing facilities. These might be underground ducts. There is a bit of a problem when you get to blocks of flats, because there is a cut-off point at which the rights of, for instance, BT or Openreach end, at which point the wayleave or easement does not pertain. When you get into blocks of flats, there are other criteria. There are many instances of cables being run up, willy-nilly, through communal service risers, with firestopping material being removed and not put back correctly, and so on. No building manager in a block of flats will willingly allow someone from Openreach, who comes with a quite different set of instructions for what they are doing, to just get in there, willy-nilly, as of right. There must be safeguards somewhere along the line.

Further explanation is needed on other things. On numerous occasions I have come across situations where overhead cables have been put underground, perhaps because they were in the way or because it was convenient for visual or other reasons. But you then find that there is no easement or wayleave in relation to the underground bit—the easement or wayleave stops at the last pole, where it goes into the ground. That has certain disadvantages because every time somebody from Openreach wants to do some reconnection or give somebody a better service, they have no drawings of the underground system. I am told that this is an issue where new developments take place and the roads and common areas do not get adopted; they are retained not by the developer but are passed on to some management entity. We have all heard of the fleecehold, where the maintenance of that common realm is then jacked up and recharged through a rent charge.

I absolutely take the point that is being made, but if I am correct a raft of other issues needs to be resolved, including powers to take possession and use of things that are not currently within the existing wayleave horizon. I just flag up the difficulties associated with that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston (Con)]

I can respond to that, since that question is being put to me. There is nothing procedurally to prevent my noble friend tabling an amendment on Report that would cover the same issues.

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

I will take advantage of the flexibility in the Chamber to say that, notwithstanding the intervention of a cup of tea, my amendment will be moved on Report.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, following that very provocative statement from the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, I will not go into great detail about Amendments 17A and 17B because they have not been moved, although by a side wind the noble Lord mentioned MDUs and various other aspects. All I can say is that if they are moved on Report they will be very firmly opposed from these Benches. There are many reasons for that, which I will not go into, but we look forward to the debate on Report. In the meantime, we will keep our powder dry.

The noble Baroness, Lady Harding, made an extremely good case for her Amendment 18, as has my noble friend. I do not think that the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, is a great fan of poles, but we will just have to live with that. Amendments such as this would ensure that an explicit right exists to access the pole itself or place apparatus on it. That amendment is supported by all operators. It is good that we have one amendment that is almost unanimously supported by the operators.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay) (Con)]

My Lords, I think the whole House is grateful to its former Leader, my noble friend Lady Stowell, for moving Amendment 18 and keeping us on the right procedural track. Amendment 18, spoken to by my noble friends Lady Harding of Winscombe and Lord Vaizey of Didcot, the noble Lord, Lord Fox, and the noble Baroness, Lady Merron, who signed it, concerns rights to upgrade and share telegraph poles.

Clauses 59 and 60 will help to optimise use of the UK’s extensive duct networks through greater upgrading and sharing, but ducts and cables under land do not represent our entire digital network, as noble Lords have reminded us today. Telecommunications lines flown over land play a substantial role too. These lines are dependent on the telegraph poles that support them. Over 1 million such poles are installed across the UK, as noble Lords have noted, providing coverage and connectivity to entire communities, particularly in rural parts of England such as Herefordshire, as the noble Lord, Lord Fox, will know, and urban areas of Scotland.

Since the Bill’s introduction, the Government have been called on to introduce measures to facilitate the upgrading and sharing of poles. We understand that there are substantial public benefits in coverage, connectivity and consumer choice, so we welcome the attention that this amendment has drawn to the significance of poles and lines in network delivery, but as I anticipated at Second Reading, we have concerns as to whether the amendment would deliver material change.

I take on board fully my noble friend Lady Harding of Winscombe’s point about the constructive spirit in which the amendments are brought forward and agree that we must look beyond the drafting of this specific amendment, but as the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, says, this is a legally complex matter. For example, it is not clear whether this amendment would permit pole sharing or allow operators to carry out works beyond those needed for a line to be flown. That might exclude upgrade works that would allow a pole to be used for fibre rather than copper lines.

It is important to note that paragraph 74, to which this amendment refers, deals with land adjacent to or in the vicinity of that on which poles are situated. We need to think about works that might involve the land on which that pole is placed. The Government are looking closely at ways to optimise the use of telegraph poles, but we must ensure that if changes are made in this area, they not only deliver public benefits but include sufficient protections for individuals with poles situated on their land. We will continue to look closely at this issue, but I am not able to accept this amendment today. I repeat the assurance I made at Second Reading that we are actively looking at this issue, and we will continue to consider it ahead of Report.

In response to some general points about requests from the industry, we certainly agree that operators should be able to obtain the rights they need to install and maintain the apparatus needed for robust network coverage throughout the UK. The department undertakes regular engagement with the industry and, if we receive compelling evidence that the Bill can be improved, we are happy to consider whether there is a good case for going further. When doing so, however, the Government will always consider the effect that any potential changes could have on landowners.

My noble friend Lord Vaizey inventively asked why telegraph poles were less contentious than multiple dwelling units, the subject of the amendments lost to today’s debate. We must also bear in mind that a good regulatory framework encourages competition and investment, which are both crucial in delivering consumer choice and supporting deployment to hard-to-reach areas. Measures beneficial to one operator may not always encourage the market competition needed to deliver better outcomes for customers. Indeed, it is important to stress that there is no consensus from the industry on this issue. In fact, many operators have opposed the proposal on the grounds that it would create an unfair advantage for operators that already have equipment inside buildings, and so could potentially have anti-competitive effects.

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

Now that I am in the swing of things, does my noble friend genuinely believe that outside the main metropolitan areas there is genuine competition between telecoms providers? Is it his view that he should support measures from the competitors of Openreach to prevent the rollout of broadband in rural areas, simply to protect their interests in the main metropolitan areas?

