National Security and Investment Bill (Fifth sitting)

James Wild Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 5th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 1st December 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Chi Onwurah]

May I begin by saying what a pleasure it is to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg, and what a pleasure and, indeed, honour it is to discuss this important Bill with the rest of the Committee?

This issue is important to Members on both sides of the Committee, and as we scrutinise the Bill line by line over the next two weeks I am sure we will get closer—or as close as social distancing allows. Labour Members look forward to a constructive and collegiate debate and recognise that Members on both sides of the Committee share the objective of making well-informed contributions. It was clear from speeches made last night on the Telecommunications (Security) Bill, the interests and ambitions of which overlap those of this Bill, that all Members share a belief in the critical importance of national security, and I am sure that will be reflected in our deliberations.

We agree on the importance of securing our national security, for which line-by-line scrutiny is vital. The Government’s impact assessment notes the need for change and says that national security is an area of “market failure” requiring some Government action. I found that statement somewhat shocking, and a marked difference between the views of Labour and Conservative Members. It is an astonishing claim, because national security is not a private concern first, and a Government after-thought second. There is no market in national security, which is the first duty of a Government and not a failed responsibility of the private sector. It ought to be the first priority of any Government to address it. It is not under-supplied by the market; it is outside the market altogether.

Although that claim is astonishing, it is unsurprising from this Government and the party that leads them. The impact assessment is a marker of a Government who have outsourced significant responsibility for national security; a Government who let Kraft take over Cadbury in 2012 because the market promised good behaviour by the acquirer, only for them to be embarrassed when the acquirer broke all its promises—national responsibility outsourced and British jobs and national interests handed over to the market.

[James Wild (North West Norfolk) (Con)]

Could the shadow Minister explain the national security issues with the Kraft takeover?

[Chi Onwurah]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. I meant to say that national responsibility was outsourced—and British jobs—and the national interest handed over to the market. That was the concern with the Kraft takeover. If he wishes, I shall follow up with further examples, but the national interest and the responsibility of this Conservative Government for economic security have clearly been lacking. This is the Government who let the Centre for Integrated Photonics, a prized research and development centre, be taken over by Huawei in 2012—an event that our head of the National Cyber Security Centre said that in hindsight we would not wish to happen. National security was outsourced and the British interest again relinquished to the market.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Whitehead]

Rather late in the day, I will say what a pleasure it is to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. I am sure you are aware that we share an anniversary: we are among the few surviving Members of the 1997 intake—those happy days when Labour used to win elections. We came to this House in 1997 and have been here ever since.

The reason I emphasise that fact, Mr Twigg, is to underline just how many Bills you and I have sat on, led for the Labour party or been involved in over the years. I am unable to tot up the exact number but it is a considerable, and it is a great pleasure to be sitting on this Bill Committee. I have served on a large number of Bill Committees of late, the most recent being the Environment Bill Committee, which has just finished its deliberations. I was unable to be present for this Bill Committee’s witness sessions because I was finishing off the Environment Bill—well, trying to strengthen it rather than finish it off. I am grateful to my colleagues for asking a series of pertinent questions in the evidence sessions. We are all grateful for that and, indeed, to the expert witnesses.

I want to cite the amendment in the context both of the various Bills that have come through the House and of the witness sessions, which I have assiduously read, even though I was not present for them. I hope the Minister will accept that the amendment is entirely in line with the constructive way in which I hope we have gone about our business in this Committee. The amendment, which I shall unpack in a moment, strengthens not only the Bill but the ability of Ministers to do their job properly as far as its provisions are concerned. That is its intention.

The amendment seeks to replace subsection (1), which is a bald sentence:

“No more than one call-in notice may be given in relation to each trigger event.”

My time with Bills has taught me to look carefully through all of the different clauses to find the qualification. In my experience, tucked away somewhere in most Bills is a qualification. Sometimes it is about when a clause is to be implemented, sometimes it is a definition of the wording, and sometimes it is an additional provision that mediates the clause to which our attention was first drawn.

This clause has no such qualification. It is an absolutely straightforward statement. We have discussed trigger events to some extent in our evidence sessions, and they are elucidated and qualified in further clauses, as are call-in notices, but the fact that we get only one call-in notice per trigger event seems to be the central essence of this subsection. Our amendment seeks to put a question mark against whether that bald statement about the fact that we get one go per trigger event is the wisest formulation to have in the Bill.

The amendment makes a modest change to the clause, stating:

“No more than one call-in notice may be given in relation to each trigger event,”

and adding,

“unless material new information becomes available within five years of the initial trigger event.”

[James Wild]

From his experience of many Bills, I wonder what the hon. Gentleman made of the provisions in clause 22 on false or misleading information that has been given to the Secretary of State, whereby if he has been given that information he can change a decision he has previously given and can therefore issue another call-in notice.

[Dr Whitehead]

Yes, indeed. The hon. Member is quite correct to draw attention to clause 22, which concerns false or misleading information. It relates to where someone has, at the time of the trigger event, concealed or misled or sought to deceive those concerned with the trigger event about the nature of the event. I would suggest that that is a different case from what we are trying to establish today. It is not that anyone has tried to deceive anybody or maliciously mislead anybody at the time of the trigger event, but new material may come to light or become available within five years of the initial trigger event that might cause a further call-in notice to be introduced. According to the definition set out in the Bill, that looks like it might not be possible.