Telecommunications Infrastructure (Leasehold Property) Bill

Lord Fox Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments & Lords Hansard
Thursday 4th March 2021 Lords Chamber

I hope that your Lordships will be reassured by the recent publication of the consultation considering potential reforms to the Electronic Communications Code. We remain very much open to ideas from the industry and landowners on how the Government can better support rollout, and we will take legislative action if the evidence demonstrates a need to do so. I therefore beg to move that this House disagrees with Amendment 3.

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her thorough review of both the amendments, and of the scene.

The Bill seems to have been around almost as long as the Covid pandemic. I am almost minded to call it the “lockdown Bill”, because it surfaced from time to time and then disappeared from time to time. Looking forward, I hope that future Bills which may or may not emerge from consultations will perhaps have a rather more impelling momentum than this one, which seems to have been rather caught in the backwash of legislation.

It has been a Bill of essentially two debates. One was the huge concern that your Lordships demonstrated about the nature of the digital communications supply chain; the Minister may be pleased to know that I will not go back into that. The other debate—the Minister may not agree—has exposed the paucity of ambition in the Bill and, therefore, by extension, in Her Majesty’s Government. On the Minister’s own admission, it is a narrow Bill; I would say it is just about as narrow as the Government’s USO, which I remind your Lordships is just 10 megabits a second. Both the Government and the industry should be seeking to increase that.

When it comes to the digital communications supply chain, there is one thing that I should like to talk about. Much work is to be done in the sector as it comes to terms with the future absence of Huawei. Since we last considered the Bill, some of us have received letters from the Minister setting out plans for supply chain diversity. I hope that that letter is in the Library; if not, it would be appreciated if the Minister made sure that it was. Government support for the NEC open RAN trial is good and we welcome that. I remind the Minister that the Government’s stated aim is to have 5G open RAN up and running this year. It would therefore be helpful if the Minister were able in her closing words to let us know whether that is on track. I should point out in referring to the technical consultation being due in the spring that the first day of spring was Monday, so we are, as it were, already sprung.

I turn to the items on the Marshalled List. When addressing the amendment on leasehold status in the Commons, the Minister of State Matt Warman MP recognised the plight of people living in flats and apartments, which was welcome. He and the Minister enumerated about 10 million people as potentially benefiting from being able to seek better broadband in their homes. That point was thoroughly made by my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones. The purpose of his amendment on Report was to clarify, as the Minister said, that people who rent their flat can make use of the changes in the Bill. It is gratifying that the Government have retained the spirit of that Amendment 1 in offering Amendments 1A and 1B instead. I am sure that my noble friend will have more to say on that.

Turning to Lords Amendment 3, the Government’s response is not supportive and that is disappointing. That amendment would have added a new clause requiring the Secretary of State to commission a review of the impact of the Bill on the Electronic Communications Code. It seems to me that in her rebuttal of that amendment the Minister enumerated the considerable weaknesses of the code and set out some areas of concern. Amendment 3 would have included an assessment of whether the code was sufficient to support 1 gigabit broadband rollout in every premises by 2025. In her rebuttal, she said that the code was not competent to do that. Given that so much weight has been put, not least by the Government, on that target, that would seem to be a serious issue. As the Minister set out, it would have required separate assessments to be made, as well as addressing the issue around utilities—that was well rehearsed on Report and I do not propose to do so again.

However, I am tempted to ask what the Government are scared of in terms of allowing that review to happen. They seem to be nervous about their ability to deliver on that 1 gigabit target. It was therefore not surprising that Matt Warman MP would politely denounce that amendment, as the Minister has done today. Both focused on the assertion that elements of the amendment fall outside the scope of the Bill. It is not beyond understanding that if that were the case the Government could have come back with an amendment that retained or created a review but also satisfied the need for the amendment to sit inside the Bill. Once again, we have fallen foul of the narrowness of the Bill.

It is partly surprising and perhaps gratifying that the Government have realised how narrow the Bill is, and it was almost remarkable that before the ink was dry on it, the next consultation came fluttering through the letterbox. Perhaps the Minister has, in a sense, already confirmed the recognition that the Bill was insufficient in the first place. It has taken us a long time for us to get not very far and now we have to start again.

On many occasions, the Minister has reminded us that the code is technology-neutral. I think we know and understand that. Therefore, the review has to grasp that within the context of how the code in future deals with the key issue: are people getting the connectivity they need, can we measure it, and can we make it quicker and better as well as cheaper? I hope that that goes beyond simply talking about access to land and that kind of issue. Let us get through this consultation as quickly and thoroughly as we can. Let us get another Bill so that we can create a code that does what it needs to do and is fit for purpose because, let us face it, the Government have an interest in delivering the gigabit target from their manifesto but the country has much higher stakes in this. We need it as soon as possible.