Cyber Security and Resilience (Network and Information Systems) Bill (Fourth sitting)

David Chadwick Excerpts

Thursday 5th February 2026 Public Bill Committees

[Dr Spencer]

I thank my hon. Friend for pointing out that discrepancy in the costings. It goes back to the key principle that business and business modelling are best left to businesspeople, not to Government. The Government have a facilitatory role, but fundamentally their role is to get out of the way of business so that it can succeed and our economy can thrive. We need to ensure, for the good of our economy as a whole, that the critical elements of it are regulated in that way.

Given the interconnected operation of MSPs in our digital sector, any burden that we put on business will limit the growth that we all need and will limit competitiveness. In this footloose market especially, that could result in organisations and companies operating in other sectors, notwithstanding the fact that they will have to comply with UK jurisdictional rules. As a general point, regulations will cause footloose industries to move and operate in different sectors, which will mean less taxation revenue and more costs for clients, making it more difficult to do business.

We need to make sure that our economy is as nimble and free as possible, both for those trading as an MSP and more generally. I cannot labour the point enough: the costs that we impose on businesses under the Bill, in particular in the cyber-security and tech sector, will be felt by our economy as a whole. We will have to pay for that through increased inflation in food, energy or anything else that our critical suppliers provide. Even our NHS provision costs will increase as a consequence of the regulatory burden on businesses as disparate and distant from the NHS as those that we see in the Bill.

[David Chadwick (Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe) (LD)]

The hon. Member is quite right to say that American companies have captured most of the market that he is talking about, particularly the cloud providers. What does he think is stopping British cloud providers from getting a larger share of the market?

[Dr Spencer]

The cloud providers I have spoken to talk about several things. They talk about the crippling cost of energy in the UK, something that we need to drive down—