Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure Bill (First sitting)
Julia Lopez ExcerptsTuesday 15th March 2022
(2 years, 9 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure Act 2022 View all Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure Act 2022 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 15 March 2022 - (15 Mar 2022)
The Chair
Thank you. Let us move first to the Minister to ask any questions that she may have.
The Minister for Media, Data and Digital Infrastructure (Julia Lopez)
Q
Anna Turley: Thank you for meeting us to discuss our campaign. I should have mentioned at the outset that we represent all the site owners around the country who host telecoms communication infrastructure on their land.
I am afraid that we are not seeing the same tailing off of difficult cases; a number of cases are continuing to come to us where leases are up for renewal, yet telecoms companies are behaving in quite an appalling way. We have cases of rent reductions, often starting at 90% to 95%, and that is par for the course—it is not a small handful of extreme cases. In a large number of cases across the country telecoms companies are coming in often with very aggressive legal notices, which are quite intimidating and making people feel that they are being steamrollered by those large companies. People feel that they have no ability to participate in the legal process, and are obliged to take those cuts of 90% to 95%. If you are small community group, a church or a sports club, the difference between £4,000 and a couple of hundred is huge and has a great impact, especially when you believed that you had that income for the next 10 years. The impact on people has been huge and it has been pretty devastating since 2017.
Our frustration with the Bill is that it fails to address the root causes of that problem. The valuation issue is affecting people deeply, and the Bill will not deal with that. Those cases will continue to arise, and in fact the Bill will expand the number of people who will be affected by the 2017 code through the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954 and the Business Tenancies (Northern Ireland) Order 1996. Between another 3,000 and 4,000 people in Ireland will be affected by the 2017 code changes, as well as thousands of others across the UK. Those cases will not diminish, nor will the huge drops in rent, and that is having a devastating effect on a lot of small landowners and property owners around the country.
Julia Lopez
Q
Anna Turley: I would say that we are dealing with in the region of a few thousand. I have a number of case studies from Members’ constituencies around the country. I am afraid that I do not have a total overall figure, but there are 33,000 site owners around the country who are affected by this. Thousands of affected people have come forward to us via social media and lobbied their MPs. I would be happy to write to the Committee with a full number, but as I said, it is in the thousands. This is not a small number of unique people; this is par for the course. Colleagues here will represent their members in such cases, too. They are not a small minority that we have cherry-picked; this is happening across the board.
The campaign was set up because there was no way for, say, a church in Scotland, a rugby club in Wales and a farmer in Surrey to come together to stand up for their rights as landlords, to talk about how this was affecting them, and to have their voice heard by Government. Legislation was continuing to be developed, through pressure from mobile operators, which have long-standing and strong connections with Government through their large lobbying organisations. The views of ordinary people about the impact of the legislation on them were not being heard.
Chris Elmore (Ogmore) (Lab)
Q
Anna Turley: Absolutely. Someone in Cambridgeshire wrote to us who has two masts on their farm:
“I have recently gained Planning Approval for 5 Houses on my land Immediately next to the mast positions. Not only do I appear unable to refuse to renew the Lease…their current offer is derisory at £750 per annum which is less than 10% of the current rent.”
Another, in Peterborough, said:
“It’s been two and a half years out of lease, they had agreed all the new terms of the lease, just about to sign off. Then all change and they pulled out, and offered £500 per year and not heard anything since. These tower operators make dodgy used car salesman seem like Saints.”
We have hundreds and hundreds of those. Churches, for example, are saying that they can no longer keep to their plans for the upkeep of their buildings. Sports clubs say that they will have to ask parents for more, so that their kids can play on the team. The impact of a rent cut from £4,000 to just £350 is devastating for small community groups and small businesses. They feel that nobody is standing up for them or listening. The impact of the new legislation will make that even worse.
Julia Lopez
Q
John, you rather touched on the challenge: this is an area that is very dynamic. All of us are learning what the security risks are, and in Government—which often moves very slowly—it is a particular challenge to manage such a dynamic, changing picture. That is why in this legislation, we have set out some broad principles and basic requirements, but a lot of this has to be secondary legislation so we can keep up to speed with all the changes that are going to be happening to connected devices, and some of the risks that will come with that. I think it would be very helpful if you could set out for the benefit of the Committee how this picture has changed over the past few years, where you think things will be moving, the extent to which connected devices will be in our homes in future, and some of the security risks that will present.
John Moor: When I started out seven years ago, I was invited to take a look by the chairman of the organisation I was working for at the time, the National Microelectronics Institute. He was the CEO of an IoT company. I confess, I had not seen what the challenge was, so when he invited me—“John, go and take a look at IoT cyber-security”—I thought, “Why me? What’s the challenge? Isn’t this thing just a tiny part of a well-established body of knowledge about cyber-security, and why me?” My background is in electronic engineering—semiconductors.
As it turned out, when I went and had a look, it did not take me very long to realise, “My goodness, there is a real problem here.” I remember that at the time, a word I was using often was “egregious”. As effectively a student coming into it, trying to understand the space, I looked at the evolution of computing, broadly speaking. In one era, we had computers—desktops, laptops—and we connected them up, and the security around those was pretty dire at one point, but we started to get on top of that. It is not perfect now, but it is a lot better than it used to be, and we are all very familiar now with doing security updates. The next phase was mobile. Mobile was not quite as bad as the era of PCs. It was better—still a few problems, but much, much better. Then we got to this thing called IoT, and it took a complete reset. It was totally egregious.
I come from the world of embedded systems engineering, and one of the first events we did was a summit we ran at Bletchley Park in 2015, just to do a landscape piece—just to try to understand it from chips to systems, bringing in the regulator. We had a representative of what was then the Communications-Electronic Security Group, but is now the National Cyber Security Centre, to try to understand where the issues are. Part of the problem, I think, is what I learned there as an embedded systems guy. We had a pen tester there, and he said, “If a researcher comes knocking on your door, don’t turn him away.” I thought, “That is a really interesting thing. What is he talking about?” We were talking about vulnerability disclosure. For someone who comes from embedding air gap systems, security was not a thing. It does not take you long to realise that when you start connecting things up, suddenly you expand this thing called an attack surface. Attackers can come from many sources, not in proximity to the thing that you are working on. Suddenly, you have this massive attack surface.
The whole idea about IoT—internet of things—is about connecting things up, so by its very nature, you are vulnerable. These things can come at you from many angles. What does that mean? It means different things to different people. I tried to understand what this thing called security was about. I immersed myself in the security community and straight away I realised there were different groups. If people start talking to me about data, they are usually coming from a data security or information assurance-type background. If they talk to me about availability of systems—keeping systems up—they usually come from an operational technology. What I mean by that is the sort of things we find in industry—process and manufacturing.
Then we have this thing called IoT. One of our board members expressed it very well. He called it the “invasion of IoT”. What I took from that is that this technology is coming at us, ready or not. We established in those early days that we needed to have a response. The need is now. We could not wait for new standards and regulation, which is why we set up the IoT Security Foundation. Our centre of gravity is in best practice. It is saying, “Can we help manufacturers who do not yet see that the very fact that they are starting to connect things up poses a risk?” They did not, but now we are in a much better state. The body is developing.
I am delighted to be here to talk about this regulation. More needs to be done, without a doubt. A seminal moment for me was at the very first summit that I talked about. We had the chief technology officer of ARM, a chap called Mike Muller, give a talk in which he said, “The ugly truth is this: you will get hacked.” That was quite an epiphany for me, because coming from an engineering background, we engineer our systems to be virtually perfect, but what we are witnessing now is that security is a movable feast that evolves. Out in the wild, things change. New vulnerabilities are discovered. Yes, you can do all you can to engineer it up front, but guess what? Once it is in the wild, this thing called resilience is so important. What that means, especially in terms of this regulation, is the software updating part and especially the vulnerability disclosure. They are absolutely essential parts. That is part of what I have learned on the way.
I come to refer to IoT security as a “wicked challenge”. By that I mean that I do not think we will ever perfectly fix it, because it is always moving, but we can address it. We can mitigate the risks to a level that we are comfortable with and can accept. Again, another phrase I learned is, “Don’t let perfect be the enemy of the good.” This is all good. This is progressive. This is what the world needs. Being part of the regulatory process to get here today, it became apparent that getting regulation right is so difficult. It is so easy to get it wrong, but going through the process, this is a regulation that we can wholeheartedly back. We think it is absolutely the right thing. It takes a step; it gets us on that security journey. We often talk about an on-ramp of security. It is about maturity. In terms of regulation, this is a fantastic first step, but more will come. The way it has been set up is exemplary. We can evolve it over time as we have to ratchet up the security for the benefit of consumers and society. I hope that little ramble gives you some idea about my journey and where I think we are at.
Julia Lopez
Q
Dave Kleidermacher: Let me start by saying I am so appreciative of the leadership role that the UK Government have taken to help us get to a better place for IoT security. I have been working closely with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport and NCSC for the past couple of years leading up to this. I have worked on how to measure security in digital technology for almost 20 years, and I believe that the lack of transparency in what the security ingredients are for digital technology has been one of the headwinds facing the entire digital world, even before the IoT was called the IoT. Of course, the IoT has made it much more urgent that we address this.
I agree that the minimum requirements we are talking about here are a really good starting point, but as we move forward and look at the secondary legislation, the really big challenge is how we scale this. The question about smaller developers is something that I am quite concerned about. At Google, we build our own first-party products but we also develop global-scale platforms. On Android, we have many manufacturers of devices across all different price points. We have millions of app developers across the world with whom we connect and work in all sorts of different environments.
