National Security and Investment Bill

Lord Caine Excerpts

Committee stage & Lords Hansard
Tuesday 2nd March 2021 Grand Committee

[Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted (LD) [V]]

My Lords, this group contains a range of amendments aimed at improving certainty which I broadly support. In particular I favour the removal of the expression “contemplation” because it is a broad expression that in my understanding, if it is not reinterpreted through guidelines, could range from not even a twinkle in the eye to serious preparations.

When I looked at this, it seemed that the first expression of “arrangements are in progress”, followed later on in the clause by

“which, if carried into effect”,

is already quite broad because it poses the notion that the “arrangements” do not have to be substantial enough to have an effect yet, only if carried through. That seems to cover quite a preliminary range of stages. Even if the Minister does not accept that proposition of deletion, is there case law that can point to what “contemplation” means? The noble Lord, Lord Lansley, has provided some useful indicators. I thought about “in contemplation of matrimony to a given individual”, which is accepted in wills as a means to overcome a negation of a will through marriage, but that will itself is a legal document defining intent. That would not necessarily be the case for just a random contemplation.

From my various adventures as a patent attorney I know better the interpretations of “serious preparations” or “effective and serious preparations”. They are used in patent and trademark law, which has received attention and clarification—or rather verification—in courts. If we have to use something, I prefer to use something akin to those terms, although this shows that it is quite difficult to define when a line is crossed.

As has already been raised, the intention of “contemplation” or anything else could be clarified by guidelines, but if that route is needed, is it not just simpler to delete “contemplation” and explain in guidelines what “arrangements are in progress” is intended to cover? To me, that sounded exactly like what the CMA had done: it had taken “arrangements are in progress” or “contemplation” as one and the same thing and then defined that, which implies something much further down the track than simple contemplation. I am therefore on the side of those who think that the wording just looks too vague, and if it has precedent elsewhere, it needs to be clarified that it does not mean anything more substantial. The CMA has pointed the way to showing that the word is not very much use.

I also support Amendment 8 relating to publication, which aims to give some certainty about when the Secretary of State can be regarded beyond doubt as having been aware of a trigger event. As the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, explained, that reflects the wording of the Enterprise Act and it would help to reduce unnecessary notifications.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Caine) (Con)]

Lord Vaizey of Didcot. No? We will come back to him. I call the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow some of the early speeches in this group today. Noble Lords have already started to unpick some key elements in the Bill and have shown how much further explanation and guidance is needed. I will come on to Amendments 3, 4 and 8 in a minute, but, given the absence of the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, I will speak first to Amendment 9.

As it stands, given the Bill’s very broad definitions of “trigger events”, “qualifying entities and assets” and “control” of entities and assets, businesses are not clear as to those transactions which require notification and those that do not. Although the Bill is retrospective, the Secretary of State will publish a Statement only after it comes into effect, so there will be little clarity for some time. Probably the word that will be most overworked during the passage of the Bill will be “certainty”, but that is exactly what we are all looking for as we proceed. The first person who used that phrase was my noble friend Lady Bowles, but I entirely agree that we must strive for that. If we are not careful, we will have significant overnotification of irrelevant transactions by businesses in order to avoid the risk of penalties for non-notification or subsequent call-in. As a former practising lawyer, I think I can testify to that.

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[Baroness Noakes (Con)]

My Lords, there are very wide powers in the Bill, and the amendments in this group are sensible and proportionate and go some way to reining in the extent of those powers. Other noble Lords have spoken extensively about Amendments 3 and 4, which I fully support. When I first focused on that language, I simply could not believe that the Government would have drafted the basis of calling in being the Secretary of State thinking that somebody else is thinking about something. My noble friend Lord Leigh of Hurley has set out the very dangerous consequences that could have for prospective transactions.

I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Lansley for explaining the link under the Enterprise Act to how the CMA operates. My view is that we should not simply rely on guidance to make an unsatisfactory formulation in legislation work better. I do not believe that “in … contemplation” is the right place to start, and guidance which will go some way to reversing what the ordinary understanding of “in … contemplation” means is not a satisfactory way forward.

I also agree with my noble friend Lord Lansley’s Amendment 8, given that the Bill, as has been pointed out, gives the Secretary of State time limits that start to run from when he becomes aware of transactions. It is just not reasonable for him ever to claim that he has no knowledge of something that is clearly in the public domain. I fully support that.

I also support Amendment 9, which the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, spoke to a moment ago, because the Government need to consider the negative impact that the Bill is likely to give rise to. It is going to be very difficult to avoid the Bill having negative impacts on legitimate economic activity. It is absolutely right that the Secretary of State should actively consider that fact when he draws up his Clause 3 statement.