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

As I am explaining, we think that the views from other operators point out that my noble friend’s amendment, which was not moved, would create an unfair advantage for operators who already have equipment; that would itself be anti-competitive. Given that the amendment was not put and, as I hope he has heard, would have been resisted in any case—certainly from the Liberal Democrat Benches—perhaps it may be best if he and I discuss it over a cup of tea, which he can add to his tab, between now and Report. I hope that he will not feel it necessary to bring these amendments back on Report.

On Amendment 18 regarding telegraph poles, while reassuring noble Lords that we will continue to look at this actively, I hope that my noble friend Lady Harding —or my noble friend Lady Stowell, who moved it—will be happy to withdraw that amendment for now.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, I want to mainly talk about Amendment 19 put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Bassam. Before doing so, I say that I have some considerable sympathy for the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, and the noble Earl, Lord Devon, because one of the themes we are very much going to come to with the coming amendments is this steady shift in the bargaining power away from site providers towards the operators over a period of years, which started in 2017 and culminates in the current Bill. We had a number of debates on unresponsive occupiers when we last debated this on the then Telecommunications Infrastructure (Leasehold Property) Bill. As the noble Earl said, it is ironic that the cornerstone case has decided what it has, yet here we are changing the legislation away from that decision. I hope the Minister will be able to answer some of the questions that have been put to him.

On these Benches, we support Amendment 19. As the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, said, it would mandate operators with agreements under the code that are not subsisting agreements—namely, agreements that came into force before the code was agreed—to give advanced notice to sites that provide and deliver emergency services, such as hospitals, fire stations and ambulance stations. It is clearly important for providers of emergency services to be given advance notice of when work is going to be undertaken, so that they can take appropriate action to ensure that they are not affected.

The noble Lord, Lord Bassam, mentioned the Minister’s response in the Commons; she prayed in aid the rights under paragraph 17 of the ECC,

“which authorise only activity that will have no more than a minimal adverse impact on the appearance of the apparatus”.

However, this takes no account of the fact that, while the works may involve minimal adverse impact, it may actually involve disconnection at the time of installation. The Minister said that she was,

“not aware of any instances in which an operator has relied on its paragraph 17 rights to carry out upgrading and sharing activities that have gone beyond the scope of what that paragraph allows”.—[Official Report, Commons, Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure Bill Committee, 22/3/22; col. 120.]

However, that is not the right question. The right question is: what kind of resilience and risk planning do the emergency services have in those circumstances? If they do not know that there is a risk of disconnection, how can they plan for it? This seems an extremely sensible amendment which will allow the emergency services to have notice and to be able to plan for circumstances when they may be disconnected.

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

My Lords, this is an interesting debate on these proposals, which are potentially linked and will develop into a theme which perhaps redresses the balance.

When commenting on the amendment to notify emergency services, it must be acknowledged—by those of us who regard our telecom infrastructure providers as providing an extremely important service to the country, doing difficult, tedious and time-consuming work with private investment—that they do not always get it right. I again remember—this will become a theme of my speeches—that, in my time as Minister, one would have local authorities refusing to give permission to broadband providers to put in place infrastructure because of the mess they had left behind from their previous work. The most notorious and, I thought, slightly irritating resistance came from Kensington and Chelsea Council, which did not like the design of the green cabinets—perhaps it wanted them designed by David Linley or someone like that. Both the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, and this emergency services amendment highlight the fact that, too often, when infrastructure providers are allowed in to upgrade their apparatus, they do not take account of the knock-on effects of their work, either by not taking into account building safety regulations or by not notifying the occupiers that there might be disruption. The amendment is well placed to raise these points and for this House to remind infrastructure providers that they must continue to improve on this.

What I find interesting, from the perspective of landowners, is the balance between wanting, obviously, a reasonable rent for the disruption and visual intrusion that telecoms equipment can bring when it is placed on one’s land—certainly one’s property rights should be sacrosanct and no one should be allowed simply to arrive without notice and put infrastructure where they please—and the point about bringing huge benefit to a local community where one’s land is situated, and indeed to one’s own operations when infrastructure provides the connectivity. I can never get my head around that.

--- Later in debate ---

The balloon has gone up, in that mast site operators and network operators are seen as having resorted to a slightly crafty inversion of law and practice. I think it is regrettable that there is a sentiment that suggests that site owners are a type of greedy usurer. I am unconvinced by this business of site rentals being too high. In many instances, it is no more than one would expect to pay for a handful of lock-up garages in a suburban location or a relatively smallish area of open storage land. The aggressive tactics that have been complained about arose because people can get away with it, and it is no longer seen as a good sector for the lessor. If you want good relationships, you do not resort to such tactics, particularly if you wish them to be long-term.

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

Is the noble Lord aware of the American import of site aggregators—companies which, I think, finance the Protect and Connect campaign? I should say I used to work for Speed Up Britain, so goose for the gander and all that. This American import of site aggregators is effectively buying up sites on land, and then negotiating with the mobile operators to extract valuable rents and increase the value of their companies.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, on these Benches, we support the amendments introduced by the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, with his expertise both as a valuer and surveyor and as a site provider. I well understand why he has taken the trouble to take us through the amendments in the way he has, because they lie absolutely at the core of the Bill, of the relationship between site providers and operators over a long period, and of Protect and Connect’s campaign. It is quite reasonable to unpack the valuation system that has been in place and explain in some detail his proposals by way of the amendments for a new valuation system, or at least an alternative way to deal with the current one.

I start by quoting the Central Association of Agricultural Valuers:

“The tragedy of the 2017 Code is that, far from encouraging collaboration over sites assisting roll-out, some leading operators have made heavy handed, confrontational and attritional use of the powers and privileges they were given by it, very largely to reduce the cost of renewing existing agreements rather than winning new ones or make themselves attractive as tenants. The irony is that, as reported to November’s RICS Telecoms Conference, even if rents may now be much reduced, the overall cost of securing a site has doubled and timescales lengthened.”


