ARM: Foreign Acquisition

Debate between Daniel Zeichner and Darren Jones

Monday 21st September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Darren Jones (Bristol North West) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for securing this important debate. Does he agree with me that in assessing the risks of the takeover bid, we need to understand the possible repercussions for British jobs and industry if trade sanctions are put in place by President Trump, for example, as the Nvidia parent company is based in the United States?

[Daniel Zeichner]

I thank my hon. Friend the Chair of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee. He makes an important point that I will come on to, but I return to the Government’s position, because I find their silence slightly ominous. It has only been breached by briefings to selected journalists and, frankly, that does not seem good enough to me.

It would be astonishing if this Government, with all their talk of world-beating test systems and taking back control, considered allowing us to lose further control of one of the only areas of technology in which we are genuinely world-beating and world-leading. It is particularly astonishing that the Government might be prepared to throw away British influence when it represents such a key bargaining chip in trade talks in a post-Brexit era. I do not think any other country in the world would allow such a jewel in the tech crown to be handed over in this way, so I urge the Government to scrutinise the deal carefully and to step in and use powers available to them to impose strict, legally binding conditions.

The sale raises a range of questions and issues of local, national and international significance. I have been raising them for many weeks now, as have trade unions and the co-founders of ARM. We have received little substantial response from Government, although I was pleased to have a direct discussion with Nvidia today. I invite the Minister to provide some answers from the Government’s perspective.

Since the announcement, Nvidia has made promises to keep ARM based in Cambridge, to hire more staff and to retain ARM’s brand, but without any legal guarantees, I fear those remain just promises—doubtless genuinely made—not guarantees. Will the Minister confirm whether the Government are seeking legal assurances in this deal to ensure that ARM’s headquarters remain in Cambridge and it retains the some 2,700 jobs it supports in my constituency and across the country? I am sure the Minister will say that it is hardly likely that Nvidia would ditch highly sought-after engineers, but members of Unite have told me that many jobs, particularly in IT, are much more vulnerable. Similarly, I am told that some 300 people in Cambridge work on graphics processors, an area in which Nvidia works. It could be a perfect match, or it could mean rationalisation and job cuts. 

There is little sign of much meaningful consultation with those who work for the company. Having followed the media commentary, it has struck me that those who work for ARM hardly seem to have a voice—a doleful consequence, I fear, of a largely non-unionised workforce. The money may be good, but when it comes to times such as this, the value of having professional negotiators acting on one’s behalf becomes apparent. I am grateful for the strong interventions from not only Unite but Prospect, which also has members at ARM. I have a further question: will the Minister confirm that Cambridge will continue to be the company HQ and explain how promises will be enforced? Anyone can make promises, but will they be kept? How will they be enforced? The deal will affect jobs not just now but in the future, and could have serious ramifications.

ARM’s current business model has been highly successful. It is based on remaining neutral in the tech market and licensing chip designs to any chip maker that wants them. ARM’s co-founder Hermann Hauser has warned that although SoftBank was able to maintain ARM’s neutrality, Nvidia is different: it is a chip maker itself, so companies using ARM will now find themselves as competitors with its parent company. Some could start to seek alternatives. Nvidia has said that it will maintain ARM’s neutrality, but we have no legal assurances. Will the Government be seeking assurances that ARM’s unique business model—and so its success—will be secured?

The sale has implications both internationally and diplomatically. If ARM becomes a subsidiary of the American company Nvidia, we will in effect be handing over control to the current US Government, as it could become subject to their foreign investment regulatory committee, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. The Trump Administration will then ultimately hold the reins over which countries use the technology—which is used in almost all mobile phone chips in the world—and where it will be possible to export it.

It is quite clear that Trump has no qualms about interfering in the operations of tech companies to pursue his own foreign policy goals. Chinese tech companies have already voiced concerns that American ownership of ARM could jeopardise access to ARM technologies for their businesses. Some may not be bothered about that, but it highlights the real role that this UK-located tech giant plays in the international struggle for technological sovereignty.

We need guarantees that ARM is not going to be embroiled in American trade wars and that decisions over this key technology are not completely lost to us. As the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee said:

“The sale of @Arm raises questions of sovereignty. Control of tech is an essential element of independence and @UKParliament will have no say on the CFIUS decisions that go to the US President alone.”

I agree. To safeguard the UK’s interests, we need clear conditions on the takeover to exempt ARM’s tech from intrusive US regulations.

The takeover comes more than a year after the Government’s telecoms supply chain review report, in which the Government committed to diversifying the UK telecommunication supply chain. Since then, a plan to do just that has repeatedly been promised and repeatedly been delayed. Will the Minister explain just how selling this UK-headquartered, world-leading telecoms supplier to a competitor supports the diversification of the supply chain?

