Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure Bill (First sitting)

James Grundy Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 15th March 2022 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

Thank you. The Clerks will note that declaration from Ruth Edwards; and Ruth, if you wish to refer to it later in the proceedings, do so.

[James Grundy (Leigh) (Con)]

This is slightly tangential, but better declared than risked. The Grundy family farm has a mobile phone mast, for which my father receives yearly payment.

[The Chair]

Thank you. The same applies.

Examination of Witnesses

Anna Turley, Dr Charles Trotman and Eleanor Griggs gave evidence.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

If you are finished, are there any other questions?

[James Grundy]

Q I refer the Committee to my earlier declaration of interest. We mentioned the issue of particular sites and the considerable reductions in rent. Is that a universal problem across all telecoms companies, or are there any particularly egregious offenders regarding the practice of aggressive rent reduction?

Anna Turley: That is a really interesting question. We have not seen particular companies standing out any more than others. I think that they all have strong legal arms and come in with a very strong approach. However, what we have seen change, even since the 2017 code changes, is the development of tower companies, which I think is an interesting thing that has not really been taken into account when looking at the new changes.

These middlemen have been created, where tower companies will now rent the site from the landlord and use the code to cut the rent that they are paying, but will continue to charge high amounts of money to the telecoms companies—Vodafone, EE, Three, and others. The savings are not actually going back to those original companies, but somebody is making money in the middle. I think that is an important change in the market, partly, I think, because of the 2017 changes, which has not been properly explored.

Again, I think that we should be looking at that before we change this legislation, because the development of tower companies has distorted the market even further. It has not resulted in reinvestment in infrastructure, and is essentially creating middlemen who are profiting off the changes brought in to essentially accelerate 5G roll-out, and that money is not going back into the development of infrastructure.

[James Grundy]

Q Are those changes, with the creation of those middlemen tower companies, largely developments since the 2017 review of the legislation?

Anna Turley: Yes, that is when we started to see them emerge. They are a recent phenomenon.

[James Grundy]

Q Just for clarification, on that basis, do you think that the pressure for dramatic rent reductions is coming from those middlemen companies, rather than the telecoms companies themselves?

Anna Turley: I think that they are certainly playing a role in it. We have seen examples where, as I said, they have continued to charge, say Vodafone, £17,000 a year for a site, but then slashed the rent to the actual site owner to a few hundred pounds. That is absolutely a huge driving force, coming from profiteering, from those guys in the middle.

[The Chair]

If there are no more questions, I thank our three witnesses for a very informative session, and for giving us their time. Thank you very much.

Examination of Witnesses

John Moor, Dave Kleidermacher and Dan Patefield gave evidence.