Telecommunications Infrastructure (Leasehold Property) Bill

Lord Empey Excerpts

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

[Lord Adonis]

I do not follow the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, in seeking to make moral, let alone ageist, judgments on different users of internet services, but I completely follow him in his point about the need for a universal service obligation that is both universal and an obligation. The noble Lord, Lord Fox, spoke about the parallel with electricity, but the more relevant parallel may be with the development of the postal service, which was done nearly two centuries ago. The principle of access on an equal basis to the most remote parts of Britain was at the centre of the postal service that Anthony Trollope and others developed in the mid-19th century. Irrespective of what people chose to put in the envelopes, the principle was that you would get a delivery at least once a day everywhere for the same price.

The bit that the Government keep ducking is turning this into a universal service obligation; they keep talking about targets for increased rollout. The steps being taken in this Bill are welcome because they will make it possible to get more gigabit coverage to more people quickly. But there is no definition of a universal service obligation, and if it is not in this Bill, then sometime soon Parliament will have to grapple with the issue of a universal service obligation that provides coverage at around the 1 gigabit level to all premises in the United Kingdom. We would then map out how to do that in exactly the same way as we have done with utilities in the past.

However, the bit that I do not think anyone can question is that this is now a utility-type service that people require. We need only to look at the most advanced nations in the world that are doing best with their internet services, led by South Korea and many east Asian countries. Some time ago, they regarded high-capacity networks of this kind as universal services and put an obligation on someone—whether the state or private providers—that they had to meet. We are still behind the curve. We cannot claim that we are building world-class networks while we refuse to define a universal service obligation. This Bill provides a good opportunity for the Government to do so, and I look forward to hearing the Minister’s reasons why we should yet again kick the can down the road.

[Lord Empey (UUP)]

My Lords, I echo some of the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Adonis. However, my anxiety about this whole process is that for years, the Government have been talking about bringing fast, competitive broadband into the United Kingdom, yet we are still quite some distance behind our major competitors. Being forced to use our current virtual proceedings has revealed inconsistency in the quality of service throughout the UK. When watching some of our colleagues on Zoom or even on Microsoft Teams, it is obvious that the quality of the service varies dramatically from one part of the country to another. The noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, pointed out that time of day also has a major impact on the speed of the system.

As more people work from home during the current crisis, it is likely that some will continue to do so, and that might be a growing pattern. If we are to have a competitive economy operating in all parts of our United Kingdom, that is all the more reason to ensure that we have a service that is fit for purpose. Governments have come out with these statements time and again, but as is often the case with much of our fundamental infrastructure, particularly as it applies to industrial strategy, we are a day late and a dollar short. This is not a new phenomenon. I do not understand why, sometimes, this country comes up with fantastic inventions but we fail to exploit them. The Whittle jet engine was a fantastic invention, but other people really made money out of it. Someone from the UK devised the World Wide Web, and yet we all know that someone else is exploiting it and making money out of it. We seem to be unable to take an idea and convert it into a meaningful and effective industrial strategy, and sometimes that can be very depressing.

If we do not set a reasonable target and require Her Majesty’s Government to come back and test how effective it has been, in two or three years’ time we will end up making the same claims in the same speeches, and many of our competitors in other parts of the world will have moved on. The Minister and the Government have nothing to lose in setting a reasonable target on which they have to come back to us. After all, the Health Secretary said today in the other place that he is happy to have his efforts judged by the statistics people. Some measurement of progress has to be made and if it is not, we need more Executive action or, as the noble Lord, Lord Fox, has said, further and better legislation.

Telecommunications Infrastructure (Leasehold Property) Bill

Lord Empey Excerpts

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

[Lord Blencathra (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I can be reasonably brief since the key points have been very well made by the noble Lord, Lord Alton, my noble friend Lord Forsyth and others who have spoken in favour of the amendment. I hope noble Lords will not feel constrained to curtail their remarks, since we have only one other item of business tonight and nothing better or more important to do than this amendment. I strongly support its purpose: to stop companies complicit in the atrocities suffered by Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang province from gaining further access to our telecommunications infrastructure.