That seems very paradoxical. This refers to the fact that, as the noble Earl said, under changes made to the code in 2017, a no-scheme or no-network valuation methodology for valuing land was introduced. As he also explained, this allowed site providers to recover only the raw value of their land, rather than receiving a market price. It did this by inserting a new line into the code that, when setting the value of a site, prevents courts from taking into account a site’s potential use for the provision or use of an electronic communications network.

At the same time, as the noble Earl has also explained, another change was made to the code’s valuation provisions to ensure that site owners cannot charge ransom rents. Any valuation must assume that there is another site available to operators so there is no monopoly in land provision around any site. As he also mentioned, this was recommended to the Government by the Law Commission. Operators have been able to use these changes to drive down the rents that they pay to site providers, often to peppercorn rents. In 2017, the Government said that they expected that rent reductions should be no more than an absolute maximum of 40%, and that has been cited at Second Reading and on many other occasions. However, we know from data cited by the operators that reductions have at best averaged at 63%, a huge sum for many of the people who rent their land to be used for telecoms infrastructure, and in many cases, as we have also heard, reductions have been much higher—in the region of 90%.

The Minister will be aware of the Protect & Connect campaign, and many Members around the House will have had communication with it. It cites the Fox Lane Sports & Social Club, which had a mast on its land for 12 years owned first by Orange and now by EE. The club was getting £7,800 a year but it has now been told that it will get only £794 a year from 2023. Billericay Rugby Football Club had a mast for over 20 years and allowed Vodafone—now Cornerstone—to attach infrastructure to the mast. It paid the volunteer-run club £8,500 a year. However, with the changes to the code, EE says that it will cut the rent by more than 90% to £750 a year. There are many such case histories worth looking into. The evidence is there.

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

Surely the noble Lord agrees that a mast on a community sports building, although it provides a generous rent, should not be regarded as some kind of lottery win. I return to my point that the benefit of that mast—the connectivity it gives to not only the sports club but the community around it—is to be considered, as well as the vast rent that was charged until the code revision.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, I cannot believe that the noble Lord believes that it is reasonable to reduce the rent by 90%. There may be community benefits. However, I will come on to whether the consumer has had the benefit of these reductions, which is a very important point, and to the point about aggregators versus mast operators, which seems to be the battle of the behemoths. That is not a very happy situation but, in a sense, one caused by the changes that have been made to the ECC.

Protect and Connect estimates that providers have lost more than £200 million a year in income, including £60.5 million of lost local authority income, £44 million of lost agricultural rural site-owner income and, as the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, says, the Government’s legislation expands the no-scheme valuation regime into approximately 15,000 agreements governed by the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954 and the Business Tenancies (Northern Ireland) Order 1996. This would allow operators to ignore contractual agreements entered into in good faith, leading to more incomes being dramatically reduced.

I come on to the question of consumers. The noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, talked about the aggregators but my noble friend Lord Fox and I have brought up throughout the passage of the Bill the question of what is in the interests of the consumer. The benefit appears not to be coming down to the consumer. In fact, a great deal of money is being made in other parts of the forest. The Times yesterday reported that Digital 9 Infrastructure has bought 48% of Arqiva Group Ltd from the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, using £300 million in cash and a loan note. Clearly there is money to be made, but is any benefit flowing through to the consumer? If the site providers are being heavily reduced in income, that is clearly not going through to the consumer.

--- Later in debate ---

I also reiterate that our focus here should be on increasing connectivity. Why would a landowner let a stretch of land to a mast operator when the rent recovered would simply be equivalent to the value of the land when undeveloped or from its existing use? That is a poorly defined concept but also, in this brave new world of ecosystem services, all of that undeveloped land now has potential to provide biodiversity net gain and to earn ELMS payments et cetera. It would appear that none of that development in the use and potential value of land will be baked into these rental negotiations. Can the Minister, in responding to these amendments, explain how payments for biodiversity, water retention et cetera will be baked into the negotiations under these new provisions?

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

My Lords, having followed this debate quite closely, I thought I would make a brief intervention. I want simply to put the case for the operators, since they have been hammered pretty much from all sides—surprisingly, from the Liberal Democrat Benches as well; they have now rediscovered their landed gentry roots and gone in to bat for them.

It strikes me that the mobile operators, in particular, are not charities. Much as it is a good thing that they were able to pay generous rents to local community rugby clubs, and much as I would not wish to stand in the way of such clubs receiving generous rents, those operators are commercial organisations. It is important to emphasise that the country benefits, as they have paid enormous amounts of money for the radio spectrum that they use. Famously, they massively overpaid for 3G but certainly paid substantial amounts for 4G and for the 5G spectrum that is now being rolled out. All that goes into the Treasury coffers and no doubt finds its way to various rugby clubs as well.

It is also a mistake to believe that the mobile phone companies in this country are particularly profitable. As I understand it, their margins are pretty low at between 1% and 2%. I always joke that that is entirely the fault of my noble friend Lady Harding, because of course it was TalkTalk that, as a company, got the British consumer used to paying low prices for mobile phones. The large cost of a monthly mobile phone bill often relates to the cost of the smartphone that the consumer is determined to have. I emphasise again to your Lordships that there is a balance to be struck between charging a reasonable rent and the benefits one gets—

[Lord Northbrook (Con)]

I am sorry to interrupt the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, but Vodafone’s figures to March 2021 showed a pre-tax profit of £3.7 billion. That seems to be a reasonably profitable company.

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

We ought to remember that Vodafone is a global company and a great British success story. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Northbrook, on reading out the successful efforts of the Protect and Connect PR campaign in picking individual stories that appear to show rapacious mobile operators riding roughshod over small community organisations.