I understand that the Government say they are looking into the takeover and that Ministers are considering whether to refer it to the Competition and Markets Authority. I also appreciate that Government policy is in a state of flux, with a pattern of tech businesses being taken over, the status of the industrial strategy unclear, and the national security and investment Bill yet to be published, so we have to use what we have. The Government have the power to impose conditions on such takeovers if they threaten national security or financial stability, which the selling of ARM to Nvidia clearly does.

I appreciate that the Minister who will respond to this debate is the Minister for Digital and Culture, not a Minister from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy or the Minister for Security—that serves to highlight the complexity of the issue. Last time, the Chancellor took ownership; we need the same again. We need a coherent, cross-Government response, led from the top. I urge the Minister to consider such issues carefully, make the case to her colleagues and wake up to the threat that the deal poses unless strict, legally binding conditions are applied.

In conclusion, will the Minister confirm today whether it is the Government’s intention to refer the takeover to the Competition and Markets Authority? Do the Government intend to place clear conditions on the deal to guarantee that ARM’s HQ will stay in Cambridge; that jobs will be protected; that its unique business model will be secured; and that its technology will not be a lever in future trade negotiations that this Government have handed to our competitors?

Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee

Debate between Daniel Zeichner and Darren Jones

Thursday 10th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Darren Jones]

This is really very important. A member of the Committee asked the assembly in a private briefing this week how they defined fairness. The answer is really important because it was defined by the assembly members—they were not given a definition—and because the assembly represented a plethora of different types of people across the country—rich, poor, different locations, different levels of education, maybe activists and campaigners on climate change, maybe people sceptical of climate change. They came to that consensus on what fairness means and see no reason why we cannot deliver that through all our policies.

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend. He was launching the report at the same time as DEFRA questions this morning, so will not have seen the Government Front-Bench response, which I thought was slightly disappointing in treating it as just another report. One of the top issues in terms of pure policy in the report is protecting and restoring the natural world, which is very timely given the Living Planet report. Does he agree that we are only going to tackle that with international co-operation, which is why it is so very important that we abide by international law and rules?

[Darren Jones]

I did not see the DEFRA Secretary’s answer, but I would be disappointed if that was the case. I wonder whether he has not read the cross-departmental memo, given the comments of the BEIS Secretary this morning at the launch, who welcomed the report as an important and substantive contribution to Government thinking. We should remember, of course, that BEIS has the responsibility to co-ordinate net zero decarbonisation across every Department, including DEFRA, so perhaps the BEIS and DEFRA Secretaries could talk about the importance of this report.

Vote Leave Campaign: Electoral Law

Debate between Daniel Zeichner and Darren Jones

Monday 10th September 2018 Westminster Hall

[Daniel Zeichner]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s observation. I do not think anyone would dispute the layers of complexity and difficulty, and the greater difficulty presented by social media. For some of us who have been grappling with electoral law over many years, social media makes it a whole lot more difficult, and I suspect we all know that we will need to update our procedures to try to cope with the challenges that are posed.

[Darren Jones (Bristol North West) (Lab)]

For many of my constituents, this feels like an obvious point. There has been a breach of the law and there should be a way in which those who are responsible are held to account through our legal system. The fact that a general, local or European election or a local referendum would, in such a case, be voided in the High Court but that this referendum has not been seems nonsensical. I agree with the point my hon. Friend just made: that the rules, therefore, clearly need updating. Would my hon. Friend support me and others in calling for an inquiry, not just to understand the problems in the referendum, but to fix the rules for the future?

[Daniel Zeichner]

My hon. Friend jumps ahead a little, but entirely correctly, to my conclusions. Over the next few minutes, I will show some of the inconsistencies and the need to update our rules and laws, and I very much hope that the Minister will listen closely.

Returning to the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee’s conclusion, that was an extraordinarily strong statement, which frankly should make anyone in any way associated with the Vote Leave campaign at least wince—they should, more properly, be deeply ashamed. I cannot help noting that the alleged point of the entire campaign was to bring control back to this Parliament—a Parliament it now treats with contempt and disdain. The sheer hypocrisy, as well as the appalling boorishness, that the campaign has exhibited takes the breath away. How dare it wave the Union Jack when it so disrespects basic British values? Millions and millions of people who voted to leave will also have been horrified by its behaviour. My hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Chuka Umunna) put it succinctly when asking an urgent question on this matter in July:

“Who do these people think they are? They think they are above the law.”—[Official Report, 17 July 2018; Vol. 645, c. 227.]

Although this particular instance is controversial and unpleasant, and stinks of arrogance and an obnoxious disregard for our politics and our Parliament, over an issue that is extremely emotive for many of us, as well as highly significant for the country, it is important to remember that this is not the only occasion on which our politics has fallen short.

