Telecommunications Infrastructure (Leasehold Property) Bill

Lord McNicol of West Kilbride Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 19th May 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

My Lords, in moving this amendment I will also speak to Amendment 9 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, which covers much of the same ground.

In the Future Telecoms Infrastructure Review, the Government said:

“We do not think it is acceptable for landlords to be able to deny their tenants a service if an operator is prepared to provide it. We want to bring telecoms operators in line with the gas, energy and water sectors by providing a ‘right to entry’, where a landlord is given notification of an operator’s intention to access a property”.


We are entitled to ask the Minister to explain what happened. Why has the Bill failed to live up to the very sensible remarks made in the review and some of the comments that have been made this afternoon?

Other noble Lords have mentioned the impact of Covid-19 and how it has radically changed the position regarding a gigabit-capable infrastructure. We have just been talking about whether that should become the USO position, which I would support. However, access to home schooling, home working and home shopping are now as important as clean water and energy. Why perpetuate the myth that gigabit-capable access is in some sense discretionary? No individual and no family should be left behind.

Secondly, operators are part of the solution and certainly not the problem, in terms of where we are trying to reach. The discussion about Openreach and the desire of operators to co-operate if the circumstances arise are all part of this issue; to achieve what we want we must support operators in the limited time we have left. If they are in an area installing fibre and have the personnel and equipment there, it must be more cost-effective for them, beneficial for all and in the public interest for all premises in that area to be dealt with.

This amendment would not remove any control from owners of properties, but it would open up the whole process. It seems from the comments we have already heard that there is support for the amendment. We need an operator to be able independently to initiate the process, so that those who want this service can get it. I cannot see that this is, in any sense, against the public interest. I beg to move.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord McNicol of West Kilbride) (Lab)]

I call the noble Lord, Lord Adonis.

[Lord Adonis]

I do not intend to speak on this amendment.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees]

The noble Lord, Lord Fox, is listed to speak, but I understand that he does not wish to contribute at this stage. Lord Liddle?

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[Baroness Barran]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lords for tabling these amendments, which would allow telecommunications operators to apply to the courts for a Part 4A order without requiring a “lessee in occupation” in the property making a request for a service. I appreciate the intention behind the amendments, but we are concerned that both have the potential to undermine the balance between the rights of the landowner, the rights of the operator and the public interest.

The noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, referred to our comments in the Future Telecoms Infrastructure Review but we then consulted publicly on the policy in this Bill. What is here in the Bill reflects the outcome of that consultation. The Bill, like the rest of the Electronic Communications Code, was designed to create a fair and balanced framework to underpin the relationships between telecoms operators and landowners. We believe that it works because it is balanced and gives the interests of all sides careful consideration. We believe the Bill continues that balance. Where a landowner is unresponsive, for whatever reason, it is important to ensure that an interest other than that of the operator is being considered by granting an order which potentially impinges on an individual’s property rights.

This is the reason for the requirement that the lessee in occupation of the property actively requests that a telecommunications service be delivered. This is integral to the policy. This request is an unequivocal demonstration that the interests of parties other than the operator alone are reflected and goes to the heart of the Bill’s carefully crafted work, taking into account and balancing the respective interests of tenants, landowners and operators. Some network operators may well welcome the freedom of being able to judge for themselves what is and is not in the public interest and the ability to gain access to a property simply by proposing to make a service available. That freedom is what these amendments would give them. However, I hope noble Lords will agree that without any accompanying constraint on such a freedom, such a system could be capable of being abused, and that is a risk the Government are not willing to accept.

I am also mindful that these amendments would mark a significant shift from the policy that was consulted on, and that is something to be particularly cautious of when dealing with issues around property rights. With that in mind, I beg the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees]

No other noble Lords wish to intervene on this amendment.

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

This is a very interesting argument, which I do not really understand. It has come up on previous amendments and we need to bottom it out before we get to the end of today’s debates. As a precursor to what I am about to say, I do not think we would be having these discussions were it not for two things. First, memories are very short. One reason that we have Openreach is the increasing frustration that we felt over the years—not just us but the Government—at the inability of BT, a slow-moving giant, to respond to the needs of the country in developing gigabit-capable broadband. Indeed, in those days we were talking about simply getting to a USO figure of 10 megabits per second. That was the rationale for forcing BT, which did not wish to do it, to split off Openreach. It may well be that that is a continuing story and we will have more to go on. The idea was that Openreach would be faster and less constrained by the bureaucracy of BT and the problems affecting it, and able to satisfy the need to get our country up to the standards we wanted. That was the moving force.

It has been mentioned but it is important to bear in mind that last year we were at the bottom of the 80 or countries that contributed to an overall survey about how fast broadband was being been brought into countries. The good news is that we are no longer bottom; we are now third from bottom with 2.8% coverage. The top countries—Iceland, Belarus and Sweden—have more than 60% coverage of fibre to the home and the EU 28 average is 17.1%. We are miles away from getting anywhere near completing this in the time allotted. I do not get the idea that somehow we have to be balanced and fair and that there is a public interest in making sure that the rights of all concerned are equally balanced. The public interest is in getting fast broadband to as many people as possible as quickly as possible.

We will do that by making sure that the process is more like utility provision than a discretionary arrangement for getting something as a result of choice. The idea that somehow bringing operators to the point where they see that it makes good economic sense to implement a process in an area they happen to be working in is somehow unbalancing the public interest is just bonkers. It is in the public interest if we increase the quality of connections available to people to connect to the fast internet if they wish to do so, and it is not taking any rights away from owners. The whole point is that this is a process that has started; it is not a decision to go ahead. The process allows people to petition the courts or others to make sure that they can get access when they wish to do so. It is not about giving away any rights. I hope the Minister will take those points away and think about them. I am certain we will want to come back to this on Report. In the interim, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

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[The Deputy Chairman of Committees]

We now come to the group beginning with Amendment 9. I remind noble Lords that anyone wishing to speak after the Minister should email the clerk during the debate. It would be helpful if anyone intending to say “not content” if the question is put made that clear in the debate. It takes unanimity to amend the Bill in this Committee. This Committee cannot divide.

Amendment 9

Moved by