There is no doubt that Huawei works hand in glove with the People’s Liberation Army—indeed, it was founded by an officer of the PLA—and if anyone believes that Huawei could have grown to the size that it has without complying with every instruction of the communist regime, then please continue living on Mars. Huawei is a tool of the communist regime’s security forces. As has been said, it has boasted of working with the security bureau to build a safer society. Of course, what it means by “safer” is hundreds of thousands of Uighurs locked up in concentration camps, where they will be forcibly re-educated from believing in their God. This amendment would debar any companies from participating in our digital networks if they are involved in human rights abuses.

I also remind my noble friend the Minister and this Conservative Government of the 70-page authoritative report published in 2016, outlining countless human rights abuses in China. It has already been referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and my noble friend Lord Forsyth. As part of its conclusions, the report refers to

“the scope of human rights abuses in China and the Chinese Communist Party’s infiltration and expansion in the world reaching a level unprecedented since the Tiananmen Massacre in 1989.”

It goes on to say that perhaps the most noticeable development

“is how China has turned state-owned mass media into a quasi court to convict detained human rights defenders before they appear for trial.”

As my noble friend Lord Forsyth said, I understand that the Conservative Party Human Rights Commission is finalising a new report that will come to even more devastating conclusions about the appalling human rights abuses perpetrated by the communist regime.

Huawei is involved in human rights abuses with the Chinese Communist Party regime’s security services. Note that nearly all of us in this debate are not criticising the Chinese people; we are referring to the Chinese communist government regime. Thus, the amendment would debar Huawei in this country and I commend it to the House. If the Government do not accept it, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Alton, will push it to a vote. I am afraid that I will have to support him. I also hope that all those people active in the Twittersphere will mount a massive campaign to draw attention to every Huawei user that they are supporting slave labour by using its products. It is more important to tear down the edifices of current abuse, rather than ancient statues.

[Lord Empey (UUP) [V]]

My Lords, I am sure that my noble friend the Minister realises that, in proposing a Bill which I support in principle, she finds herself caught up in a vast argument about not only rights but the security implications of using a company that is hand in glove with the Government of China.

I am not anti-Chinese. I have great admiration for what they have done. I am aware of the privations that they suffered during World War II, for example. The current regime has got so powerful largely because we in the West exported our manufacturing capacity to China, but it now poses a threat to many of its neighbours. There are the situations on the border with India and in the South China Sea. It is creating island bases for its military. A whole range of things is happening.

What does that have to do with the Bill? I hear what the Minister says and I understand what she is trying to tell us. Yes, she legitimately raises issues, in particular about people’s ability to access broadband, which we all want. However, she also has to recognise that many of the complications she highlighted could be resolved if the Government brought forward their own amendment. The unusual actions to, in effect, try to close down the debate at such an early stage were unfortunate and are backfiring on the Government, because Members are angry about how this country seems to be ambivalent about how it handles its relationship with the Chinese Government, and not only on security issues.

It is not, however, only about China. Our electricity infrastructure is owned largely by the French Government. Lots of our transport infrastructure is owned by the German Government. Very soon, moreover, significant slices of our telecoms infrastructure will be owned by the Chinese Government. This country has to decide what it wants. The fact that this amendment is passing by Parliament at the moment is why so many of us feel that we have to send a signal.

With regard to scope, and whether things are appropriate in a particular Bill, I also draw my noble friend’s attention to the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation etc) Bill, which came before this House with virtually no proper parliamentary processes and dealt with very significant social issues—in a Bill that had nothing whatever to do with the subject matter before the House. The Government can, therefore, in many respects do what they want, and I say to my noble friend that the solution to this problem is for the Government to bring forward their own amendment. If I caught what she said correctly, however, she does not seem prepared to do that. She is prepared to meet the noble Lord, Lord Alton; that is good, but she is hoping to steer him and the House away from sending a signal.

The Chinese Government need to get the message that the patience of the West is not infinite and that there are circumstances in which we are ready to act. While this may seem a very minor issue in comparison with others, I believe that the significance of sending a signal is probably worth the downsides that she has pointed out. The Government themselves can resolve this at Third Reading. I would be very happy to take guidance from the noble Lord, Lord Alton, at the end of this debate. Should he call a Division, I will support him.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord McNicol of West Kilbride)]

Following the earlier intervention of the Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, and the noble Viscount, Lord Waverley, have withdrawn. I now call the noble Lord, Lord Hain.