The key point is that, if you put a mobile mast in a rural area, it is not going to be a significant generator of revenue for you as a company because it will be used by only a few people. If the market is left entirely to its own devices, most of the masts—as with most of the fibre that is going into the ground—will go into our main metropolitan areas. That is why if you walk down Oxford Street, you will see a mast pretty much every 10 or 15 metres because that is where the revenue is generated. If one insists on charging very high rents in rural areas, we will slow down the connectivity and build-up of rural networks. I simply want to make the point that mobile operators do not exist, much as one would wish them to, to supplement the income of community sports clubs, much as I love and admire the work that they do.

[The Earl of Lytton (CB)]

In saying that mobile operators are very large and substantial companies, does the noble Lord accept that only part of what they do fulfils the same sort of social benefit commonly associated with a traditional utility company? A very large amount of what they do and propose to do is the selling of very large amounts of bulk data for all sorts of commercial purposes, not least streaming information to parts of the entertainment business. Why is the claim made that they should be treated in the same way as a utility, when a data centre, battery storage facility or even a wind or solar farm would not qualify in the same way? I put it to him that some of the arguments put forward, and which appear to have influenced government, do not stand up to scrutiny.

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

I do not want to be sidetracked into a debate on the classification of wind or solar farms, but I would describe mobile phones as an essential utility. The noble Earl himself pointed out what pleasure he got from having an emergency services Airwave mast on his land and how important that is. Rural connectivity is becoming absolutely essential, which is why the Government have put £5 billion into supporting the shared rural network.

My noble friend Lord Northbrook spoke about his row about the mast on the M3. What he should also have pointed out about the reduction in rents perhaps reducing the opportunities for farmers to diversify is that it is a complete red herring. The opportunities for farmers to diversify are provided by giving better mobile connectivity. Anyone who knows Jeremy Clarkson and has watched his incredible programme “Clarkson’s Farm”—maybe he is one of the 50 rumoured Peers who will be coming into this House shortly and will give us the benefit of his views personally—will know that what is really holding back diversification are small, conservative, small-minded district councils that will not give planning permission for much needed restaurants, car parks and farm shops.

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, I shall not enter the zero-sum game debate we appear to be having. However, the really salient point I ask your Lordships, particularly the Minister, to focus on is the one made by the noble Earl, Lord Devon: if there is no financial incentive to landowners to take masts, there will not be masts and we need those masts. Whatever happens, the formula has to deliver an incentive to the landowners. The evidence is clear; that incentive is vanishing to the point where it ceases to be viable. That is the point your Lordships should focus on in this debate, and the one I hope the Minister brings to bear in his response.

Media Literacy

Lord Vaizey of Didcot Excerpts

Monday 20th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

The Online Safety Bill includes provisions to strengthen Ofcom’s media literacy functions. Its transparency reporting and information gathering powers will include media literacy, giving Ofcom greater visibility of what the industry is doing. The Secretary of State will have powers to direct Ofcom’s media literacy activity in emergency circumstances—for example, where there is significant threat to public health—and, following a recommendation from the Joint Committee, media literacy is also included in the risk assessment duties. The noble Baroness is right that schools have an important part to play in equipping young people with the skills they need to navigate the internet safely. Citizenship education covers this, as indeed do subjects such as history, English and art, which encourage people to think critically about information that they receive in whatever medium.

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

My Lords, I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the register of Members’ interests, particularly on Common Sense Media and NewsGuard. I am sure that the Minister will have seen the EU code of practice on disinformation, which was published last week. Does he agree with me that there is much more to this than just media literacy? There has to be a comprehensive strategy that includes the role of platforms, the ability to cut off money from some of the sites which spread disinformation, transparency on political advertising and better research. Will the Minister commit to a much more comprehensive approach to tackling disinformation on the internet than simply media literacy?

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

Misinformation and disinformation are subjects which are covered in many ways through the Online Safety Bill, which will force companies to tackle harmful misinformation and disinformation, ensuring that they are accountable for dealing with this damaging content on their services. My noble friend is right that we must look at these issues in the round.

Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure Bill

Lord Vaizey of Didcot Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 6th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

My Lords, it is a delight to follow my noble friend Lady Harding, and a great pleasure to be in the Chamber with her. When I was a Minister, I worked closely with her when she was the chief executive of TalkTalk, so it will be enjoyable to respond, to a certain extent, to some of the points she made.

I begin briefly by outlining my interests. I work as an adviser to a US bank called LionTree, which has advised a UK alt-net provider called Hyperoptic. I am also, amazingly, the patron of the Institute of Telecommunications Professionals. I have no idea how that came about, as I know nothing about telecoms and I am not a professional. I was also chairman of Speed Up Britain, which is one of those lobby groups that the noble Lord, Lord Fox, pointed out in his remarks. It competes against Protect and Connect in trying to persuade your Lordships to take alternative views on how to reform the Electronic Communications Code, but I am no longer its chair; I just wanted to put that in context.

But, obviously, the reason I wanted to take part in this exciting debate—which is really where the action is today—was because of my six years as the Minister for Broadband, where I suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune of people constantly telling me to hurry up and deliver exactly what my noble friend Lady Harding was talking about, which is what everybody wants: ubiquitous broadband everywhere, for as many devices as possible. It was a hard slog, but we made progress.

Like everyone else who has spoken, I will take the Bill in two parts. Starting with product security, I do not think this is a controversial part of the Bill, so it can be skimmed across relatively quickly. I doubt that there will be any amendments to it at all; it is a necessary piece of legislation in an age of digital technology where cybersecurity is at the forefront of our minds. We know that the Government recently published their national cybersecurity strategy. To give this Government, and recent previous Governments, credit, they have invested absolutely correctly in cybersecurity, both at the national security level and in encouraging businesses to take cybersecurity seriously, so the Bill is very welcome.