Like the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, I believe that the volume of precautionary but unnecessary voluntary notifications is likely to be very significant, and it makes sense for the Secretary of State to ensure that his Clause 3 statement gives as many steers as possible to allow transactions to go ahead without having the Bill hanging over them. If the Secretary of State does not get this right it will result in the security and investment unit being overwhelmed by transactions, and that will do nobody any good at all.

The amendments in this group are soundly based and I look forward to hearing my noble friend the Minister’s response.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Caine) (Con)]

I will try the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey again. Lord Vaizey of Didcot?

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con) [V]]

Yes, I am definitely here. I am sorry that I did not realise that I had to unmute myself, but I will not detain the Committee with my farcical debut in tabling amendments to a Bill. I will simply say how pleased I am to be in this group of amendments with the noble Lord, Lord Leigh, and how much I enjoyed his introduction to his amendment seeking to delete the word “contemplation”, which I have been delighted to support.

As my noble friend made clear, we are all here to serve a common purpose, which is to tease out of the Minister his thinking on the wording of the Bill. The Minister may well come back with a slam-dunk justification for “contemplation”. One of the advantages of the delayed entry of my contribution is the arguments put forward by other Members of the Committee about that amendment. It seems that it boils down to whether the Minister thinks that “contemplation” has a religious, business or technical meaning. If it has a technical meaning, it seems perhaps important that that is teased out in these proceedings to help people in the future.

As far as my own technical amendment is concerned—and I was delighted as well that my technical ineptitude meant that it was much more ably introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones—it seeks to echo some of the points that I made at Second Reading. Most of us who have taken an interest in the Bill and have discussed it with numerous trade bodies and City lawyers are aware that the Government’s estimate of the number of notifications under the Bill as drafted is somewhat low. We can expect thousands of precautionary voluntary notifications to come about, at least in the first instance.

More importantly—and what the amendment in my name and that of the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, seeks to deal with—is that the Bill will start to have a potentially deleterious effect on foreign direct investment. As the noble Lord, Lord Leigh, pointed out, we are second in the world in terms of foreign direct investment. We often proudly say that we have more of it than Germany and France combined, at least as far as Europe is concerned. Over time, more and more companies looking at potential investments and acquisitions may well start to shy away from the UK if they feel that they have to undergo certain additional hurdles.

No one of course is saying that we should not have a national security framework to protect our vital industries. But just as the Secretary of State under this clause is required in a very good way to give guidance on how he or she is exercising the call-in powers, it is important that a very real contemplation of the potential deterrent effect that the new regime may bring about is front of mind alongside the sectors and technical thinking lying behind acquisitions that might be called in. If this amendment were accepted down the line, it would ensure that future Secretaries of State kept this front of mind.

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[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Caine) (Con)]

My Lords, I have received one request to speak after the Minister from the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for that careful analysis, but I must admit that I am not wholly reassured as a result. I feel as though we have gone in a spiral of logic and I think we ended up where we began, in a cloud of uncertainty. In particular, I thought the Minister’s arguments on Amendment 9, that the statement was forward-looking not backward-looking, were very circular. It all depends on how the statement is constructed. It can be made both forward-looking and backward-looking simply in the way the Bill is amended. So the argument there was extremely circular.

I will read Hansard extremely carefully, but to me the question about the Secretary of State being unaware means that the Government have decided that the net is going to be extremely wide. We have assurances on the sifting process, but in the end everything falls in until it is thrown out. That, I think, is what worries quite a lot of us. The contemplation point may have some precedent, but the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, made the point that these transactions are not just mergers but intellectual property licences, know-how transfer, asset sales and a whole range of things. Is the merger regime fit for purpose for this broad range of transactions?

That is all I want to say at this stage. I thought the Minister valiantly tried to justify the current wording of the Bill, but I do not think he succeeded.

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Let me close by reassuring noble Lords that the UK is not alone in pursuing this approach. Our French and German neighbours both have similar automatic voiding provisions in their investment screening legislation. We are consistent in this with economies with similar national security concerns. To alter it would be to make our regime comparably less effective. I know noble Lords who have tabled these amendments have good policy as their motivation and good law as their objective. Therefore, I hope the points I have been able to provide them with assure them the Government are delivering these in the Bill as it currently stands. I hope, with these explanations, those noble Lords will choose not to press their amendments.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Caine) (Con)]

I have received one request to speak after the Minister, from the noble Lord, Lord Leigh of Hurley.

[Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)]

Does my noble friend the Minister recognise that some countries allow voiding? He pointed out some that do not, but some do. Does he agree that if a transaction is voidable, it could still be declared void?

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Amendment 5 withdrawn.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Caine) (Con)]

Before moving on, notwithstanding the successful last-second intervention by the noble Lord, Lord Leigh, I remind noble Lords that if they wish to speak after the Minister they should email the clerk. We now come to Amendment 6.

Amendment 6

Moved by