National Security and Investment Bill

Debate between Adam Holloway and Stephen Flynn

Consideration of Lords amendments
Monday 26th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Flynn (Aberdeen South) (SNP)]

I am very much of the view that, as Shakespeare said, “brevity is the soul of wit”. Notwithstanding that, the Chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee, the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis), made an incredibly professional and profound set of points that I hope the Minister listened to closely.

As the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah), did, I welcome the Minister to his place, notwithstanding the fact that the previous Minister, the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi), is off doing a fantastic job—I think it is fair to say—getting the entirety of the UK vaccinated, of course in partnership with our colleague in Scotland. I am sure that he regards it as a step up in terms of ministerial oversight of the Bill.

On the Bill itself, my right hon. Friend the Member for Dundee East (Stewart Hosie) spoke on Second Reading and on Report with passion and knowledge of the subject in respect of the scrutiny that should be provided by all of us when looking at such serious matters. We have tried to be constructive with the Government and to make helpful suggestions. I am pleased with many of the amendments moved by those in the other place that the Government are agreeing to—on beefing up scrutiny and perhaps offsetting some of the concerns that some of us might have had about the danger of investment chill, which was certainly real given the original nature of the Bill.

Improvements have been made, therefore, but there is still scope for further improvement. In that regard—as I said, I will be brief, Madam Deputy Speaker—I again urge the Minister to give cognisance to the wise words of the Chair of the ISC.

[Adam Holloway (Gravesham) (Con)]

I welcome the powers that the National Security and Investment Bill introduces and I am very much in favour of the amendments moved by the Government in the other place.

Those amendments temper the impact on investment of the Bill, allowing a greater proportion of transactions and investment decisions to go ahead without requiring Government approval. Furthermore, the Government’s power to intervene on their own, if needed, will be retained. That is a good compromise between the Bill’s objectives: to grant the Government the powers to defend the UK against losing companies and expertise to unfriendly competitors, without stifling the investment that we need to become the home of the industries of the future. That is vital to our national security and to our future prosperity.

We must ensure that the technologies that are so frequently developed by our brilliant scientists here in this country can also transform themselves into successful world-leading companies here. I think of the many university spin-out programmes and how often extraordinary technology is immediately shipped off somewhere else. Developing more powerful computers and software, but allowing them all to be commercialised and deployed most effectively elsewhere only makes us less secure, not more secure. They will only be commercialised and deployed here if the Government protect them from being snapped up by our competitors, thereby damaging our long-term security interests.

We have seen the impact of such problems in the past. Only last week, the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport called in the potential NVIDIA-Arm deal as representing a potential threat to our national security. If Arm, the Cambridge-based silicon fen semiconductor and software design company, can pose a threat to national security, so could the sale of other critical companies in developing industries.

Quantum computing is about to revolutionise the digital age, and the UK has some of the leading research establishments, notably in London and at the University of Bristol. However, many leading companies have moved abroad in the past. The British academics who founded PsiQuantum, the company that believes it is on track to build the world’s first usable quantum computer, moved to California some years ago. I have absolutely zero financial or other interests in that company—it is only that I wish to see the UK lead the world in quantum computing, with all the associated industry and benefits that will follow that.

The four professors from Bristol and London Universities recently made an offer to the Government to build that first usable quantum computer here in the UK, ensuring that the security offered by its cutting-edge technology is based in the UK. I think we can all agree that it would have been far easier and a lot less expensive if those academics had never left the country in the first place.