One of the biggest challenges is how to monitor and measure these requirements, and how to make that work for small businesses in particular. That is the area I have personally been putting a lot of time into over the past couple of years. How do we build and establish an actual practical mechanism or scheme for measuring security at scale? There are a lot of details that go into that, but at the end of the day, we need a hub and spoke model. I can give you an example of a failure mode. The UK is, again, taking a leadership role, but many countries are looking at similar kinds of ideas and legislative concepts. The problem is that if every single country decides to create its own testing scheme for how to measure this, imagine how difficult it would be to have, say, a webcam or smart display, and then go to each country and provide documentation, provide the test results, explain how it works and go through a testing mechanism for every country.
As an example, for our Nest Wifi products, Google has had public commitments and transparency about our desire to have third-party independent security labs to test the products and assess compliance to these common-sense requirements. We have been doing that for a while now. We certify all of our products that way, but then a couple of countries at the leading edge of this started to ask us to certify again their schemes, and we did. That was a lot of work, to test to one scheme and certify and then do the same for another country with a different set of rules. The product did not change at all; it did not get any better because we were already certifying it. However, the work and the cost of doing that were significant. If we scale that to the full IoT, to all the countries which are interested in this—they all should be—then you can imagine how quickly it breaks down.
The hub and spoke model is looking at how we can work together to build a public-private partnership where there are non-government organisations, typically well-regarded international standards bodies, which take the great standards that we are developing, such as the ETSI EN 303 645 international specification on security requirements, which the UK has led in developing, and translate that into a practical conformance regime. An NGO can take that specification and the test specification—a sister specification, ETSI TS 103 701—and test a product once to have it certified for use in all of the different nations which adopt the same standard. That is the trick to this—the hard part that has to be solved as we move forward.
Dan Patefield: I think John and Dave have already mapped out the ever-growing risk landscape, so I will not reiterate that. From an industry perspective, there is clearly strong support for the ambitions of the Bill we have been discussing today, in implementing a minimum baseline that everyone should work to. Certainly, large swathes of industry are going beyond that, as Dave has outlined. I think I would join the other panellists in commending DCMS on the leadership that it has shown in developing the framework, not just with this legislation, but with the code of practice in 2018. I also commend it for playing a key role in developing the globally recognised standard in this space, EN 303 645—I always get that number wrong. The challenge that we have, and I am sure that we will come on to this, is that the code of practice—we supported its development and engaged industry in it—created an outline for best practice. However, it was never prescriptive; it was broadly focused. The practical challenge now is translating that into regulation that is workable for industry and consumers. I am sure we will move on to that, so I will leave it there.
Julia Lopez
Q
Dan Patefield: Going back to the code of practice, I am confident that across all 13 of those areas many companies have made good progress, and will continue to develop best practice that goes far beyond those requirements. I think it is a good approach to start with the three requirements that are included in the Bill; it is not the case that industry will be surprised by what comes out in secondary legislation. The practical challenge is translating the non-prescriptive code of practice into something that will be more prescriptive by definition.
There are a number of areas where I think there is more work to be done to smooth the path to compliance, if you like. We have got various elements. We have got the standard—that is not going to be a surprise. We know the security requirements—they are not a surprise. What we have not got is the boring bit—the technical specification that people in compliance teams within manufacturers are worried about. Quite often they have to then communicate that to their HQs—which are often in different parts of the world—and say, “We have got legal certainty that this is how it is going to work and this is how we achieve compliance”. That is the bit that we have not yet got.
Julia Lopez
Q
Dave Kleidermacher: It is a really important distinction, as we look at the so-called security ingredients in digital products. The analogy to food is a good one—but it also has its limits. What is good about it is that consumers deserve to have information at their disposal to be able to make better decisions about their health; in the case of food, that is their physical health, but in the case of digital technology it is their digital health. The concept that a consumer should easily be able to get a sense of the security status of a product is a very good idea. However, the main challenge is that food contents do not typically change—there can be a printed label that works okay. However, in the digital world, it could happen that you ship a product today and then there is a severe critical vulnerability, perhaps a hardware problem, that cannot effectively be mitigated or even patched. If that happens in the future, even a day after you have shipped it—this is a worst-case scenario—then if you try to put an attestation on the static label that the product is “secure” or meets these requirements, that attestation could be immediately incorrect. In fact, it could be dangerously misleading, and give consumers a false sense of security, so I believe that, while the ingredients label is essential, the user needs to have transparency. The consumer needs to have visibility here.
That label needs to be a live label. A simple example would be a QR code on packaging, although I am not sure how much consumers really go back to their packaging. We should also stress in-product experience wherever that is practical. It will not be practical in the case of every electronic product, but there is typically an app to manage many of our consumer IoT products. The app can provide an experience where the consumer can get the real-time, current status. That status can be as simple as a link that takes you to the certification page. As I mentioned earlier, we can have NGOs that establish the conformance programmes that we need to help to measure the security. It could just take you to the certification page to see the real-time status. If a product is deemed unsafe for use, it will become decertified, and the user will then know it.
Digital Identity and Attributes
Julia Lopez Excerpts(2 years, 9 months ago)
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The Minister for Media, Data and Digital Infrastructure (Julia Lopez)
I wish to inform the House that the Government have today published their response to the digital identity and attributes consultation.
In our increasingly digital world, and as technology devices become ever more integral to everyday life, being able to prove identities digitally is a tool which will give people more convenience, choice and security in how they access products and services. From making purchases, starting a new job, or moving house, it is important now more than ever that people and organisations can trust who they are dealing with as easily when transacting online as they do when dealing with others in the physical world.
Published in July 2021, the digital identity and attributes consultation sought views on three main proposals that could achieve a safe and secure digital identity system for the whole UK. Extensive engagement informed these proposals and the contents of the consultation response. We are determined to put the needs of individuals first with a strong focus on privacy, security and inclusion.
Based on the views received from respondents to the consultation, our response details the Government’s intent to legislate, when parliamentary time allows, to enable the development of a secure and trusted marketplace for digital identities and attributes across the UK economy.
First, the Government will seek to introduce legislation that will establish a digital identity and attributes governance function. This will help to build a trusted ecosystem in which digital identities and attributes can be used safely and securely across the economy. The governance function will have oversight of the UK digital identity and attributes trust framework and will be responsible for the issuance of a trust mark to organisations certified against it. This will give confidence to individual users of digital identities and attributes that they can trust certified organisations to offer safe and secure digital products because they have a trust mark to show they are adhering to the standards of the UK trust framework.
The Government will also seek to introduce legislation to enable public bodies to allow secure digital checks by trust-marked organisations against personal data they hold for the purposes of identity and eligibility verification. This will allow people and businesses to have confidence that digital identities in the UK can be built on trusted datasets in a way which upholds UK standards of privacy and data minimisation.
Finally, the Government will seek to introduce legislation which will establish that data held by public bodies which are then shared digitally through the legal gateway, are equivalent to the same data shared through traditionally accepted forms of identification, such as physical passports. This will provide all parties that rely on these data with the clarity and confidence that digital identities and attributes can be trusted.
Further details can be found in the consultation response, available at:
https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/digital-identity-and-attributes-consultation/outcome/government-response-to-the-digital-identity-and-attributes-consultation.
A copy of the consultation response will also be placed in the Libraries of both Houses.
[HCWS668]
Mobile Coverage: 5G Deployment
Julia Lopez Excerpts(2 years, 9 months ago)
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The Minister for Media, Data and Digital Infrastructure (Julia Lopez)
Now more than ever, reliable digital connectivity is essential for people and businesses. We have committed to extending mobile geographical coverage across the UK. In order to improve coverage in rural parts of the country, the Government have agreed a £1 billion shared rural network deal with the UK’s mobile network operators to extend 4G mobile geographical coverage to 95% of the UK by the end of the programme. We also want to ensure that people and businesses right across the country can realise the full benefits of 5G as soon as possible. Through our £200 million 5G testbeds and trials programme, we are already seeing the benefits 5G can bring to manufacturing, farming, transport networks and healthcare.
In order to realise these ambitions, it is essential that the planning system can effectively support the deployment of new mobile infrastructure, as well as network upgrades. The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, and the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities—formerly the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government—have been consulting on proposed changes to permitted development rights for electronic communications infrastructure in England. Following an initial consultation in 2019 on the principle of the reforms, we published a technical consultation last year on implementing the proposed changes.
Having reviewed the responses to the consultation, we believe that the proposed changes will have a positive impact on the Government’s ambitions for the deployment of 5G and extending mobile coverage. In considering the reforms, we have sought to ensure that we find the correct balance between facilitating improved connectivity, minimising impact in protected landscapes and ensuring that the appropriate environmental protections are in place.
The Minister for Housing, my right hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew), and I can announce that today the Government have published their response to the consultation, which sets out that we will make the following changes to permitted development rights:
Enable the deployment of small equipment cabinets on article 2(3) land—such as national parks, conservation areas and areas of outstanding natural beauty—and allow greater flexibility for installing equipment cabinets in existing compounds, without requiring prior approval from the planning authority, while retaining prior approval for cabinets over 2.5 cubic metres;
Allow for the strengthening of existing masts by permitting limited increases in the width of existing ground-based masts without the need for prior approval, and greater increases subject to prior approval, on all land. Also allow for limited increases to the height of existing ground-based masts without the need for prior approval outside of article 2(3) land, with greater increases on all land, up to specified limits, subject to prior approval;
Enable the deployment of building-based masts by permitting these in closer proximity to a highway subject to prior approval outside of article 2(3) land. Permit smaller masts to be installed on buildings without the need for prior approval outside of article 2(3) land; and
Enable taller new ground-based masts to be deployed—up to 25 metres on article 2(3) land and 30 metres on unprotected land, subject to approval from the planning authority.