I have just made a pretty strong attack, so I will try to lighten the mood for a moment. In the interest of painting an accurate picture, I fully acknowledge that claims that ballots have been rigged or that electorates have been misled are hardly new or unusual. It was not just the notorious £350,000 claim on the side of the bus. [Interruption.] Million—sorry, not thousand. I have lost count of the number of constituencies I have arrived in and by-elections I have turned up to, where I have been puzzled and amused by the information being offered to the electorate by one side or another. Let me get my mea culpa in first. My party has made some interesting claims. I remember “Vote Labour or the fox gets it” dominating one parliamentary by-election. I remember Labour claiming that the Lib Dems were high on taxes and soft on drugs—that was one of my particular favourites, which I think was from Oldham and Saddleworth. In another by-election, possibly in Leicester, I remember being told that the contest was Mr Strong versus Mr Weak—neither of which candidates appeared on the ballot paper, as I recall. In general elections, the Conservatives have used the notorious double tax whammy and they have asked us, “Are you thinking what we’re thinking?”. Of course, whenever the Liberal Democrats are involved, it is always a two-horse race, whatever the facts might say.

Whether witty, making a reasonable point in a clever way or downright misleading, none of those statements actually broke the law, but Vote Leave did and it has been punished according to the law as it stands. However, the campaign also seriously misled the public. I and many others feel furious about the false promises that were made, but I reluctantly concede that this motley collection of attempts to at best divert and at worst mislead the electorate is, frankly, what electoral politics has always been: an unlovely struggle to achieve sometimes noble ends through too often distinctly tawdry means.

Sometimes, however, cheating does lead to a rerun. In Oldham East and Saddleworth, a by-election was triggered in November 2010 after the sitting MP, elected just months before, was reported guilty of “knowingly making false statements” about an opponent in the general election earlier in the year. After various court proceedings and an appeal, he was reaffirmed as guilty and conceded defeat. I was very sorry, because he was a Labour colleague. Interestingly, the electorate chose not to punish Labour at the ensuing by-election. There are more recent examples. In South Thanet, accusations of electoral fraud have been made that could have declared the election result in 2015 void due to overspending. The trial has been delayed. It is expected to happen in October and I therefore do not think it would be appropriate to say anything more about it.

Those who have signed the petition under consideration today may well ask: why are parliamentary election reports of wrongdoing treated so differently and so much more robustly than those relating to referendums? The answer, as I have hinted, is that electoral law is complicated, with different overlapping pieces of legislation that make it difficult to understand, even for those of us who have been struggling to work out what it means for many years. The important point here is that electoral law is different for national referendums.

In the case of a parliamentary election, there can be a challenge for one of three reasons: if there have been administrative failings that could have led to the wrong result; if a candidate is suspected of being disqualified from standing; or if there have been corrupt or illegal practices, including a candidate spending over the limit. Although there are financial limits on national spending by political parties and third-party campaigners during an election, there is no similar provision for declaring a general election result void because of overspending on the national scale. That makes the rules for referendums and parliamentary elections both complex and varied.

Data Protection Bill [ Lords ] (Eighth sitting)

Debate between Daniel Zeichner and Darren Jones

Thursday 22nd March 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Darren Jones]

I thank the Minister for her co-operative words and for the invitation to be part of this developing area of public policy. Having already plugged my New Statesman article, I will plug a part of it, which is the news that, having worked with some of the all-party parliamentary groups, I am pleased that we will launch a commission on technology ethics with one of the Minister’s colleagues, whose constituency I cannot quite remember, I am afraid, so I cannot make reference to him. But he is excellent.

We look forward to working with industry, stakeholders and politicians on a cross-party basis, to get into the debate about technology ethics. I accept the Minister’s warm words about co-operating on this issue positively, so that hopefully the outcomes of this commission can perhaps help to influence the work of the unit, or centre, and the Government’s response to it.

I would like this new unit to be given a statutory basis, to show its importance. It is vital that it has clout across Government and across Departments, so that it is not just a positive thing when we have Ministers who are willing to take part in and listen to this debate and instead is something that will go on with successive Ministers, should the current Minister be promoted, and with future Governments, too. However, in return for the Minister’s warm words of co-operation, I am happy not to press the new clause to a vote today.

[Daniel Zeichner]

Very briefly, I declare an interest as the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on data analytics. This is a subject, of course, that is very dear to our hearts. I will just say that there is a great deal of common ground on it. I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol North West for trying to put it into the Bill, because I, too, think it needs to be put on a statutory basis. However, I will just draw attention to a lot of the very good work that has been done by a whole range of people in bringing forward the new structures.

