Enterprise Act 2002 (Specification of Additional Section 58 Consideration) Order 2020

Lord Reid of Cardowan Excerpts

Wednesday 15th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Reid of Cardowan (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, there is obviously a heavy element here of trying to close the stable door after the horse has bolted. Indeed, both horses have bolted: the Covid pandemic and the cybersecurity issue. But the problem is that even now the stable door has not yet been closed effectively. The new grounds on which the Secretary of State might intervene in mergers are short-term measures until more fundamental reform is taken forward through the National Security and Investment Bill, as the Minister said. But we do not know what is going to be in that Bill, so it is very difficult to judge these changes. As the SL committee says, the House will be able to scrutinise the issue properly only when the Bill is being considered. Incidentally, the committee also asked the department to give a timetable for the introduction of the Bill without delay. The Minister missed that point, and I am not aware that any such timetable has been provided or published.

Secondly, if the Bill that is to come before us is based on the 2018 White Paper, this raises a number of other issues of concern. Are these proposed measures really temporary or are they permanent? Will the Bill unwind these and other recent changes to jurisdictional thresholds made in 2018? Will the new regime be mandatory or, as the White Paper suggested, based on a voluntary notification system? Will there be a turnover or market share threshold applied? I regret that none of these questions has really been answered today. I would very much like to welcome these measures, but I think that the House has been left in a very unsatisfactory position.