Like all other noble Lords who may be taking part in this debate, I have read the briefings that have come in to me from both Which? and a company called NCC Group, and they all seem to make extremely valid points which may well be worth exploring in Committee. For example, Which? has suggested that online marketplaces should be covered so that products that are sold on them reach a minimum standard; that there should be a minimum time period in which a company guarantees to update the software on a connected device; and that connected devices fall within consumer rights law. NCC Group has suggested that there should be some form of third-party verification of online devices to ensure that they are compliant. That seems eminently sensible. It also has a minor obsession, which I cannot really understand, with e-scooters, so my simple question to the Minister is: is an e-scooter a connectable consumer product? I think it probably is, but they can of course be hijacked and the brakes put on remotely. A very interesting and worthy point of debate is the amendment to the Computer Misuse Act to see whether there is a public interest defence to ethical hacking. Those are just some points to put on the record which I would be willing to explore with other noble Lords in Committee, should they be minded to table amendments.

But let us now turn to telecoms infrastructure, where I carry the scars on my back, as it were. In fact, it is probably my fault that we are here debating this at all, because I was in charge of the first reform of the Electronic Communications Code. But as he has not made it to this place yet, let me firmly blame Oliver Letwin for everything that went wrong there, because the minute he got hold of it, it became an All Souls seminar, and it took about three years to get it through Whitehall. However, we did deliver some changes. I make no apology for the changes that were made because, at the time, obviously, the relationship between the infrastructure provider—whether it was a mobile infrastructure provider or a fibre infrastructure provider—was very unequal with the landowner. If you wanted to get your mast or to lay some fibre across somebody’s land, the landlord had all the bargaining chips in their bag, and—quite rightly, of course—they extracted generous rents to provide for their land.

Contrary to what some people may think, the telecoms business is not overly lucrative. For example, the margins for mobile telecoms providers in this country are about 1% or 2%; it is a very fiercely competitive marketplace. In fact, my noble friend Lady Harding is partly to blame, because TalkTalk has ensured that the prices that consumers are prepared to pay for broadband and mobile phones are far lower than you would be prepared to pay on the continent. It is a relatively low-margin business, and there is no doubt that the high rents that landowners were charging were hindering the rollout of infrastructure.

There is an argument—and Protect and Connect put this—that the pendulum swung too far the other way when the Electronic Communications Code was reformed and rents dropped far too precipitously but, if I had to take a side, I would much rather lower rents and investment in infrastructure and quicker rollout than the higher rents that were in place before we reformed the Electronic Communications Code. The simple fact is that if we want mobile and fixed connectivity, it is all about the planning. The technology is actually a complete sideshow; the real pain is getting the planning. I will go off on a slight tangent here. The extraordinary lack of joined-up thinking in many local authorities is a wonder to behold. I was talking to a mobile phone company the other day which, obviously, wanted to put in small 5G masts and was told by the lamp-post department of a London council that the lamp posts were not to be touched, so the lamp-post department was stopping the other departments in the council fast-forwarding 5G in the local authority area.

I was lucky enough to get full fibre broadband in my small village in Oxfordshire, Sparsholt. I wonder how that happened. I pay tribute to Craig Bower from Oxfordshire County Council—I am sounding a bit like an MP here—Martin Crutchley from Openreach and local resident Maia Sissons, who got everyone in a row. I saw over the five to 10 days how much planning, extraction, digging and so on had to take place to fibre up simply a rural hamlet of 100 homes. That is happening all over the place. Whether it is a TalkTalk, CityFibre or Openreach engineer, we are very lucky to have people doing this work. It is difficult, time-consuming and takes a great deal of planning.

If we are to move forward, we must keep that in focus, which is why I would support amendments on the points to do with both telegraph poles and multi-dwelling units. I am told by Openreach that a letter has gone to the Minister setting out a way by which telegraph poles may be brought into the scope of the Bill, which is a very exciting development. If that way can be found, I would certainly support an amendment that would allow telegraph poles to be upgraded. Again, just as a point of interest, in both my home in London, in Shepherd’s Bush, and my home in Oxfordshire, the fibre cables are delivered on a telegraph pole, so telegraph poles are important. Openreach says there are something like 1 billion miles of fibre on telegraph poles all over the country.

I part company with my noble friend Lady Harding on multi-dwelling units. This goes to the heart of some of the issues to do with infrastructure rollout and a problem I had when I was the Minister. I was constantly berated for putting all my eggs in the Openreach basket and asked why I was not fostering competition and all these extraordinary alternative providers, such as TalkTalk and CityFibre, which could really hold the candle to BT Openreach and really take it on. Funnily enough, when broadband came to my village in Oxfordshire, I was alerted by an alt.net provider, and I rang the provider up. I said, “I would love to get broadband from you: I will go through the front door.” It said, “No, sorry, it was a mistake. We put the flyer in but, actually, we’re not interested in fibering up your village.” If you want as much connectivity as quickly as possible to as many homes as possible, you have to put Openreach at the centre of your strategy.

It is a misplaced intellectual argument to say that Openreach cannot upgrade multi-dwelling units where there could be many people living on low incomes who will depend on digital connectivity because, somehow, it is anti-competitive. I also think it is a slightly spurious argument to say that Openreach has greater powers than the police to enter your premises thanks to this legislation. It is not as if someone from Openreach is going to get into your flat and make themself a meal of spaghetti Bolognese while it busily upgrades the telecoms infrastructure in your multi-dwelling unit.

We all know that getting hold of, identifying and getting a response from landlords in multi-dwelling units can be extremely difficult. Making a simple upgrade to increase the connectivity for dozens of people living in those flats seems eminently sensible to me. The argument that it will prevent alt-net providers providing fibre rollout has long since gone. Only yesterday, CityFibre raised £5 billion in debt to continue its expansion. The fact is that alt-net providers have very rich pickings in central parts of our urban environment, whether it is London, Manchester, Bristol, Newcastle or anywhere else where they can put their networks into flats. Where I live, in Shepherd’s Bush, we have had three or four fibre providers digging up the road, one after the other, because they know that it is a competitive enough environment for them to put in an investment.