To balance these freedoms, we will introduce new planning conditions that will require operators to minimise the impact of all new development, especially for more sensitive areas, as far as possible. We will also make changes to the procedure for safeguarding aerodromes and defence assets, and technical changes to the definition of small cell systems. Following the consultation, we have decided not to allow any new ground-based masts to be installed without the prior approval of the planning authority.
Improved mobile connectivity, especially 5G, will ultimately bring benefits to all communities and businesses throughout the country in support of our levelling-up agenda. The reforms will provide operators with the flexibility they require to upgrade existing sites in England for 5G delivery, enhance coverage and meet the growing demands for network capacity. They will also reduce the time, cost and uncertainty involved in upgrading mobile network infrastructure as well as encourage the use of existing infrastructure and promote site sharing to reduce the impacts of new deployment.
Alongside the Government response, we have also published a new code of practice for wireless network development in England. This will provide updated guidance to ensure the impact of new and upgraded mobile infrastructure is minimised and that appropriate engagement takes place with local communities.
In order to make these changes, we will shortly make amendments to part 16 of schedule 2 to the Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) (England) Order 2015, as amended, through secondary legislation.
As planning law is a devolved matter, the legislative changes will apply to England only, but we will continue to work closely with the devolved Administrations to ensure that the planning regime continues to support the deployment of mobile infrastructure across the United Kingdom.
[HCWS662]
Draft Telecoms Security Regulations and Code of Practice: Consultation
Julia Lopez Excerpts(2 years, 9 months ago)
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The Minister for Media, Data and Digital Infrastructure (Julia Lopez)
The Government want to ensure that the UK has world-class fixed and wireless digital infrastructure as soon as possible, unlocking the huge economic and social benefits these will bring. As we become more dependent on these technologies, their security and resilience becomes vital. That is why the Telecommunications (Security) Act was passed last year to deliver important improvements to the security of public telecoms networks and services within the UK.
The new telecoms security framework established by the Act is designed to ensure public telecoms providers protect vulnerable parts of their networks and services. The overarching security duties inserted into the Communications Act 2003 will be accompanied by specific security measures contained in regulations. A code of practice will provide detailed technical guidance on the actions providers can take to meet their legal obligations.
I am pleased to inform the House that we have today published a consultation on the draft regulations and a code of practice. The Act requires the Government to consult on any codes of practice that are issued or revised. Given the need to ensure appropriate and proportionate secondary legislation for the initial implementation of the new framework, today’s consultation also extends to the regulations. These were developed through engagement with the National Cyber Security Centre, industry and Ofcom. The responses to the consultation will be used to inform the final regulations and security measures contained in the code of practice.
Telecommunications policy is reserved and the Communications Act applies and extends across the UK.
I have placed a copy of the consultation in the Libraries of both Houses.
[HCWS646]
Oral Answers to Questions
Julia Lopez Excerpts(2 years, 10 months ago)
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Duncan Baker (North Norfolk) (Con)
The Minister for Media, Data and Digital Infrastructure (Julia Lopez)
We very much understand the frustration of poor mobile coverage in rural areas. That is why we agreed a deal with the operators to deliver the shared rural network, which tackles notspots and reduces the divide in connectivity between urban and rural areas. Norfolk will see coverage uplifts by the industry element of that programme, which is due to complete in June 2024.
Duncan Baker
As my hon. Friend may be aware, my constituency has many areas of outstanding natural beauty. They include Salthouse, Overstrand and Kelling, and I am sure she may want to spend her holidays there this summer. However, places such as those also have incredibly bad mobile phone reception, and residents are caught between better reception and blighting the area with mobile telecoms infrastructure. Would the Minister meet me to discuss how we can bring a better mobile signal to those areas without decreasing their natural beauty?
Julia Lopez
I thank my hon. Friend for his question, and I can assure him that I know how beautiful North Norfolk is. I spent some time there last summer, and it is an incredibly picturesque part of the country. We want to maintain that, and that is why the shared rural network aims to transform mobile coverage without duplicating infrastructure, therefore minimising the visual impact. My officials have spoken to the shared rural network, and they will be getting in touch with his team. I would be happy to meet him after that to see how we can do more in this area.
Mr John Whittingdale (Maldon) (Con)
The Minister for Media, Data and Digital Infrastructure (Julia Lopez)
This Government’s actions have helped the film and TV industry bounce back from the pandemic. Our production achieved record success last year, and my right hon. Friend may have seen the vote of confidence given by the new Amazon Prime deal with Shepperton studios this week. Our covid-related support includes the £500 million production restart scheme and the culture recovery fund, which my right hon. Friend will know has awarded £117,000 to Maldon’s Rio cinema. We want to make sure not just that films are made here, but that they are seen on the big screen in cinemas across our towns.
Mr Whittingdale
I join my hon. Friend in welcoming the excellent news from Amazon Prime. Can she confirm that the film and TV production restart scheme, which was possible only as a result of Brexit, has so far supported production worth nearly £2.5 billion and supported 80,000 jobs? Given this success, will she consider extending the scheme beyond its end in April, and if that is not possible, will she try to obtain equivalent cover from commercial insurers at that time?
Julia Lopez
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right to point out how successful the scheme has been. It has supported £2.8 billion of production spend and over 92,000 jobs, which means we have kept production going and had a fantastic year. As he knows, the scheme was established as a time-limited and short-term intervention in response to a market failure because of the pandemic. It will continue until 30 June, but in the meantime we are working very closely with industry stakeholders and insurers to make sure that there is an effective transition to market cover when that scheme closes to new applicants in April.
Lucy Powell (Manchester Central) (Lab/Co-op)
I am grateful to the Secretary of State for giving me advance notice of her absence today. I am not sure whether her own side would see that as a blessing or a curse, given that some of her recent performances have had—how shall we describe them—mixed reviews. Our public service broadcasters are responsible for two thirds of commissions outside London, and provide a pipeline of skilled and talented workers across our regions and nations. With programming that is sold around the world, they underpin our incredibly successful creative ecosystem. The levelling-up White Paper will soon impose a statutory requirement on the Government that their own policies will meet their new levelling-up missions. How will the Secretary of State square that with her plan to sell off Channel 4 and end the BBC as we know it? Will her plans to do so be evaluated against her Government’s new legal requirements for levelling up?
Julia Lopez
I confirm that we miss the Secretary of State very much. She is flying the flag for the UK in the global Expo today, and we are all proud of the work she is doing there.
I assure the hon. Lady that we very much support our public service broadcasting sector, and it has a huge role to play in levelling up the regions. We want to support that role going forward, and we have absolutely no intention to end the BBC. A decision has not yet been made about the sale of Channel 4, but if we looked at such a sale, we would very much look at commitments to the regions. We also do fantastic stuff on PSBs with apprenticeships, and those PSBs are creating jobs across the UK, which we very much want to keep going.
Peter Aldous (Waveney) (Con)
Selaine Saxby (North Devon) (Con)
The Minister for Media, Data and Digital Infrastructure (Julia Lopez)
Gigabit broadband coverage has rocketed from 6% to 65% in the past three years. More than 80 different companies are now rolling out gigabit broadband, investing more than £30 billion between them. In hard-to-reach areas, we have already upgraded 600,000 premises, with a further 2.5 million premises in our procurement pipeline, as set out this week in our most recent winter update to Project Gigabit.
Peter Aldous
I am most grateful to my hon. Friend for her reply. I recognise the challenges of achieving nationwide gigabit broadband coverage, but it is essential if the levelling-up agenda is to be properly delivered. At present, the gaps in coverage in Suffolk extend to approximately 25% of premises predominantly in rural areas. What assurances can my hon. Friend provide that gigabit-capable broadband in such rural areas will keep pace with the wider drive towards nationwide coverage?
Julia Lopez
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to highlight the importance of good digital connectivity, and we want to ensure that there is no divide between urban and rural areas. There is already 97% superfast coverage in Suffolk, but we want to futureproof connectivity to take on board all the technologies that will be coming down the line. We are creating a competition friendly environment to encourage commercial roll-out in most areas, and we are then prioritising public money in areas where the commercial roll-out will not reach. Our regional supply of procurements is up and running, and I am pleased that Suffolk is in phase 1 of that programme. We are aiming to launch the procurement process by April.
Selaine Saxby
With the Government’s levelling-up announcement confirming plans for the UK to have nationwide gigabit-capable broadband by 2030, it is important that consumers in rural constituencies such as mine have access to every fibre internet service provider on the market, ideally via a wholesaler. What steps is my hon. Friend taking to help ensure that residents in North Devon and the wider south-west have, as consumers, fair and reasonable choices?
Julia Lopez
My hon. Friend is rightly back in her place and is holding my feet to the flames on these issues. Thanks in part to our gigabit strategy, there is a thriving market rolling out gigabit-capable broadband all across the country, but we cannot force providers to offer their services in specific locations. Where deployment is supported directly by publicly funded contracts, those contracts include requirements for wholesale access. For Project Gigabit, the procurement processes differentiate suppliers on the choice of retail offerings that they are able to bring. We are also supporting various industry initiatives to develop the wholesale market for smaller alt-nets.
Sarah Green (Chesham and Amersham) (LD)
In 2016, The Lee Parish Council in my constituency received an assurance about broadband provision from HS2 Ltd, that it would keep it
“updated on the outcome of discussions with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and Broadband UK in relation to support for broadband provision for communities along the Phase One route.”
Apart from a few holding letters, The Lee Parish Council has not heard anything for three years. Will the Minister provide details about those discussions to reassure my constituents that they are indeed taking place?
