Telecommunications Infrastructure (Leasehold Property) Bill

Lord Adonis Excerpts

Report stage & Report stage (Hansard) & Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 29th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Meacher (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I support the Bill because it provides an opportunity for some residents to obtain telecommunications infrastructure for their properties, even when their landlord cannot be contacted to give permission for such installations. The problem is I do not think that many tenants would be included. I added my name to Amendments 2 and 3 tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, because they would enable further, badly needed, additions to our telecommunications infrastructure.

The essential issue here is the need to extend the availability of telecoms infrastructure as widely as possible, while providing sufficient protection for landlords to avoid unnecessary damage to, or interference with, their property. The protections for landlords in the Bill are more than adequate, albeit that some of the detail of those protections will be specified in regulations and be up to Ministers.

The most important protection for the landlord is that the operator must convince the First-tier Tribunal (Property Chamber) of the justification for the installation of telecommunications infrastructure. Only then will permission be given for the installation to go ahead. The Bill makes it clear that the tribunal will require an enormous amount of information before making its decision, and at the start of the process the operator must make multiple attempts to contact the landlord and gain their approval if they possibly can. The amendment provides for Ministers to extend the scope of the Bill.

The Government’s justification to the Delegated Powers Committee—I declare my interest as a member of that committee—for restricting the scope of the Bill at the outset is simply that multi-occupied blocks of flats are the most common source of demand for the provisions of the Bill. However, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, that it would be sensible to extend the scope of the Bill to tenants with a rental contract, for example, even if it turns out that the demand from those tenants is not all that great.

The Government refer to business parks and office blocks as potential candidates for the powers under the Bill to obtain telecommunications infrastructure. Perhaps the Minister could explain if there is any reason not to include such premises within the scope of the Bill now, and by that I mean rental situations as well as lessee situations.

Amendment 3, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, affords an operator the right to initiate proceedings to provide infrastructure on a site where they see a public interest in doing so. Again, I welcome the proposal; the safeguards for the landlord are so extensive, including the need to convince the tribunal of the merits of the case, that this extension of the scope of the Bill could only be beneficial.

I hope very much that the Minister will consider these amendments sympathetically. They are not party-political issues at all but rather a genuine concern for the general improvement of the country’s infrastructure.

[Lord Adonis (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I entirely agree with all the arguments that have been made by the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, and have nothing to add. I hope the Government will accept this amendment.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I would like to clarify some of the arguments that have arisen on the sidelines since Committee regarding how Amendments 1 and 2, which I am inclined to support, would function.

It is probably fair to say that in rural areas the connections are slower and less secure, as we have seen in a number of our own parliamentary proceedings. Amendment 2 refers to who can request an operator to provide an electronic telecommunications service; that would include rural tenants. I am concerned that many tenants are trying to conduct a business from home in the current circumstances surrounding Covid-19; I have found myself in such circumstances.

Can we have an assurance today from the Minister that, given what other noble Lords have said about the assurances and powers that landlords have in this regard, consent being sought from a landlord could not possibly delay connections to a fibre network? Fibre is very slow to be delivered, particularly in upland areas, and it would be regrettable if there were any further delay due to consent being sought from a landlord who may not be immediately available in that regard. I would be grateful to learn what my noble friend’s thinking is in that regard.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering [V]]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, for giving us the opportunity to look at this very vexed area. Is the Minister aware of the situation and the fact that many living in isolated situations and deeply rural areas, as described by the noble Lord, feel that they are being disadvantaged in this regard? It would be helpful to know that. I entirely endorse what my noble friend said about seeking a balanced relationship between the landowner, the operator and the tenant, but can she confirm the point that I made earlier—I do not know whether she addressed it—that the landowner cannot use any delay, in any way, to prevent the service and the upgrade to a fibre network that would benefit the tenant? She would surely agree with that.

[Lord Adonis [V]]

I have nothing to add to what my noble friend has said.

[The Deputy Speaker]

Lord Naseby? Do we have Lord Naseby? Is Lord Naseby not available? In that case we will go to the Minister.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I am speaking to the House virtually, using equipment manufactured by a company which is central to the Communist Party of China’s surveillance state, and, as such, to the egregious oppression of religious and other minorities. My BT Openreach equipment is made by Huawei, one of whose directors openly boasted that:

“Together with the Public Security Bureau, Huawei will unlock a new era of smart policing and help build a safer, smarter society.”


It will be “a new era” indeed: an era of detention without trial for bloggers, journalists, academics and dissidents; an era of televised forced confessions; an era of torture, enforced organ harvesting, compulsory sterilisation, and the destruction of crosses and their churches.

I commend to the House the evidence-based report by the Conservative Party Human Rights Commission entitled The Darkest Moment: The Crackdown in Human Rights in China, 2013-16. It makes for very disturbing reading. It details how a pastor’s wife was buried alive while protesting at the demolition of a church in Henan province, and how Falun Gong prisoners were forced to donate organs to high-ranking Chinese officials.

Giving evidence to the commission on organ harvesting, the Chinese-born actress Anastasia Lin said that such acts force us

“to confront the question of how humans—doctors trained to heal, no less—could possibly do such great evil”.

Her answer was that:

“The aggressors in China were not born to be monsters who take out organs from their people … It’s the system that made them do that. It’s the system that made them so cold-bloodedly able to cut people open and take out their organs and watch them die.”


