National Security and Investment Bill (Twelfth sitting) Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
Alan Whitehead
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National Security and Investment Bill (Twelfth sitting)
Alan Whitehead ExcerptsThursday 10th December 2020
(4 years ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate National Security and Investment Bill 2019-21 View all National Security and Investment Bill 2019-21 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 10 December 2020 - (10 Dec 2020)
Sam Tarry
As I listened to the Minister, it struck me that one of the witnesses, Charles Parton from RUSI, said:
“Let us not forget that most foreign investment by the Chinese is state owned, so it is not just a fair bet but a fair certainty that any state-owned enterprise investing is fully politically controlled.”––[Official Report, National Security and Investment Public Bill Committee, 24 November 2020; c. 17, Q19.]
That is in part our thinking. One slight contradiction with the Bill is that it does not feel as though it always quite reflects the statement of political intent published alongside it. We support that statement of political intent, so the new clause’s objective was to strengthen the Bill’s commitment to ensuring that the Investment Security Unit is provided with an assessment that recognises the relationship between hostile actors and the countries to which they owe allegiance, which is stated in the statement of political intent.
I hope that the Minister takes time to take stock of what the new clause is trying to do, but on this occasion I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.
Clause, by leave, withdrawn.
New Clause 6
Access to information relevant to national security
“(1) The Secretary of State may by regulations make provision for the call-in power under section 1 to be exercisable by the Secretary of State in respect of circumstances where a person acquires access to, or the right of access to, sensitive information but does not acquire control of an entity within the meaning of section 8 or control of an asset within the meaning of section 9.
(2) For the purposes of this section, sensitive information means information of any form or description the disclosure of which may give rise to a risk to national security.”—(Dr Whitehead.)
This new clause would allow the Secretary of State to regulate to include new trigger events, where a person has access to information relevant to national security, even if the party does not acquire control or material influence over a qualifying asset or entity as a result of an investment.
Brought up, and read the First time.
Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
Hon. Members will be sad to know that I have failed in the ballot to be one of the 2,000 supporters to watch Southampton Football Club this Saturday. I will reflect on that, but I have already sat here for much longer than 90 minutes in near-freezing conditions, watching two equally matched teams slug it out together, so I am not too upset about it. That is the last thing I will say about the unpleasant conditions in this Committee Room.
I hope this clause will be seen as helpful to the Secretary of State and as an addition to the armoury of this Bill in dealing with the multitude of different circumstances under which influence may be sought, or technologies and sensitive information may be acquired, as we have discussed. It seeks to give the Secretary of State an exercisable power under the clause 1 call-in powers and it follows on from what my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South said in the previous debate.
Start-ups may be invested in by venture capitalists, but those venture capitalists may turn out to be bodies that are effectively seeking to gain influence in the start-up or small company, by means of investing in it. They are not seeking to control it, or to control either the entity or the asset, in terms of the meaning in section 8 or 9, but to put themselves in a position where it is pretty impossible for those companies to resist providing information to that limited partner.
In the UK, British start-ups effectively rely on foreign investment. In 2019, 90% of large tech investment rounds included US or Asian investors, according to Atomico’s “The State of European Tech.” There are many circumstances in what we might call our UK venture capital ecosystem in which that kind of sourcing of funds is a regular state of affairs. Venture capital-reliant firms in this country are now receiving millions of pounds from Chinese investors, as my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South has enumerated for us.
Those venture capital investments do not end up, and are not supposed to end up, with the seeking of material control of those companies. As I have said, it would be difficult—practically impossible—for that venture capital-based firm to deny its limited partner investors access to technological information from portfolio companies. In such cases, especially when limited partner investments in the fund take place after an initial trigger event, those would be missed by the Bill as it currently stands. Indeed, that is made tougher still by the fact that most venture capital funds do not publish the names of limited partners. So the Government would not even know when those investments happen and when access to information passes into potentially hostile hands. That series of circumstances is becoming pretty widespread in the high-tech world, and does not appear to be focused on very accurately by the provisions already in the Bill.