Julia Lopez
I thank the hon. Lady very much for raising that. I am keen that any hon. Member should feel that they can write to me about issues in their area. We are trying to get a much better system up and running so that we can get such cases answered. I encourage her to write to me as I am very happy to look into her concerns.
Lucy Powell (Manchester Central) (Lab/Co-op)
May I take this opportunity to send our best wishes to my hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore (Chris Elmore) for a speedy recovery from covid?
We have had a dizzying number of broadband targets, each weaker than the last. Which is the Government’s current target—is it nationwide gigabit-capable broadband by 2025 as they previously said, 85% coverage by 2025 as their national infrastructure strategy says, or the latest one of nationwide coverage by 2030? How confident is the Minister about meeting any of those targets given that the digital divide is growing, not narrowing, and she has no detailed plan for reaching communities that are not commercially viable?
Julia Lopez
I thank the hon. Member for probing me on these matters and send our best wishes to the hon. Member for Ogmore (Chris Elmore). The target is 85%-plus by 2025, and we expect to have all our procurements under contract by the end of this Parliament. We are confident about meeting those targets which, given the increasing importance of digital connectivity to our prosperity, are vital to ensuring that we do not see digital divides emerge.
Allan Dorans (Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock) (SNP)
The Scottish Government have invested hundreds of millions of pounds in accelerating the roll-out of superfast broadband in Scotland, even though broadband is reserved. Will the Minister insist to Cabinet colleagues that levelling up plans must include finally delivering the funding necessary to roll out superfast broadband, as that is the United Kingdom Government’s responsibility?
Julia Lopez
I thank the hon. Member for raising the important connectivity needs of Scotland. This is a Union issue and the Government are keen to help. I recently had a productive meeting with Kate Forbes—incidentally, I congratulate her on her pregnancy—who is an excellent Minister. Ensuring connectivity across the Union is very much part of our levelling up plans, and I am happy to continue working with the Scottish Parliament on such issues.
Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)
The Government’s focus on gigabit roll-out is absolutely right and I am grateful that Buckinghamshire is included in the current public review of gigabit broadband infrastructure. Will my hon. Friend reassure me that there is a plan to tackle the problem in villages such as Mentmore in my constituency, where fibre has been installed but 20 commercially unviable houses have been left out, leaving those people and homes behind? How can we narrow that gap and ensure that once fibre goes into a village, it really reaches everyone?
Julia Lopez
This is a common challenge across the country. We are trying to focus public resource on premises that are not being connected by the commercial roll-out and ensuring that we share data with commercial providers so that we know which premises we need to cover in our contracts. I am happy to look into my hon. Friend’s area to ensure that we do that.
Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)
The Minister for Media, Data and Digital Infrastructure (Julia Lopez)
Our public service broadcasting system is a critical part of our media landscape. We are committed to making sure that it continues to thrive in the face of a rapidly changing broadcast sector. That is why we are undertaking a strategic review looking at making sure that the PSB system delivers for audiences and supports the success of our incredible creative sector. We will set out the conclusions of that review in due course.
Jamie Stone
I want to put on the record my thanks for a useful meeting with the Minister this week about social tariffs for mobile devices. Channel 4 is close to my heart, as it is to those of many hon. Members. Will she assure me that any future owner of Channel 4 will be as committed to using small, local producers and providers as Channel 4 is at present? Have the Government carried out a risk assessment on what privatising Channel 4 might mean for small, local, important British producers?
Julia Lopez
It was a pleasure to meet the hon. Member this week to discuss the important issue of social tariffs as well as Union connectivity, which I know he feels passionately about. Channel 4 is valued by all of us. There is a debate to be had, however, about the best ownership structure for it. The Government believe that one of the strengths that any future buyer might see in Channel 4 is its links with independent producers—small independent producers in particular—and, were we to decide to sell it, we would very much want to see that protected.
Robert Largan (High Peak) (Con)
An important part of public broadcasting is radio. Last October, the Government’s review into digital, audio and radio found that the Hope valley in my constituency has very poor DAB—digital audio broadcasting—service. What are the Government doing to improve digital radio access for rural communities such as the Hope valley?
Julia Lopez
I thank my hon. Friend for raising the needs of the Hope valley, which he is right to do. We have conducted a review of this area, and we have been working with commercial radio and the BBC on this issue for a number of years. We do not expect them to be doing a great deal of extra work on DAB roll-out, but I am happy to continue looking into the matter and to consider the issues he highlights in his own patch.
Kim Johnson (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab)
Stephen Morgan (Portsmouth South) (Lab)
The Minister for Media, Data and Digital Infrastructure (Julia Lopez)
Access to the internet is increasingly important to people’s life chances. Today, over 65% of premises can access gigabit-capable networks, but we have ambitions to do much more, precisely because we want to ensure that a more profound digital divide does not emerge. The Government are encouraging broadband providers to roll out low-cost broadband social tariffs for low-income households, so that the internet is more affordable. We are highlighting those services via work coaches at jobcentres. We are also looking to boost digital skills. Adults can undertake specified digital qualifications up to level 1 free of charge.
Stephen Morgan (Portsmouth South) (Lab)
The Local Government Association has warned that digital exclusion is more likely to impact those on low incomes, the over-65s and people with a disability. At the start of the pandemic, only 51% of households earning between £6,000 and £10,000 had home internet access. Meanwhile, my city is significantly below the UK average for gigabit broadband availability. With vulnerable people in Portsmouth increasingly being left behind by the Government, what specifically is the Minister doing to address affordability and bridge the digital divide?
Julia Lopez
I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising such an important issue. I cannot disagree with some of the LGA’s analysis. I am happy to look into his city in particular, but this is an issue I discussed with the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) just this week. Providers are offering social tariffs but we do not think uptake is strong enough. We all have a responsibility in this House to promote social tariffs, so that those who need to get on to the net can. We are looking at various initiatives to make sure people can get online, because it is so important for people’s life chances.
Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)
Ruth Jones (Newport West) (Lab)
The Minister for Media, Data and Digital Infrastructure (Julia Lopez)
I am standing in for the Culture Secretary, who is today promoting the UK’s national day at the Dubai Expo and welcoming the Queen’s baton ahead of the Commonwealth games. Our Department is at the heart of the levelling-up agenda, through fantastic digital connectivity for all and initiatives such as the new national youth guarantee to enrich the lives of young people in every corner of our country.
We continue to make brilliant progress on our plans for a blockbuster 2022, during which we will honour Her Majesty the Queen, who this week marked 70 years of steadfast service to our country. Two nights ago, we celebrated the best of our world-class music industry at the BRITs. To echo the comments from the Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Worcestershire (Nigel Huddleston), the ministerial team would like to wish the very best of luck to Team GB, who are flying the flag for the entire country at the Beijing winter Olympics.
Ruth Jones
Musicians in Newport West and across the UK have been campaigning alongside leaders in the Musicians’ Union, such as Councillor Sarah Williams, for a touring visa that will allow them to showcase British musical prowess. When will the Minister wake up and fight for the musicians’ passport that people so desperately want and need?
Julia Lopez
I thank the hon. Member for raising the issue of touring. I have been doing a lot of work with officials and other Departments to ease some of the challenges that people have had since we left the EU, and I will continue to work on this issue.
John Penrose (Weston-super-Mare) (Con)
Jeff Smith (Manchester, Withington) (Lab)
I am afraid that the Minister’s answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West (Ruth Jones) was far too vague. Musicians and orchestras are facing a touring crisis. We need an EU-wide cultural touring agreement that includes allowances for cabotage, carnets and customs rules. That needs to happen now, so what are Ministers doing to sort the problem as a matter of urgency?
Julia Lopez
We have been working closely across Government to deal with some of the cabotage issues. The issues around agreements with member states are being addressed on a bilateral basis. We have had great breakthroughs with Spain and are working closely with Greece, but most people can work in those countries for up to 90 days. I am happy to engage with the hon. Gentleman further on the issue.
Mrs Sheryll Murray (South East Cornwall) (Con)
Swimming is massively important not just for health reasons, but for safety in our island nation. Saltash swimming pool is an excellent facility. What more can the Government do to ensure the long-term future of such facilities?
Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)
Julia Lopez
One of my first Acts as a Minister in DCMS was to take through the Telecommunications (Security) Act 2021. We take these issues incredibly seriously, and I offer the hon. Gentleman reassurance that we have a whole package of work to ensure that our telecoms networks are secure. Those matters have not been influenced by other issues.
Andy Carter (Warrington South) (Con)
Technology is changing the way in which listeners tune in to their favourite radio stations. Will the Minister set out her plans to secure future access for UK radio stations to smart speakers?
Julia Lopez
My hon. Friend raises an important point about social media platforms potentially becoming gatekeepers for radio stations. We are looking closely at this issue to ensure that radio stations can have their own data, protect their listenership and so on. I offer him reassurance on that point.
Ronnie Cowan (Inverclyde) (SNP)
Mary Robinson (Cheadle) (Con)
Good broadband connectivity is vital not only for leisure, but for working from home. But one street in my constituency is a street of two halves—one with 8 megabits per second and the other with 1,000 megabits per second. How can we address these issues? Will the Minister meet me to discuss how we deal with urban notspots?
Julia Lopez
I would be happy to meet my hon. Friend to discuss these matters. We are trying to target public subsidy at areas that are not being covered, including looking at individual premises. I will look into her particular case.
Marsha De Cordova (Battersea) (Lab)
Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)
I welcome greater efforts by the Government to improve internet access, but I met the families federations of the Navy, Army and the RAF, and they are concerned about access to the internet across the military estate. May I invite the Department to do a study on internet access on bases for our armed forces, and to report back to Parliament?
