Telecommunications Infrastructure (Leasehold Property) Bill

Debate between Lord Blunkett and Baroness Falkner of Margravine

Committee stage & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 2nd June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly in opposition to the amendment. I can see why the noble Lords, Lord Clement-Jones and Lord Fox, tabled it, because targets are quite important to ensure that the Government do what they set out to do. However, the narrow timeframes given in the amendment are not practicable and will not tell us any more than we will know through other means.

I go straight to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Fox, about the Prime Minister commissioning the National Cyber Security Centre to review new US laws that will impact on Huawei’s ability to use US technology. We know that the Prime Minister is looking again at this matter through this review. I am delighted to hear that, as the Committee would expect me to be given what I said earlier on my own amendments. It is quite right: it is better to change your mind and to get better information later, rather than too late to be able to effect the changes you might need to put in place.

However, the amendment is redundant for another reason: six months’ time is way too narrow because it takes us to the end of this year, when we know that the bandwidth of Parliament and government will be intensely focused on Covid-19 and its impacts. Distracting additional pieces of legislation or reports would probably not garner the bandwidth they need for us to see whether the Government are achieving what they set out to achieve. Six months is way too short.

As for annual reviews, the correct place to know whether the Government are reaching their objectives is Ofcom’s annual reporting on this matter. Anyone who saw Ofcom’s last report of December 2019 got a very clear picture of where there has been success for fibre broadband, some limited success for ultrafast broadband and great open holes in rural coverage. We all know from what the regulator is telling us is that there are real issues about rural coverage that have their own particular hurdles, such as masts, local communities, planning permissions and all those things. All that information is readily available through the regulator. I cannot see why we would wish to put another layer of reporting on top of what the regulator is already doing.

I again emphasise that I am very much in favour of the Government’s objectives. I have my other concerns, which I might well come back to on Report, but for the moment the amendment is redundant in a very fast-moving situation.

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

Everything that I intended to say has already been eloquently put on to the agenda by those who have spoken in favour of the amendment, so I will be brief. I reinforce that what has happened over the past three months has, in many ways, drawn attention to the inadequacies of the system that we are operating, not just as individuals but in how companies have tried to survive in this very difficult environment. The more that we can ensure that we review progress the better it will be, in whatever form. I take the point entirely about reporting from Ofcom, but the emphasis has to be on requiring the Government to address the key issues. I do not intend to go back to the Second Reading issues about the industrial strategy, but the rebalancing of our economy and the regeneration and recovery programme will be highly dependent on connectivity, with acceptable speeds right across the country in ways that ensure that they are reliable. That point has not actually been reinforced.

A review is crucial if we are not to repeat what has sadly happened over the past 30 or, in many cases, 40 years in efforts to ensure that modern technology is used effectively and is available and accessible to everyone: promising a great deal and delivering far less. The great pity of the December election, which was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Empey, is that we could have addressed the challenge of really ambitious investment but instead got caught up on pricing policy. Today, in this short debate and with this very narrowly focused Bill, it is time to say that we need to review anything that moves us on to being able to deliver what has been commonplace in other countries for a very long time, as was rightly said by my noble friend Lord Adonis.