What the amendment seeks to do, as I have mentioned, is enable the Secretary of State—if it is considered by the Secretary of State to be an issue that warrants further consideration—to make regulations for the provision of that call-in power outside the terms of clause 9 of the Bill. I think that is a potentially very positive additional power that would reside in the Bill and would be an additional piece of armoury in the hands of the Secretary of State on the basis of what we think is a continuing expansion of investment which may have malicious intent to scoop up, by that venture capital arrangement, a slice of sensitive information.
I was thinking about the equivalent of Chinese dragons in “Dragons’ Den”, taking a portion of the company in return for having a hand in that company’s investments. In a sense, that is what venture capitalists will do under these circumstances. Although the control of the company, as we see in “Dragons’ Den”, remains very much in the hands of the person who has gone into the den in the first place, the investment in that company is nevertheless a source of very substantial leverage in what the company does, what information it provides and what sensitive information it gives out.
I offer this new clause in what I hope will be seen as a very constructive spirit. The clause endeavours to strengthen the Bill by providing a particular option to the Secretary of State, when looking at the entire landscape of how influence is sought, at how sensitive information may be provided and at how assets may effectively be acquired.
Peter Grant
The new clause is a significant improvement to the Bill and I hope that the Government will support it. It takes action to close a loophole that I certainly did not spot reading through the Bill the first time. I suspect a lot of others did not spot it either. It was highlighted by a number of the expert witnesses we spoke to a few weeks ago. They pointed out that a hostile operator does not necessarily need to have control or even significant influence over a security-sensitive operation to be able to do us some harm. One of the examples I vividly remember was that if somebody buys up as little as 5% or 10% of the shares of a company, possibly keeping it even below the threshold where it would need to be publicly notified to Companies House, that might still be enough by agreement to give them a seat on the board of directors. That means they will have access to pretty much everything that is going on within that company. For that kind of scenario alone, it is appropriate that we should look to strengthen the Bill.
The way the new clause is worded is entirely permissive. It would not require anybody to do anything, but it would give the Secretary of State the statutory authority to make regulations, should they be necessary, and to word them in such a way that they could be targeted towards any particular kind of involvement by a hostile power—it is difficult for us to predict now exactly what that might be.
I know that the usual format is that an Opposition amendment is not supported by the Government, but if the Government are not minded to support this one now, I sincerely hope they will bring through something similar on Report or when the Bill goes through the other place at a future date.
Nadhim Zahawi
I am grateful to the hon. Member for Southampton, Test for setting out his case for the new clause and to the hon. Member for Glenrothes for his contribution.
When I first read the new clause, I was fortified to see that, despite previous debates that we have had in this Committee, Her Majesty’s Opposition are clearly now firm converts to the “may by regulations” formulation. I am incredibly grateful. We have found much common ground in the course of our line-by-line scrutiny, but this was, I admit, an unexpected area of consensus.
My understanding is that the new clause would enable the Secretary of State to, by regulations, introduce a new trigger event covering circumstances in which a person acquires access to, or the right to access, sensitive information, even if the party does not acquire control over a qualifying entity or asset. The hon. Member for Southampton, Test may have in mind particular circumstances relating to limited partnerships and the role of limited partners.
The attempt to potentially include access to national security sensitive information as a separate trigger event is, in some ways, a reasonable aim, but I fear that it would, at best, sit awkwardly with a Bill introducing a new investment screening regime that is specifically designed around acquisitions of control. At worst it would bring into scope a huge swathe of additional circumstances, outside the field of investment, in which the Secretary of State could intervene, which could be notified by parties and which could create a backlog of cases in return for little to no national security gain.
For example, such a new clause could raise significant question marks about whether the appointment of any employee who might have access to certain information would be a trigger event in scope of the Bill. I am almost certain it would. Similar concerns would apply in respect of any director, contractor, legal adviser or regulator who might have access to sensitive information. That is not the Government’s intention.
If limited partnerships are the specific target of the new clause, I can reassure the hon. Gentleman that there is no specific exemption in the regime for acquisitions of control over a limited partnership. Of course, in practice, the rights of limited partners are, by their nature, limited, so we expect to intervene here by exception. But those acquisitions remain in scope of the call-in power, along with any subsequent acquisitions of control over qualifying entities by the limited partnership—particularly where there are concerns about the general partner who controls the partnership, or limited partners who are exerting more influence than their position formally provides.