Julia Lopez
I thank my right hon. Friend for raising that issue in the Chamber; it has not been raised with me before. I would be happy to look into improving access to the internet for our military.
Mr Speaker
I must say that Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport questions are a major agenda item, and I do not think that we give it long enough. I hope that others will listen to that. So many people could not get their question in; I can only say sorry. I believe that it should be a full hour.
Project Gigabit Winter Update
Julia Lopez Excerpts(2 years, 10 months ago)
Written StatementsRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Minister for Media, Data and Digital Infrastructure (Julia Lopez)
Today we have published the fourth Project Gigabit quarterly update. Thanks to the work of industry and our record investment, we are making phenomenal progress delivering the biggest broadband rollout in UK history.
In this Project Gigabit delivery plan winter update, we share the news that over 65% of UK premises now have a gigabit-capable connection—a huge leap forwards from just over one in twenty in January 2019.
This delivery plan update also reports on:
newly launched regional supplier procurements in Cambridgeshire and the north-east of England, as well as local supplier procurements in rural Dorset, north Northumberland and Teesdale;
16 local and devolved authorities which currently have live schemes to top up our voucher projects worth £10.5 million;
details of upcoming procurements in Cornwall, Norfolk, Suffolk, Hampshire and Shropshire; and updates on how we are working closely with the devolved Governments to develop and deliver Project Gigabit plans in some of the hardest-to-reach areas in the UK.
Since the launch of Project Gigabit in April 2021, we have connected over 3,500 public sector building hubs: places like Borrowdale Primary School in Cumbria, which is now able to take full advantage of online learning while also speeding up connections to surrounding homes and businesses. We expect to connect a further 100 hubs over the next quarter.
To support this phenomenal progress, Building Digital UK (BDUK) will become an Executive agency of DCMS. BDUK will be based at a new head office in central Manchester, boosting the city’s credentials as a fast-growing digital tech hub.
This Government are supporting access to the internet of the future—building broadband that is fast, reliable and future-proof, that supports 5G, and that paves the way for new and unexpected developments in commerce, trade and technology.
I will place a copy of the Project Gigabit delivery plan winter update in the Libraries of both Houses.
[HCWS601]
Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure Bill
Julia Lopez Excerpts(2 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Minister for Media, Data and Digital Infrastructure (Julia Lopez)
I thank all hon. Members for their valuable contributions to this debate. I am pleased that the Bill commands cross-party support, which underlines the commitment of this House to make sure that every household and business in our country can access faster digital connectivity and feel assured that our tech is secure. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Boston and Skegness (Matt Warman) for laying the foundations for this Bill and for bringing his expertise to bear in today’s debate.
This Bill comes at an opportune time when cyber-attacks are on the rise and the pandemic has underlined the increasing importance of digital connectivity to how we live, work and socialise. The quality and security of that connectivity has an impact on people’s life chances today and even more so in the future, so we have to grip these issues now. That is why we have to view fantastic telecoms infrastructure as more akin to a key utility, notwithstanding the need for different regulatory approaches.
In that way, this should not be seen as a dry debate about technology. I appreciate the valiant attempts to spice up this debate, which is about people and how we give them and their communities the fundamental tools to live good lives and prosper. These networks are vital for the UK’s future competitiveness. We cannot stay at the heart of the global economy if our connections are not world class, which is something we want not just for pockets of our nation but for every community.
We must not see a digital divide emerge between well-connected urban areas and poorly connected rural areas. I know how passionate Members are about the connectivity of their regions, and I welcome their highlighting of the challenges. I pay particular tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon (Selaine Saxby), who is tireless in her pursuit of better broadband for her county. I encourage ongoing engagement with my Department so that we get high-quality intelligence about what is really happening on the ground as our operators roll out new networks and upgrade existing. I ask my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Edward Timpson) to write to me in detail with some of his concerns about particular streets in his constituency.
As tech becomes a central driving force for our economy and our society, we have to be able to trust it without ordinary citizens needing deep expertise in cyber-security. That is why we want to make connected devices more secure by design, whether baby monitors or malevolent toasters, as highlighted by the hon. Member for Ochil and South Perthshire (John Nicolson)—perhaps not as perilous a nightmare as that offered by my hon. Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Ruth Edwards), who discussed pictures of nude US Presidents. Cyber-attacks continue to be a serious and current threat to businesses and states, but this is also increasingly a phenomenon that is affecting all sorts of organisations, from local authorities and public bodies to individuals. The hon. Member for Ogmore (Chris Elmore) raised an important point about the service of cyber officials and the tremendous work they do, and I echo his words.
My right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne) made a typically zesty contribution, but I am glad that he has at least accepted that we ought to be debating these issues, as yesterday he was considering not allowing that. He is very concerned about lowered rents for landlords who are hosting telecoms infrastructure. We have discussed these issues in person. As he knows, the electronic communications code was changed in 2017. I should make it clear again—I know this will disappoint hon. Members—that we are not seeking to alter that pricing structure again. In our view, the prices being paid for rights to install communications apparatus prior to 2017 were much too high, and with digital communications becoming an increasingly critical part of daily life, that really needed to be addressed.
The argument has been made that delays in digital deployment are primarily a result of changes to the code in 2017 because the amounts offered by some operators are reduced, thereby disincentivising landowners from letting land be used. We do not think this is the case. We maintain that the 2017 valuation provisions created the right balance between public need for digital communications and landowner rights.
But that is not to say that the valuation changes did not create challenges, and the Bill is designed to make a positive difference to some of the David and Goliath situations raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Siobhan Baillie). To help ensure that fair outcomes are reached, we are introducing changes to encourage more collaborative discussion. The alternative dispute resolution provision will offer a particularly useful means of tackling situations involving either unreasonably low offers or unrealistically high payments. I am none the less happy to continue this discussion as the Bill progresses through the House.
My right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest West suggested that the Government are on the side of rapacious telecoms operators over landlords. I wish to assure him that that is not the case. We are getting good digital infrastructure to as many people as possible, as quickly as possible. I challenge the idea raised by my hon. Friend the Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare) that the telecoms operators are making a quick buck out of the networks they build. These are long-term investments, and the Government are pushing them very hard to deliver more, including by stripping high-risk vendors from their networks and rolling out infrastructure to communities that are not within easy reach.
I dare to suggest that some of the rarer and more emotive cases about community organisations receiving reduced rents are being used by certain lobbyists, some of whom are former Labour MPs, to obscure a larger, pretty hard-nosed commercial interest from companies that have bought up large numbers of telecoms sites and are concerned about receiving a lower return on their investment. Some of the same interest groups that oppose rent changes have written to me to express their support for better connectivity in rural areas. We should therefore not pretend that better connectivity does not rely on better access to sites and more realistic pricing for network operators who wish to deploy their services. Some hon. Members have pushed for the Bill to go further, particularly in relation to renewals and operator rights. Our policy aims align with that; we just need to make sure that the legislation is working as we hope. If amendments are required in Committee, we will actively consider them.
The hon. Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell) mentioned the recent report by the Public Accounts Committee on gigabit roll-out.
I thank the PAC for its detailed work. It expressed concerns about the absence of legislation, but here is the legislation, which the Secretary of State and I have championed since our arrival in the Department, building on the fantastic work of my predecessor. We have also launched a series of procurements in the hardest-to-reach areas and Building Digital UK will soon be established as an executive agency to drive that work. I am glad that the impact is already being seen in areas such as Eddisbury.
On the product security part of the Bill, I welcome the expertise of my hon. Friend the Member for Rushcliffe and I encourage her to engage in the new national cyber strategy, because we would benefit from some of her points. The hon. Member for Manchester Central expressed concerns about whether we are taking future technological developments into account. There are a number of secondary provisions in the legislation. Technologies are changing all the time and it is important that the legislation can change with it.
Finally, the Bill is not a silver bullet to address all the cyber challenges that we face. It is an important tool in our arsenal. The UK has established global leadership in the area and we are the first to develop domestic legislation that creates cyber-security requirements for consumer connectable products. The Bill will allow us to protect people across the UK, even as the world changes around us, and to keep pace with technology as it transforms our everyday lives. Combined with the measures on telecoms infrastructure, it will do a huge amount in the coming years to benefit our constituents and society at large.
I am sure that we can continue to work together to bring this important piece of legislation into law as soon as possible. We care passionately about connectivity for every community in our country and I am sure that the same spirit will continue as the Bill makes it passage through the House.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill accordingly read a Second time.
PRODUCT SECURITY AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS INFRASTRUCTURE BILL (PROGRAMME)
Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 83A(7)),
That the following provisions shall apply to the Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure Bill:
Committal
(1) The Bill shall be committed to a Public Bill Committee.
Proceedings in Public Bill Committee
(2) Proceedings in the Public Bill Committee shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion on Tuesday 29 March 2022.
(3) The Public Bill Committee shall have leave to sit twice on the first day on which it meets.
Consideration and Third Reading
(4) Proceedings on Consideration shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion one hour before the moment of interruption on the day on which those proceedings are commenced.
(5) Proceedings on Third Reading shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at the moment of interruption on that day.
(6) Standing Order No. 83B (Programming committees) shall not apply to proceedings on Consideration and Third Reading.
Other proceedings
(7) Any other proceedings on the Bill may be programmed.—(Michael Tomlinson.)
Question agreed to.
PRODUCT SECURITY AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS INFRASTRUCTURE BILL (MONEY)
Queen’s recommendation signified.
Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 52(1)(a)),
That, for the purposes of any Act resulting from the Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure Bill, it is expedient to authorise:
(1) the payment out of money provided by Parliament of:
(a) any expenditure incurred by a Minister of the Crown under or by virtue of the Act; and
(b) any increase attributable to the Act in the sums payable under any other Act out of money so provided;
(2) the payment of sums into the Consolidated Fund.—(Michael Tomlinson.)