My next point was mentioned in, I think, the speech from the noble Lord, Lord Fox; although I am obviously not the chair of Speed Up Britain, it is quite clear where my sympathies lie. It is worth pointing out that Protect and Connect is supported by what is known as a land aggregator, an invention from the US, where so many of these clever financial wheezes are invented. It buys up the land where mobile sites are—a sensible business approach—and so ends up having thousands of sites all over the country. It is then clearly in its commercial interests, but frankly not in the interests of UK plc, to ensure that the rents extracted from those sites are as high as possible.

I urge noble Lords to get behind this Bill. I will certainly look at supporting amendments to make it easier to upgrade existing infrastructure in multi-dwelling units. I also hope that my noble friend Lady Harding and I can work together on the specifically denoted “telegraph pole amendment”.

I want to finish on one important point. It is now traditional in these speeches for me to lavish extraordinary praise on our Minister. I note that I have not even mentioned him so far in my speech. In conclusion, therefore, let me say how pleased I am to see the Minister on the Front Bench. I do not know how long he will be there, given what is happening across the way—he may be our Prime Minister in a week’s time, voted in by application—but to see this Renaissance man move from Raphael to Open RAN, from Modigliani to mobile and from Botticelli to broadband is always a wonder to behold. I look forward to his concluding remarks.

Cultural Objects (Protection from Seizure) Bill

Lord Vaizey of Didcot Excerpts

3rd reading
Monday 25th April 2022 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot]

That the Bill do now pass.

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

My Lords, I will keep my remarks extremely brief. The Cultural Objects (Protection from Seizure) Bill amends Part 6 of the Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement Act 2007, which provides immunity from seizure for cultural objects on loan from abroad in temporary exhibitions in public museums and galleries in the UK. Cultural objects on loan from abroad featuring in exhibitions held in UK museums and galleries approved under the Act are at the moment protected from a court order seizure for a period of 12 months from the time when the object comes into the UK.

The Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport is responsible for approving these institutions in England, which can come under this regime, and the devolved Administrations have similar powers in other parts of the UK. To gain approval under the Act, the institutions must demonstrate that their procedures for establishing the provenance and ownership of objects are of a high standard.

When this Act was passed, 12 months was considered to be a very adequate period for objects to arrive in the UK and to be returned. During the Bill’s Second Reading, I mentioned that unforeseen travel delays can now result in works not being returned on time, and that risks undermining the confidence of foreign lenders to lend their art treasures to the UK.

The measures in the Bill would allow the current period, therefore, to be extended beyond 12 months at the discretion of the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, or indeed Scottish Ministers when it comes to Scotland. That will ensure that this protection remains fit for purpose. The new power to extend would only apply following an application from the approved museum or gallery. Extensions would be granted for a further three months initially, with a possibility of a further extension if considered necessary.

I am pleased to inform noble Lords that guidance for approved museums and galleries on how they can submit an application for extension has now been published in draft by the department, so the process and the guidance to support it are now ready to go.

I am delighted that the Bill has received such strong support, and I thank everyone who has contributed, including the Member for Central Devon, Mel Stride, for his work steering the Bill through, and the civil servants in the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. As the department’s Secretary of State pointed out in the newspapers only today, they are knocking it out of the park in DCMS—whether they are present at their desks or not. Finally, I thank my favourite cultural object, who is, of course, our wonderful Minister, my noble friend Lord Parkinson. I am delighted that, after his successful visit to the Venice Biennale, he was protected from seizure and has returned to our shores to give the Bill the final seal of approval.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay) (Con)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to my noble friend not just for bringing forward this Bill but for his kind words. I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate Sonia Boyce, who represented the United Kingdom at the UK Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, as well as Emma Ridgway, the curator, and everyone at the British Council who commissioned her work, which I am very pleased to report won the coveted Golden Lion for the first time since 1993. It is a tremendous achievement and everyone in the UK is very proud of them all.

I am pleased to reiterate the support of Her Majesty’s Government for this Bill. It is short and straightforward but will be of great benefit to the many approved museums and galleries in England and Scotland that rely on immunity from seizure protection when they borrow cultural objects from abroad. It will add an appropriate layer of flexibility to the existing legislation covering immunity from seizure. Currently, as my noble friend says, the maximum length of time an object can be protected from seizure while on loan is 12 months. As we learn and move on from the unprecedented challenges that museums and galleries have faced over the past two years in particular, the Bill rightly recognises that unpredictable delays do sometimes happen and that it may not always be possible for objects to be returned within that existing timeframe. The ability to extend the protection afforded to cultural objects is a sensible option to have. I am very grateful to my noble friend for presenting these helpful measures and for all his work in guiding the Bill through your Lordships’ House, to all noble Lords who have supported it, from all corners of the House, and, as my noble friend says, to the DCMS officials who have supported it.

As my noble friend says, the guidance for approved museums and galleries on how and when to apply for an extended period of protection has now been published in draft. The policy is therefore ready to be put into effect, subject to Royal Assent being granted. I am grateful to all those who helped the Bill speed on its way to the statute book.

Cultural Objects (Protection from Seizure) Bill

Lord Vaizey of Didcot Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 18th March 2022 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot]

That the Bill be now read a second time.

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

My Lords, this is a wonderful opportunity for me to take this important Bill through your Lordships’ House. I thank—I do not know if I can call him my honourable friend—the Member for Central Devon, Mel Stride, whom I have known for a while, who guided this Bill through the other place and very kindly asked me to take it through your Lordships’ House. I was delighted to take over the reins, given my interest in these issues in my former role, now so elegantly occupied by my noble friend Lord Parkinson.