I should also highlight that the Bill already covers acquisitions of control over qualifying assets, the definition of which includes
“ideas, information or techniques which have industrial, commercial or other economic value”.
For the purposes of the Bill, a person gains control of a qualifying asset if they acquire a right or interest in, or in relation to, a qualifying asset that allows them to do one of the two things set out in clause 9(1). That means that an acquisition of a right or an interest in, or in relation to, information with industrial, commercial or other economic value that allows the acquirer to use, or control or direct the use of, that information is in scope of the Bill. Therefore, depending on the facts of a case, an investment in a business that, alongside any equity stake, provides a person with a right to use information that has industrial, commercial or other economic value may be called in by the Secretary of State where the legal test was otherwise met.
The Committee heard from our expert witnesses that these asset provisions are significant new powers and that it is right to ensure that we have the protections we need against those who seek to do us harm, but I firmly believe we must find the right balance for the new regime. That is why acquisitions of control over qualifying entities and assets are a sensible basis for the Bill. Broadening its coverage to ever-wider circumstances risks creating a regime that theoretically captures everything on paper, but that simply cannot operate in practice, due to a case load that simply cannot be serviced by Whitehall. I urge the hon. Member for Southampton, Test to reflect on that point, given all we have heard in the last few weeks about the importance of implementation and resourcing, and I respectfully ask him to withdraw the new clause.
Dr Whitehead
I respectfully ask the Minister to reflect carefully on what I and the hon. Member for Glenrothes have said this afternoon. Whether or not the Minister thinks the new clause is one he can reasonably adopt, he has already accepted, in terms of what he says may be in the scope of the Bill, that this is a real issue. This is something that we have to think very carefully about and that, by its nature, is fairly difficult to pin down, because it relates to a series of actions that do not easily fit into the box of control or company takeover. It is much more subtle and potentially wide-ranging, but nevertheless it is something that we know is real. As my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South said, it is happening in silicon valley, Germany and this country. It is happening in a number of places. Interests are being bought up not because of altruistic concern for the health and welfare of that particular start-up, but for other, much more worrying reasons than simply influence as a limited partner in a company.
I am pleased that the Minister put on record that he thought that the extension of this activity might be in the scope of the Bill already, although I think it is stretching what the Bill has to say to take that line. I hope he will not regret that. When he looks at what he has said about what he thinks is in the Bill, he may find, on reflection, that the new clause would have been more use to him than he thought. However, I am not going to press the issue to a vote this afternoon.
I hope the Minister will reflect carefully. He has already said on the record that he thinks that a number of these measures can be squeezed into the Bill. I hope he will not find that there are circumstances where he needs this method of operation but that it can, after all, not be squeezed into the Bill as well as he thinks it can be. I hear what he says and wish him the best of luck with squeezing things into legislation that perhaps were not quite there. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.
Clause, by leave, withdrawn.
New Clause 7
Annual report to the Intelligence and Security Committee
“(1) The Secretary of State must, in relation to each relevant period –
(a) prepare a report in accordance with this section, and
(b) provide a copy of it to the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament as soon as is practicable after the end of that period.
(2) Each report must provide, in respect of mandatory and voluntary notifications, trigger events called-in, and final orders given, details of—
(c) the jurisdiction of the acquirer and its incorporation;
(d) the number of state-owned entities and details of states of such entities;
(e) the nature of national security risks posed in transactions for which there were final orders;
(f) details of particular technological or sectoral expertise that were being targeted; and
(g) any other information the Secretary of State may deem instructive on the nature of national security threats uncovered through reviews undertaken under this Act.”.—(Chi Onwurah.)
This new clause would provide the Intelligence and Security Committee with information about powers exercised under this Act, allowing closer scrutiny and monitoring.
Brought up, and read the First time.
Chi Onwurah
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
It is with some regret that I rise to move new clause 7, because it is the last new clause we propose to the Bill. It is a Christmas present to the Minister. Things have certainly been interesting since we began our line-by-line scrutiny. With your leave, Sir Graham, I will take this opportunity to thank all those involved in drafting the Bill, as well as the Clerks, who have worked so hard and played such an important role in helping to draft amendments and provide support to all members of the Committee. I also thank you, Sir Graham, for chairing it so admirably.
We have learned a great deal over the last couple of weeks. I have learned just about everybody’s constituency—