Question agreed to.
PRODUCT SECURITY AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS INFRASTRUCTURE BILL (CARRY-OVER)
Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 80A(1)(a)),
That if, at the conclusion of this Session of Parliament, proceedings on the Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure Bill have not been completed, they shall be resumed in the next Session.—(Michael Tomlinson.)
Question agreed to.
Ultrafast Broadband: Devon and Somerset
Julia Lopez Excerpts(2 years, 11 months ago)
Westminster HallRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
The Minister for Media, Data and Digital Infrastructure (Julia Lopez)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Rees. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon (Selaine Saxby) for securing this debate, and for her proactive engagement with my Department on behalf of her constituents and in her role as the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on broadband and digital communication. She does tremendous work and I commend her for that. I am always grateful for these opportunities to speak to hon. Members because we have a shared goal of delivering fast and reliable internet to everybody in the UK. I genuinely welcome problems and challenges being highlighted along the way so that I can seek to address them with officials.
As many hon. Members have said, the pandemic has really highlighted the importance of digital connectivity in how we live and work, which, as technology advances, will only become more profound. Several hon. Members have highlighted that there is a risk of a digital divide emerging, and I agree. The hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) talked about the movement of people into the region and, therefore, the additional importance of productivity gains coming from digital connectivity. My hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome (David Warburton) highlighted the issue of economic competitiveness for the region, which I am very alive to. I enjoyed his beautiful analogy of the beacons on the mounds—I hope that we have moved some way beyond that in the last few hundred years, but I am happy to look into any concerns that that is not the case. Other hon. Members highlighted the importance of levelling up and the work that they are doing as a group of MPs to highlight connectivity issues.
My hon. Friend the Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris) made some interesting comments about needing to prioritise those who are hardest to reach, and I wish to assure her that that is what the Government are doing. I will come to some of the issues relating to her region, but one of the first procurements we are looking into, which has already launched, is for Cumbria—which, as I hope hon. Members will appreciate, is one of the hardest-to-reach areas. Learning lessons from the Cumbria procurement will help us to manage the roll-out in other similarly difficult-to-reach regions.
I wish to assure all hon. Members that the Government are not leaving the knobbly bits until last, but trying to deal with them early in the process. As my hon. Friend the Member for Newton Abbot says, these people really matter. We want to make sure that everybody is connected, not least because this matter now affects people’s life chances in terms of education, the economy and so on.
I want to address some of the other interesting points raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Newton Abbot about innovation and how we need to look at all kinds of technologies, not just fixed fibre. It might interest hon. Members to know that I conducted the UK’s first ever call on Open RAN technology earlier today. Hon. Members will be aware of some of the challenges we have had in removing some of the kit from higher-risk vendors following the Telecommunications (Security) Act 2021, which has left us with questions on the resilience of the technology we use. We are trying to increase the range of supplies in our network, and we see Open RAN as one of the solutions.
I am keen to work closely with partners such as Vodafone and small and medium-sized enterprises to roll out that technology so that our networks are not only wide reaching but resilient. That ties in with some of the work that we are doing on the shared rural network. We hope those things will tally, because the Open RAN technology is being tested in some of those rural areas first. I hope that reassures my hon. Friend.
The roll-out of gigabit broadband and the work we are doing on 5G is for me, as Minister for Digital Infrastructure, as much about future-proofing our economy and society as it is about delivering faster internet speeds, as important as that is. We will achieve that primarily through Project Gigabit, with several billion pounds of investment to support nationwide gigabit-capable broadband. The commercial aspect to that gigabit roll-out is the key part of the programme. We want to support commercial activity to go as far as it possibly can, and only then use taxpayers’ money to intervene where it is necessary.
We want to use as much capacity from the market as possible, and maximise that pace of delivery. Our interventions include local, regional and cross-regional procurement. We are looking at Cumbria as one of the first of those. We are looking at gigabit vouchers, which have been pretty successful, and giga-hubs, where we invest in public buildings, such as schools, and gigabit delivery via the remaining projects under the superfast broadband programme.
All suppliers have the opportunity to bid for procurements at all levels, and to get involved, working with communities to use gigabit vouchers in areas where no other delivery is currently planned. In the spirit of the cross-party working in which we all wish to engage, and the fact that this is a collective endeavour, I encourage all hon. Members to highlight the voucher programme to constituents who might not be aware of it, and to encourage suppliers to get involved in those critical procurements.
At a local level, communities from across the UK have seen massive increases in gigabit broadband coverage, spurred by commercial investment. Through listening to industry and working closely with Ofcom, we have made a made a number of policy and regulatory changes to stimulate the market, including Ofcom creating a new pro-investment, pro-competition regulatory system for telecoms in the UK that was introduced early last year. Our 130% super-deduction on qualifying plant and machinery investment means that we expect more homes to receive coverage by 2025 without a Government subsidy, which is critical if we are going to make best use of taxpayer cash.
We have also changed the law to make it easier to connect premises in blocks of flats. We are piloting innovative approaches to street works, which we think can speed up build by between 10% and 40%. We are also working with industry to set up a gigabit take-up advisory group to review how to increase consumer demand for gigabit, and incentivise further investment from the private sector in gigabit roll-out. Although many homes are able to get connected to gigabit, they do not always do so. We need to make households aware of the importance of gigabit connectivity.
Luke Pollard
On connecting buildings, does the Minister have a view on the progress made on allowing new operators—such as CityFibre, which is rolling out the fibre network in Plymouth—to use historic wayleaves, so that they do not have to negotiate afresh with landowners where there is an historic wayleave that would allow access and speed up the roll-out, especially in buildings where there is a lower speed but an established connection?
Julia Lopez
I assure the hon. Member that we have just introduced legislation that we hope will deal with some of those issues. We are in close contact with some of the operators, asking what they need to speed up the roll-out. Factors such as wayleaves, as he highlighted, are among them. I encourage him to support the legislation on Second Reading.
There has been an unfair amount of gloom about the progress we are making in this area. Although I welcome the Opposition’s commitment to cross-party work on this, I push away some of the more partisan points made by the hon. Member for Ogmore (Chris Elmore). As a result of the measures we have taken, the UK has seen more than £30 billion of private sector investment committed, and one of the fastest gigabit broadband roll-outs on the continent. Today, more than 65% of premises can now access gigabit-capable networks, which is up from one in 10 in November 2019. I hope the hon. Member will acknowledge the good progress we are making.
On concerns raised by my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon about rural areas missing out again, I emphasise that it is not just towns and cities that have seen increases in coverage. Since 2018, we have provided gigabit coverage to more than 600,000 rural premises, which has made a huge difference to the work and home lives of local people. In Devon and Somerset, 66,000 further premises now have gigabit-capable coverage being delivered, as part of our superfast broadband programme, which is managed by Connecting Devon and Somerset. On the broader picture, some of the tricky areas are among our first procurements.
My hon. Friend the Member for North Devon stated that the south-west had 92% superfast capability and that her constituency had 87%. I am pleased to report increases in both, with the latest thinkbroadband statistics estimating a figure of 94% in both Devon and Somerset and nearly 92% in my hon. Friend’s constituency. That regional statistic will also increase to more than 96% once the current contracted delivery is completed. Even though those improvements are coming, I recognise it can be a long wait for many and that is a frustration for all of us, and some premises will still not be included in those plans.
BDUK is working in partnership with local bodies on the ground. We are working to make sure those relationships are functioning well, and we have a good amount of shared data on where coverage is happening. Nevertheless, most hon. Members are aware that delivery in Devon and Somerset has been slower than we would have liked because of the challenges faced by Connecting Devon and Somerset, which is the joint team resourced by a number of hon. Members’ councils. I do not think those challenges are typical, notwithstanding that other rural areas also share issues regarding the complexity of some builds.
I do not wish to go over old ground, but the previous contracts collapsed and that followed procurement by CDS in 2015, which failed to complete owing to an inability to agree terms with the supplier, which in that case was BT. Subsequent to the previous contracts being terminated in 2019, CDS will have had to undertake a new open market review and public review with suppliers to confirm which premises are not within any commercial plans and therefore require subsidy. That has been a lengthy process and it is important to minimise that risk of overbuild of other commercial networks, which has also been regularly highlighted by my hon. Friend and which was also a requirement under previous EU state aid rules. CDS then had to follow that with a compliant public sector procurement process, meaning that the new delivery contracts were agreed only at the end of 2020.
The same processes will also be required for contracts taken forward under our new gigabit programme, but rather than local authorities, BDUK will be in the lead for that process. BDUK brings together central resources and expertise and we hope that will mean we get a more consistent national approach to delivery while still working with councils to deal with local implementation issues. BDUK is currently part of the Department, but it will be spun out as a separate executive agency this year. That will give it greater autonomy and greater scrutiny from a new board. That is going to be an important step in focusing and giving greater priority to ensure a good gigabit roll-out from now on.
My hon. Friend talked to BDUK officials just yesterday. Other hon. Members have spoken about making the west country a priority area for connectivity and that connectivity-related issues are not just nice-to-have things to address. I assure them that I have had my own discussions with BDUK to see what more we can do for the region, because I appreciate that hon. Members have particular frustrations that need to be addressed. I want to work together to do that. We have officials in the room, so I wonder whether we can look at the GigaHubs programme as well to see if there is anything more we can do.