Before I get into the meat of the Bill, I thank the excellent Bill team at DCMS—Mark Caldon, Karl Jagdis and Aisling Parrish—as well as the brilliant DCMS lawyer, Lydia Williams. I am sure my noble friend Lord Parkinson will agree with me that he is lucky enough to be working in a department full of the most excellent civil servants who give so much to us.

The Cultural Objects (Protection from Seizure) Bill is a short two-clause Bill and, I think, relatively uncontroversial. It extends the period of protection for an art object against a court-ordered seizure. It covers an object that is loaned to an institution in this country—a listed institution, which I will come to in a minute—for a temporary exhibition and ensures that it cannot be seized while it is in this country.

That provision was brought in by Part 6 of the Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement Act 2007. Under Section 134 of the Act, provided that certain conditions are met, these objects are protected from a court-ordered seizure for a period of 12 months. It is obvious why the legislation was originally brought in: there were concerns from a number of countries that their art objects were in danger of being seized while abroad if a third party, for example, had brought a claim against that object or indeed if a third party had a dispute with the state, albeit some kind of territorial dispute, and it wanted to use the object as a bargaining chip.

Section 134 of the Act clearly provides protection against seizure, provided that the object is normally kept outside the UK, it is not owned by a UK resident and it has been brought here for temporary public display by a museum or gallery—provided that that gallery is approved under Section 136 of the Act. In order for the object to be protected, the borrowing museum must have complied with the regulations made under the Act relating to publishing information about the loan in advance of it coming to the UK, and also doing due diligence on the provenance of the object.

The Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport is responsible for approving the institutions in England—and, indeed, in the devolved Administrations—that come under the provisions of the Act. To gain approval under the Act, institutions have to demonstrate that their procedures for establishing the provenance of the object and the ownership of the object are of the highest standard.

When the Act was passed in 2007, it was considered that 12 months was an adequate period of time to allow objects to arrive in the UK and then to be returned following their inclusion in a temporary exhibition. Section 134(4) of that Act provides that the protection continues for not more than 12 months, and that begins on the day that the object enters the UK. The only exception to that is where the period can be extended if the object suffers damage and repair work is needed.

The legislation has worked well over the years; it has enabled institutions across the UK to borrow some outstanding objects that the public would not otherwise have been able to see. There are now 39 institutions across the UK that have been approved under the regulations. I could point to many examples where the regulations have enabled an exhibition to take place, but I need only cite two that will be very familiar to your Lordships: the terracotta warriors, loaned from China to National Museums Liverpool in 2018, and of course the “Treasures of the Golden Pharaoh”, Tutankhamun, loaned from Egypt to the Saatchi Gallery in 2019, an exhibition that was seen by almost 600,000 people.

A more up-to-date example is the eagerly-anticipated Raphael exhibition at the National Gallery, which opens next month. The exhibition is unique in exploring Raphael’s complete career, featuring his celebrated paintings and drawings as well as his work in architecture, poetry and design for sculpture, tapestry and prints. But it has loans from abroad: from the Louvre, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the Prado Museum in Madrid, the Uffizi Gallery and the Vatican Museums. I am sure that it will draw huge crowds.

Many of these loans will of course be protected under immunity from seizure. These include Raphael’s letter to Pope Leo X from the state archives of Mantua, a tapestry of “St Paul Preaching at Athens” from the Vatican Museums and paintings such as the self-portrait, the portrait of Baldassare Castiglione, and “St Michael” and “St George” from the Louvre. One of the star exhibits is featured on the front page of the exhibition catalogue: the portrait of Bindo Altoviti, which has been loaned by the National Gallery of Art in Washington.

I do not know why I am banging on about the Raphael exhibition at the National Gallery, because I have just been appointed as a trustee of Tate. I turn instead to that great institution and commend to your Lordships the new “Surrealism Beyond Borders” exhibition at Tate Modern, which runs until 29 August—so, by my calculation, your Lordships have five months to get across the river. Previous stories of surrealism have focused on Paris in the 1920s. Our exhibition at Tate will reach across the world and over 50 years. It shows how artists around the world have been inspired and united by surrealism from centres as diverse as Buenos Aires, Cairo, Lisbon, Mexico City, Prague, Seoul and Tokyo. Again, many of the loans would not have been possible without immunity from seizure.

The logistics involved in planning and hosting blockbuster exhibitions such as these are immense. With their long experience in managing exhibitions, museum staff are incredibly versatile and adept at dealing with unexpected problems, including transportation delay, but problems can still occur. For example, the Icelandic volcano which erupted in 2010 and, of course, the global pandemic, have both led to delays. Thankfully, travel restrictions have now eased and museums are enjoying hosting and planning future exhibitions with a degree of confidence. However, I say that as the current appalling conflict in Ukraine and sanctions against Russia illustrate that safely moving and returning artwork around the world is never straightforward. That is why this Bill is important.

Where there are unexpected delays in returning protected objects, the Bill allows a period of protection to be extended beyond 12 months, at the discretion of the Secretary of State. It will ensure that the protection remains fit for purpose and that foreign lenders continue to lend to the UK. The new power to extend would apply following an application from a museum or gallery, and extensions would be granted for a further three months initially. There is the possibility of a further extension, if considered necessary. The circumstances under which an extension may be considered will be set out in guidance, which is being developed in discussion with museums and the Scottish Government. It will be published before the Bill completes its passage in this House. The measure is strongly supported by the museums sector and the Arts Council. I am also delighted to tell your Lordships that, only yesterday, the Scottish Parliament passed its legislative consent Motion, so the Bill can now have effect in Scotland.