I will just say again that in general I think we are heaping a huge amount of responsibility on the Information Commissioner; frankly, we are now almost inviting her to save the world. She and her office will need help. So an additional body, with resources, is required.

The Royal Society and the British Academy have done a lot of work on this issue over the last few years. I will conclude by referring back to a comment made by the hon. Member for Gordon, because it is worth saying that the Royal Society and the British Academy state in the conclusions of their report:

“It is essential to have a framework that engenders trust and confidence, to give entrepreneurs and decision-makers the confidence to act now, and to realise the potential of new applications in a way that reflects societal preferences.”

That is exactly the kind of thing we are trying to achieve. This body is essential and it needs to be set up as quickly as possible.

Data Protection Bill [ Lords ] (Third sitting)

Debate between Daniel Zeichner and Darren Jones

Thursday 15th March 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Darren Jones]

My right hon. Friend is exactly right. Of course, the Information Commissioner is an excellent commissioner. We are privileged to have Elizabeth in the role here in the UK, not least with her experience, as a Canadian, of being in a third country. That is why I put some flexibility into my amendment—to recognise that situations may arise about which we cannot hypothesise today in which the commissioner will need some flexibility. Under my amendment, she has the power to add modifications that she considers necessary. The Government’s concerns about the lack of flexibility are not reflected in the drafting of my amendment, as I have tried to deal with that.

The idea that the amendment increases the European data protection board’s power is incorrect, because this is UK law, not European Union law. The amendment merely says that we will go only slightly further, with flexibility, by recognising that in the decisions that we want to be a part of—that is a really important point here—and to influence, we will take the obligations as well as the responsibilities, should we be invited to.

[Daniel Zeichner]

Could the Bill not also put the Information Commissioner in an extraordinarily difficult position? Decisions that she may make in the future could have huge political consequences. I would be surprised if she wanted to take that on.

[Darren Jones]

I agree with my hon. Friend. The reality may be that under the wording in the Bill, the Information Commissioner has no choice but to apply and incorporate the European data protection board’s decisions if it is to keep up and maintain adequacy.

That is why the amendment is not something to worry about. It seeks to do what will probably happen in practice, but it puts our commitment to that relationship in the Bill. When we say to Europe that, uniquely, unlike any other third country and despite not being a member of the European Union, we want to have a position of influence on the EDPB, we can also say that we recognise that no one else has that level of influence, but in seeking to have it, we have made commitments to that future relationship in UK legislation.

I do not think any other Members here are members of the European Scrutiny Committee, but I spent the whole of yesterday afternoon losing votes on amendments to a report, and I rather enjoyed myself, so I will press this amendment to a vote.

Question put, That the amendment be made.

Data Protection Bill [ Lords ] (Morning sitting)

Debate between Daniel Zeichner and Darren Jones

Thursday 15th March 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Darren Jones]

My right hon. Friend is exactly right. Of course, the Information Commissioner is an excellent commissioner. We are privileged to have Elizabeth in the role here in the UK, not least with her experience, as a Canadian, of being in a third country. That is why I put some flexibility into my amendment—to recognise that situations may arise about which we cannot hypothesise today in which the commissioner will need some flexibility. Under my amendment, she has the power to add modifications that she considers necessary. The Government’s concerns about the lack of flexibility are not reflected in the drafting of my amendment, as I have tried to deal with that.

The idea that the amendment increases the European data protection board’s power is incorrect, because this is UK law, not European Union law. The amendment merely says that we will go only slightly further, with flexibility, by recognising that in the decisions that we want to be a part of—that is a really important point here—and to influence, we will take the obligations as well as the responsibilities, should we be invited to.

[Daniel Zeichner]

Could the Bill not also put the Information Commissioner in an extraordinarily difficult position? Decisions that she may make in the future could have huge political consequences. I would be surprised if she wanted to take that on.

[Darren Jones]

I agree with my hon. Friend. The reality may be that under the wording in the Bill, the Information Commissioner has no choice but to apply and incorporate the European data protection board’s decisions if it is to keep up and maintain adequacy.

That is why the amendment is not something to worry about. It seeks to do what will probably happen in practice, but it puts our commitment to that relationship in the Bill. When we say to Europe that, uniquely, unlike any other third country and despite not being a member of the European Union, we want to have a position of influence on the EDPB, we can also say that we recognise that no one else has that level of influence, but in seeking to have it, we have made commitments to that future relationship in UK legislation.

I do not think any other Members here are members of the European Scrutiny Committee, but I spent the whole of yesterday afternoon losing votes on amendments to a report, and I rather enjoyed myself, so I will press this amendment to a vote.

Question put, That the amendment be made.