I also wish to address the point made by the hon. Member for Ogmore about Wales and his constituency. It is going to be important that we work closely with the devolved Administrations. I am meeting Kate Forbes MSP this week, and I will be holding similar meetings with counterparts in the Welsh Administration and will be happy to look into his constituency. The hon. Gentleman raised points about the Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure Bill, which includes measures on the electronic communications code that regulates agreements between landowners and telecoms operators. We are looking to try and deal with some of the problems that came after the 2017 changes, trying to move to a position where we can have more arbitration rather than litigation and getting better relationships between landowners and mobile network operators so roll-outs can happen much faster. I hope the hon. Gentleman will support that legislation.
Returning to Project Gigabit, we only want to intervene when it is necessary. The same applies to delivery under the superfast broadband programme by CDS. That is why the open market review and the public review process I referred to earlier has to be followed, even though it can take a significant amount of time. As I say, I appreciate the frustrations. CDS has followed that process and is now only intervening in premises confirmed as eligible for public subsidy. However, we recognise that commercial plans will be changing and to maximise that value for local bodies, we should take reasonable steps to make way for new commercial investments.
That is easier said than done and CDS will be mindful of the risks to some premises of descoping to make way for a commercial build if that then leaves other neighbouring premises without viable coverage. Those are tricky issues that I know my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon will appreciate. I simply encourage all local bodies to be open and transparent in their dealings with commercial suppliers and to make way for new commercial builds if they can, and BDUK will continue to reinforce that point to local bodies.
Conversely, although I welcome new commercial build plans, I urge commercial providers to target investment at areas that are currently not in scope for any other coverage. BDUK is also making this point with suppliers. That will help increase the number of premises that have gigabit access from at least one operator, rather than having fewer premises with multiple providers.
Several hon. Members talked about the voucher scheme, which is one of the mechanisms that we have to incentivise and encourage suppliers to provide coverage to areas not covered by any other plans. I encourage all commercial suppliers to use that scheme as much as possible, and I encourage everybody in this Chamber to highlight the scheme to their constituents. The voucher scheme can be hard work for communities, and it runs the risk of delivering a patchwork of coverage. However, it is a relatively quick means of supporting delivery in particular communities and has been used successfully by many suppliers, including some of the largest, to provide gigabit coverage in communities across the country.
Many areas of Devon and Somerset are making good use of the voucher scheme. I am pleased to say that 5,466 premises in Devon and Somerset have gained a gigabit connection because of it, and a further 2,645 premises are awaiting connection. That is a combined total of over £12 million of investment. In the North Devon constituency, 299 premises have gained their gigabit connection as a result of that scheme, and another 208 premises are awaiting connection. That is nearly £1 million of investment by the voucher scheme in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon.
We have deliberately designed Project Gigabit to ensure that coverage is delivered in every area of the country, and not to leave those harder areas until last. We think that that will add to the gigabit coverage currently being delivered through superfast contracts. We want to reach as far as possible beyond 85% gigabit coverage by 2025, and every area of the country will be under contract by that stage. However, it is not the case that rural areas will be left with no coverage once that has been completed. The latest stats from thinkbroadband show that North Devon currently has 32% full-fibre coverage. That is ahead of the UK average of 30%, so when it comes to gigabit there is a good story to tell, and a good start has already been made.
Selaine Saxby
I thank the Minister for her clarifications this afternoon. We have already talked about the low take-up of gigabit in some areas. Is she able to clarify whether that is because some of my constituency is served by small providers who are not wholesalers, which is not the same as having Openreach or CityFibre and is therefore further reducing take-up?
Julia Lopez
I am afraid that I do not know enough about the commercial relationships and situations in my hon. Friend’s constituency to be able to provide a detailed answer; I will have to go to BDUK and get further details.
Many people are satisfied with their superfast speeds, and question why we need gigabit. Gigabit is actually about future-proofing homes and businesses across the country. Constituents across the country should understand that, although technology is advancing quickly, it is going to be taking even greater strides in future. We may see the delivery of more healthcare requiring fast speeds and new types of factories requiring really great connectivity. We need to ensure that we are thinking not just about speed, but about capacity, resilience and connectivity. We need to ensure that, when more applications and technologies require this kind of digital infrastructure, it is there, ready and waiting to be used.
In March 2020, the Government announced that they had agreed a £1 billion deal with mobile network operators to deliver the shared rural network—this relates to my hon. Friend’s concerns about notspots. The deal will see operators collectively increase mobile phone coverage across the UK to 95% by the end of that programme. That is underpinned by legally binding coverage commitments. In the south-west, 4G coverage from all four operators will increase to 87% from the current 75%, and from one operator from 97% to 99%, thanks to the shared rural network.
I was interested in the comments of the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport on the trainline piece of work. I believe that that may be happening in other parts of the country, but I am happy to look into this particular project for him and see whether there are any conversations that the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport needs to have with the Department for Transport. I recognise that the current roll-out will still leave some premises in the region with sub-superfast speeds, and in any case we now want to increase access from superfast to gigabit.
In our quarterly Project Gigabit delivery updates, which I hope hon. Members have received, we set out a target timetable for our regional supply procurements. For Devon and Somerset, we are targeting a procurement start in February to April 2023, with contract commencement early in 2024. This procurement is currently set up to include 159,600 premises, but the number could change depending on the market’s build plans.
The timetable for procurement was drawn up after extensive consultation with industry and local bodies and reflects the need for coverage from current contracts to be clear. Unfortunately, that is where hon. Members are seeing some of the challenges that their region had previously under superfast have an impact on how quickly we can get going with the gigabit stuff, which I regret.
It also increases the chances that the suppliers in the current programme will be able to bid for projects and continue building once their current deployment ends. We must be cognisant of the fact that only a certain number of people have the expertise to deliver some of this work. If those companies are engaged in superfast work, they may not have the capacity to bid for some of those gigabit contracts, which is regrettable.
All the procurements will, of course, be open to every interested supplier and I hope for good levels of competition. Our approach keeps open the potential for using smaller local supply procurements and the larger regional and cross-regional procurements that I think we want the likes of Openreach to be bidding for. We will seek to use each of those options as effectively as possible.
While we all welcome a large single supplier volunteering to complete coverage in Devon and Somerset commercially, we will need to see what results from the competitive procurement process. We should all welcome competition. It is positive that many more broadband network providers are now able to deliver significant levels of coverage, compared with the position in the past when only one national operator was undertaking a new roll-out. That is where our efforts to get a really good commercial market going are reaping dividends.
I am confident we will be successful in ensuring coverage through these procurements. I very much look forward to working with my hon. Friend and others in this Chamber, all Members from Devon and Somerset and all other interested parties, so that we can get the connectivity that is not only important to speed and life chances now, but ever more so into the future.
Oral Answers to Questions
Julia Lopez Excerpts(2 years, 11 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Nick Fletcher (Don Valley) (Con)
The Minister for Media, Data and Digital Infrastructure (Julia Lopez)
Happy new year to you, Mr Speaker, and to the House. I also welcome the new shadow team.
The Government launched a consultation in August last year to level the playing field between traditional broadcasters and video-on-demand streaming services, to provide a fair competitive framework and ensure that UK viewers receive equivalent standards regardless of the tech they use. That included looking at audience protection measures such as the role of the British Board of Film Classification age ratings. That consultation closed in October. We are now considering our response to the consultation and will publish the next steps in due course.
Nick Fletcher
Does my hon. Friend agree that these certifications not only protect our young people, if they are adhered to by responsible parents, but help us as adults to determine what we want to watch in our own homes?
Julia Lopez
I thank my hon. Friend for his tremendous campaigning work to protect children online and for sharing with the Department details of his recent meeting with the BBFC. We have great trust in its best practice age ratings and, as I have set out, we are currently considering its role, as part of the VOD consultation. We are trying to strike the right balance between freedom of expression, protecting audiences from harm and making sure that traditional broadcasting and streaming services are held to the same standards. If my hon. Friend has additional ideas on how best to do that, I have sent him the details of the lead official in this area and we would welcome his further engagement.
Allan Dorans (Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock) (SNP)
Jacob Young (Redcar) (Con)
The Minister for Media, Data and Digital Infrastructure (Julia Lopez)
The Government are in the process of determining the level of the licence fee from April this year. We need to deliver value for money for the licence fee payer while ensuring that the BBC can continue to provide high-quality services. We have been having constructive discussions with the BBC, and I believe we are close to reaching an agreement, but I cannot comment further while those negotiations are ongoing. An announcement will be made in Parliament in due course.
Jacob Young
The Minister will know that there is growing support for scrapping the licence fee or axing the TV tax, not least in Redcar and Cleveland, where the Bilsdale mast fire left people without TV reception, yet most were not given any sort of refund. Does the Minister agree that this is not an acceptable situation and that if the BBC were a satellite, broadband or phone provider, a refund for time without service and, in some cases, even further compensation would have been expected? Given that the BBC is using my constituents’ licence fees to pay celebs hundreds of thousands of pounds—
Julia Lopez
I thank my hon. Friend for highlighting the plight of his constituents after the mast fire in Bilsdale. I have been working very closely with Arqiva to try to restore those services urgently, and I believe 98% of households have now had their Freeview restored, but I believe the BBC has also been issuing refunds. It has got to something like 11,000 refunds now; if my hon. Friend wishes to take this issue up with the BBC, I recommend that he do so.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
Mark Eastwood (Dewsbury) (Con)
Julia Lopez
The Government’s actions helped the film and TV industry bounce back from the pandemic, with production now stronger than ever. Our support includes the £500 million production restart scheme, supporting over 88,000 jobs, and the cultural recovery fund, supporting over 200 independent cinemas. We have also built on the UK global screen fund.