Although Part 6 of the Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement Act provides immunity from seizure, there are currently no approved institutions in Wales or Northern Ireland. During the Bill’s passage in the other place, it was actually amended to remove its application to Northern Ireland and Wales. This was because the Department for Communities in Northern Ireland decided that at the moment, it is unable to prioritise a legislative consent Motion in the Northern Ireland Assembly. Also, following discussions between the British and Welsh Governments, it has not been possible to reach agreement on how the concurrent power to extend the current 12-month period of protection would apply across the two nations. The Welsh Government have also therefore declined to table a legislative consent Motion for the Bill as it stands. I am afraid those are unfortunate developments; I emphasise again that objects may still be protected under the current immunity from seizure legislation in Northern Ireland and Wales, but without a power to extend the current 12-month period.

We have a very busy day today so I will bring my remarks to a close. I trust your Lordships will agree that this is a worthy measure, ensuring that cultural objects can continue to be protected from seizure from their country of origin. I am sure your Lordships will breathe a mild sigh of relief that I will not be taking the House through the current exhibitions at the museums designated in the Act, from the Ashmolean Museum to the Wolverhampton Art Gallery. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

My Lords, this has been a fantastically erudite and insightful debate, covering a wide range of issues, but coming back always to focus on the importance of the Bill. I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Merron, on mentioning school trips, and the controversy, and I commend the article from Maria Balshaw, the director of the Tate, in yesterday’s Evening Standard, in which she agrees with the noble Baroness—as do I—that school trips are absolutely essential to museums and should not simply be seen as there to promote grades.

I am tempted to take up my noble friend’s invitation to compare every speech to a great exhibition. If my speech was a surreal one, may I say that the maiden speech of my noble friend Lord Strathcarron was absolutely excellent. I am going to compare it to the British Museum exhibition on Stonehenge—rooted in tradition, reaching back to the ancients and yet still illuminating us with new and current modern insights. I say this with all sincerity: it is wonderful to have him in the House, and I look forward to partaking with him on many debates on cultural policy.

I would compare the great speech of my noble friend the Minister to the V&A exhibition that opened yesterday, “Fashioning Masculinities: The Art of Menswear”. As we listen to his erudite comments, we simply must acknowledge also that he is one of the most elegant Members of the Front Bench, in terms of how he puts his case and how he presents himself in the House. I commend the Bill to the House.

Bill read a second time and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

Digital Technology (Democracy and Digital Technologies Committee Report)

Lord Vaizey of Didcot Excerpts

Friday 11th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, and I can assure him that he is no impostor. It is a great pleasure to sit on the Communications and Digital Select Committee with him. Without wishing to have a Spartacus moment, let me say that I am the impostor because not only am I not Lord Puttnam, but I did not even sit on the committee whose report we are debating today. While it was a joy for me to join this House, it was a matter of deep regret that shortly after I joined Lord Puttnam decided immediately to resign from the House, so this is my one chance to work with him, albeit semi-virtually.

I have to say that I have no idea why he resigned as I bumped into him in a bar last night at 10 pm and we gave each other a big hug, but it is a genuine source of regret to me because he was a great mentor to me when I was in the other place working on all the issues that he cares so deeply about and which he spent 20 years or more in this House influencing a great deal. Indeed, in my second interview to be chairman of Ofcom, I though fondly of Lord Puttnam this week and his influence on the Communications Act, which brought Ofcom into being. If my noble friend the Minister wants to update the House on how I did in the interview, I will look forward to his informative insights.

I should declare two important interests as set out in the register as they are very relevant to the remarks I want to make. One is that I am on the advisory board of NewsGuard, which also includes luminaries such Jimmy Wales, which rates the veracity of new websites, based on nutrition labels, and I also chair the UK branch of Common Sense Media, a US charity that campaigns for kids’ rights on the internet and looks up to the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, and 5Rights for inspiration.

I have to say that this report, albeit that we are debating it some 18 months after it was first published, remains as relevant today as it was then, particularly in the light of the horrific events we are seeing in Ukraine. It has never been more important to be able to address the misinformation and disinformation on the internet, particularly propagated according to the platforms. The report makes many sensible recommendations on how to combat that.

There is no doubt that this kind of information on the internet influences people’s responses to news and events. If fact, a report published by Axios today shows that people’s trust in vaccines is very much influenced by the sources from which they get their news, and that people who do not rely on trusted news sources have much less trust in vaccines.

The report addresses the risks placed on our democracy and our electoral process. It is important for us to remember that it is not just the US. There were attempts to influence the German elections, and we can expect that attempts will be made to influence our rather more modest local elections in May—again, particularly given the global circumstances. Those attempts are made through the platforms, through disinformation and deliberate misinformation.

So it is quite right that the report calls for a code on political advertising. Political advertising online has been left in a vacuum, as it were, and indeed the limits on spending by political parties do not take account of the ability to propagate information online. It is also right that the report calls on us to bolster sources of local news. The Communications and Digital Committee recently published a report that called on Google, the BBC, Facebook and others to pool all the money that they give to local news sources as a way of showing their virtuosity, in order to provide a real pool of money—a bit like the Content Fund, which was so successful but is sadly now being discontinued—to provide financial support for genuine news.

Referring to my work with Common Sense Media, I also thoroughly endorse the report’s call for digital citizenship. The report calls for lifelong learning for digital citizenship, and it is vital that our young people in schools get a proper digital citizenship curriculum. They are growing up in a digital age; they are savvy and they know their way around it. Nevertheless, if the Government backed this much more vigorously, that would make it quite clear how important it is that our children are given the tools to navigate the internet and the information that they are bombarded with.

I conclude, as the numbers flash, by once again recording—because I have not given any speech in this House since I have been here without doing so—my unequivocal support for the BBC. I mentioned Ukraine in my opening remarks. There are many issues to do with Ukraine, but one of them is how important it is for people in this country, and indeed in Ukraine and the world, to have a trusted news source such as the BBC.