As a consequence of her criticism of the regime, Miss Lin’s family were threatened by state security agents, and her Canadian sponsors were asked by the Chinese consulate to withdraw their support to her. I believe that a new report, under the chairmanship of Fiona Bruce MP, is to be published shortly. It concludes that the situation is worse now in China, not better.

Of course I understand the importance of getting the nation connected with fibre; I support this Bill in its objectives. However, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, on his ingenuity in bringing forward this amendment, and on the courage and courtesy he has shown in bringing it to this stage. I also thank the Minister, who has been diligent in listening to arguments and representations.

As the noble Lord, Lord Alton, predicted, the Minister will say that this is not the right vehicle to address my concerns for national security and human rights. I was a Minister for 10 years, and I would love a pound for every time I used that particular argument. If, however, the argument is correct, an undertaking to bring forward in future legislation an amendment to exclude Huawei and other high-risk vendors from our network should be given by the Minister, with a commitment to introduce it quickly. In that case, there would be no need to press the matter today. So far, the Government have failed to give such a commitment, but it is not so difficult. After all, speaking from the Front Bench on 27 January, my noble friend Lady Morgan of Cotes—who we will hear from shortly—gave the whole House an assurance that

“high-risk vendors never have been and never will be involved in our most sensitive networks”.—[Official Report, 27/1/20; col. 1300.]

If so, all that is required is dropping the qualification “most sensitive”, and recognising the difficulty of maintaining effective security with 5G systems which are software-based.

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute has detailed how Huawei is implicated in the world’s most far-reaching surveillance state. In a BBC “Panorama” documentary, Adrian Zenz, a German academic who the noble Lord, Lord Alton, referred to, spoke of the Chinese Government’s actions in Xinjiang:

“The world should acknowledge this for what it is: the largest detainment of an ethnic minority since the holocaust.”


I repeat: “since the holocaust”. Our Five Eyes allies have rejected Huawei. As was pointed out by the previous speaker and fellow signatory to this amendment, the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, if we allow our dependency on Huawei to grow, how much more difficult it will be for us to take a stand for national security, decency and human rights.

Huawei is not without friends in high places. The noble Lord, Lord Browne of Madingley, chairs the UK board, and in April it was announced that Sir Mike Rake, former chairman of BT and president of the CBI, was joining the board. Other members include the Lord Lieutenant of London, Sir Ken Olisa, and Sir Andrew Cahn, the former head of UK Trade & Investment. From a quick online search, I could not find what the UK board of Huawei does, or what roles the directors carry out. However, championing the human rights of oppressed groups in China is certainly not one of them.

This amendment would simply require the Chinese Communist Party and its state-controlled company, Huawei, to meet fundamental standards of humanity if they wished to operate in UK telecommunications in the future. It is hard to see how anyone in your Lordships’ House could be against that. As the noble Lord, Lord Alton, pointed out, Ministers and officials have confirmed that the telecommunications security Bill will not be amendable to secure human rights obligations, so, in the absence of a government commitment to bring forward an amendment at Third Reading, this is our only chance to stand up for the millions of people in communist China who have been robbed of their freedom and whose lives are a misery because of their beliefs and ethnicity. I urge all noble Lords to support the amendment in the name of humanity.

[Lord Adonis [V]]

My Lords, I support the amendment and applaud the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for consistently drawing the attention of the House to systematic and unsupportable violations of human rights in respect not only of China but so many troubled regions in the world.

The key issue in respect of Huawei and this Bill is how we balance two priorities. The first is the modernisation of our national infrastructure and the second is seeking to support improvements in human rights in China. I have come to human rights issues relating to China only fairly recently, because of the obviously worsening situation. The key issue is that just raised by the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth: whether human rights in China are getting significantly better or significantly worse. It is clear that it is the latter.

My prime concern previously as the founding chairman of the National Infrastructure Commission, working with all parties in the House, has been the modernisation of our infrastructure. In that role, I published two reports, one on the importance of a rapid rollout of 5G, so that we could be world leaders in that respect—as we need to be—and the second on the poor state of our 4G coverage, where we are well below international benchmarks and have been strongly engaged with Huawei. I am therefore very mindful of the importance of infrastructure modernisation and working with international partners in that regard.

However, it is clear to me at this crucial juncture, as we start the rollout of 5G and seek to improve 4G, that we have to do so sustainably. I do not believe that it will be sustainable over the medium term, which is what we need to look to in the rollout of 5G and what comes after it, if we are dealing with a Chinese regime not only systematically abusing human rights but doing so to a steadily worsening degree. If that is the situation we face, we need to move sooner rather than later in looking for alternative suppliers. I can say to the House from my experience of chairing the National Infrastructure Commission that we would not be putting ourselves at a significant disadvantage if we did not engage with Chinese suppliers. There are plenty of very good European suppliers of telecoms equipment. Our German friends—I always look to Germany as a model for how we should develop in these areas because it is normally ahead of us—have managed to engage in this technological development without the need to engage with Chinese suppliers. I am also mindful that our security partners, notably the United States and Australia, have given us strong public, and even stronger private, advice not to go with Chinese suppliers in respect of 5G.

We have heard in shocking detail from the noble Lord, Lord Alton, about systemic human rights abuses in respect of the Uighurs as well as within the traditional territory of China, but the House is mindful that we face an escalating crisis in respect of Hong Kong which is taking on a human rights dimension. It is the Hong Kong dimension that has most strongly alerted me to the fact that the situation may be unsustainable.