Andy Carter
One reason why we have such a successful TV and film production sector in this country is the broad ecosystem of large, medium and small businesses that all contribute to that global success. Could I take the Minister back to the point raised earlier about Channel 4? Can she reassure me that specific regard is being given to the small and medium-sized businesses in my constituency and across the north of England who rely on Channel 4 for their first entry into network television commissions? What steps is she taking to ensure they are not disadvantaged?
Julia Lopez
I would like to provide him with those reassurances. That is very much on my mind, and that of the Secretary of State, as we look at this issue. I read with interest my hon. Friend’s piece in The Times on Channel 4 and levelling up, and the contribution that the broadcaster makes in that regard. In so far as we are minded to sell—no decision has yet been taken—it would be done in order to secure the future of the broadcaster and looking at the wider sector. I assure him that the independent production sector is doing incredibly well and is moving away from a reliance on the public service broadcasters anyway.
Mark Eastwood
I appreciate the support given to our TV industry. However, a big question remains on the viability of the BBC licence fee in today’s modern society. With hundreds of commercial and subscription channels currently available, I urge the Minister to look at the possibility of phasing out this outdated payment model and to consider other options for the BBC to be able to fund itself.
Julia Lopez
The current licence fee funding model is fixed for the rest of the charter, until 2027, but we will be reviewing the model well in advance of the next charter period. We are considering all options. I appreciate the concerns he raises, which I know are shared by a number of others.
Mr Speaker
Order. I had the greatest respect for the hon. Gentleman as a Whip, and we used to have this challenge of Front Benchers’ questions needing to be short in topicals, so I was hoping he would set the right example, as I am sure he will next time.
The Minister for Media, Data and Digital Infrastructure (Julia Lopez)
We have put forward an important piece of legislation on this, to get our ambitions out there on improved wireless and broadband connectivity. I would be keen to engage with the hon. Gentleman further on these issues, but we think we have struck the right balance between the mobile network operators and those who receive rents.
Andrew Rosindell (Romford) (Con)
I know that my hon. Friend the Minister will agree that the singing of the national anthem is something that provides a great sense of unity and pride in our nation. In this year of the Queen’s platinum jubilee, will he take steps to encourage national broadcasters to play the national anthem and ensure that the BBC restores it at the end of the day’s programming before it switches to News 24?
Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
We know that over Christmas children and young people would have been watching mainly streaming services rather than terrestrial TV, so can I press the Minister? Would it not be an easy and quick win to require all streaming services to use the British Board of Film Classification age verification system? We know that Netflix does, but Disney does not, which causes confusion for parents. This would be an easy, quick win for the Government, as well as everyone else.
Julia Lopez
I know that the right hon. Lady is passionate about this issue, which is something we are actively looking at, as I mentioned earlier. Those ratings are already voluntarily taken on by the likes of Netflix and others, but we are looking at what more could be done.
Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)
If there is evidence that officials in the Department have inadvertently advised the Secretary of State on the application of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 and the HMRC film production company manual, would this be of concern to her, and would she agree to meet me and my constituent about this matter?
Draft Network and Information Systems (EU Exit) (Amendment) Regulations 2021
Julia Lopez Excerpts(3 years ago)
General CommitteesRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Minister for Media, Data and Digital Infrastructure (Julia Lopez)
I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft Network and Information Systems (EU Exit) (Amendment) Regulations 2021.
The regulations were laid in draft before the House on 26 October. This short but very important statutory instrument makes technical corrections to the UK’s network and information systems legislation, which arose as a result of the UK leaving the EU. These corrections will allow the Information Commissioner, in her role as the regulator for digital services providers, to be informed of important cyber incidents affecting online marketplaces, online search engines and cloud computing services in our country.
Before moving on to the amendment at hand, it is important that we first consider the context that we find ourselves in. The NIS regulations were introduced in the UK in 2018, implementing the EU’s 2016 directive on security of network and information systems. The regulations provide a legal framework to protect the network and information systems of essential and digital services. They do this by directing operators of essential services and digital service providers to take steps to protect—against cyber-attack and physical fault—the security of those systems that their services rely on.
Beyond ensuring the security of their network and information systems, these organisations have other duties as well. One of the most significant, and the most relevant for this statutory instrument, is the duty to report to their regulator incidents that have a substantial impact on their services. Such reports are critical to the regulator’s ability to react and to implement the NIS legislation. The regulator can then provide advice, report the incident to the national technical authority—in this case the National Cyber Security Centre—or take enforcement action if appropriate.
Michael Fabricant (Lichfield) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend think that these changes not only fill a gap from our leaving the EU but create an environment whereby we can perform better than if we had remained in the EU?
Julia Lopez
I would like to provide my hon. Friend with a very positive story about Brexit through these regulations, but this is quite a technical and narrow change. When it comes to his ambitions, we have a much more ambitious agenda in the coming year or so.
Without the information required, the regulator is not aware of the incident, and citizens and businesses relying on that service are affected for longer. The threshold for what qualifies as a reportable incident for the majority of the six sectors is set in statutory guidance by the relevant regulators. Only one sector—digital service providers, which are regulated by the Information Commissioner—has its set in legislation. All other regulators are able to react to the changing circumstances and amend the thresholds as necessary.
The Information Commissioner is limited by that retained EU law. That is due to how the NIS directive was established. In the EU, digital service providers are regulated at Union level, rather than at individual country level. For that reason, the thresholds that establish whether an incident has had a substantial impact on the security of a network and information system were not left to individual member states to establish, as is the case with all other sectors. These were set out in a Commission implementing regulation, which harmonised the rules across the whole EU. Following our withdrawal, it remained embedded in the UK statute book by virtue of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018. Therefore, the thresholds remain at the level suitable for the EU, which has a population of 500 million, not for the just under 70 million of our own population. That means that they are unable to be changed to reflect our new position as an independent country outside the EU.
Parameters such as the amount of users impacted or user hours lost from an incident are set far too high currently for the UK, and considerations relating to impacts on EU citizens are not appropriate for our own NIS legislation. The Information Commissioner has received only one report since we left the EU. That is not surprising if an incident must have a noticeable impact on an economy the size of the EU in order to be reported in the UK. Without incident reporting, the commissioner will not have an understanding of the threats to and impacts on the sector, and will not be able to identify threats, provide guidance or take enforcement action if appropriate. For the NIS regulations to remain effective in protecting the essential services provided, we have to be able to set the reporting thresholds at a suitable level for our own country. This statutory instrument is designed to resolve that issue by removing those deficient provisions in retained EU law and allowing the Information Commissioner to set the thresholds to a level that effectively reflects our position and size.
The enabling provisions under section 8 of the 2018 Act allow changes to be made to rectify EU exit-related deficiencies only. I am content that the amendments made in this statutory instrument do not introduce new policy, although we have ambitions in that regard; rather, they are meant to ensure that the original policy objective is achieved. The Information Commissioner has already carried out a consultation on the level of thresholds to be set to represent the UK market, and the practice of setting appropriate thresholds for reporting is already in place for every other competent authority. This statutory instrument will bring digital service providers in line with all other operators of essential services in the UK.
Additional amendments in the statutory instrument cover textual changes as a consequence of the UK’s withdrawal from the EU. This includes a requirement for digital services providers to consider the geographic impact of an incident in relation to the UK rather than across the UK. The NIS regulations form part of the Government’s toolkit to protect digital services, which citizens rely on in their day-to-day lives, and help to support the functioning of the digital and physical economies. That is why it is essential that we maintain the framework for protecting our essential services and deter those who seek to act in a subversive manner towards them. For those who do unfortunately fall victim, it is necessary to provide support in guidance. To do this, competent authorities have to be informed of such incidents.
This statutory instrument incorporates much-needed amendments to the NIS legislative framework, which will lead to increased security of digital service providers and their network and information systems. Although the amendments are minor and technical in nature, they are none the less critical for maintaining the effectiveness of the NIS legislation and for providing the Information Commissioner with the right information to support digital services in the UK. I commend the regulations to the Committee.
Julia Lopez
I thank members of the Committee for attending and for their patience in debating the regulations. I also welcome the hon. Member for Ogmore to his position. I am very glad that he supports the regulations, and I very much appreciate the warm welcome he gave me. I look forward to working with him collaboratively where we can and to addressing his concerns when he raises them.
I assure the hon. Gentleman on our general approach to cyber-security. We entirely understand how important this area is. To that end, this week we are launching a new national cyber strategy, which is a whole-of-Government approach but also a whole-of-society approach. Huge efforts are going to be required by each of us as citizens; otherwise, any vulnerability in the system will have an impact on all of us. As we have seen during the pandemic, more aspects of our lives have gone online, and with that comes a consequent risk.
I completely agree with the hon. Gentleman on the importance of joint reporting and collaboration. We held the future tech forum at the Science Museum a couple of weeks ago, and we started some of those discussions with ministerial counterparts in EU countries. There was an EU representative present and I look forward to working collaboratively with them.
My hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield was absolutely right to refer to the importance of the relationship with Israel. I met the ambassador when I was at the Cabinet Office and we talked about where we can collaborate more closely when it comes to cyber-technology, because it is such an important area. It is the area of the future, where I fear we will be fighting many of tomorrow’s battles.
We have been assured that the ICO has the resources to deal with the extra reporting. I also say to the hon. Member for Ogmore that we will consult on NIS regulations early in the new year. We will also be looking at expanding the list of people that this applies to. I entirely agree with him about the importance of dealing with small businesses, which are going to be holding increasing amounts of risk. We are doing a huge number of things in that regard, including improving the skills base from which they can recruit cyber expertise and introducing a new royal charter so that people can be assured of the cyber expertise that individuals hold. At the moment, that is a very messy landscape. I hope that that assures the hon. Gentleman on some of the initiatives that we are working on. If he has any further questions, I shall be happy to engage with him. I commend the regulations to the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.