National Security and Investment Bill (Eighth sitting)

Peter Grant Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 8th sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 3rd December 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Dr Whitehead]

The amendments relate to clauses 19 and 20. Amendment 20 might be regarded as slightly unusual, as it seeks to remove a number of sentences in the Bill: to be precise, lines 24 to 27 on page 12—it would remove clause 19(2), while amendment 21 would remove clause 20(2). The Minister might be saying to himself that Oppositions usually try to restrict Ministers’ powers, yet here we are trying to extend their powers through these amendments. I want to explain why we think that is important.

We want to hear from the Minister why he thinks those particular paragraphs should remain in the Bill, and how the restriction that they place on the Secretary of State’s activity is advantageous to the Bill’s main purpose. The paragraphs that the amendments would take out relate to the power to require information and the power to require the attendance of witnesses and seek evidence. I am sure that hon. Members can read clause 19 for themselves, but I will point out the key part:

“The Secretary of State is not to require the provision of information under this section except where the requirement to provide information is proportionate to the use to which the information is to be put in the carrying out of the Secretary of State’s functions under this Act.”

That is to say that unless it can be, or is, established that the requirement to provide information is proportionate to what the Secretary of State wants to do under the Act, the Secretary of State is not able to require the provision of information. That is effectively what the clause states.

We have already heard during evidence to the Committee that there may well be a complex web when it comes to getting information and working out what is and is not relevant, particularly if a hostile power or body is seeking to take over a company or gain access to its information and IP. The information may well not consist of what it appears to consist of, or there may be a number of paths by which that information can be obtained.

From our expert witnesses we heard some interesting examples of things they thought looked rather far from the central activity of information provision. For example, on academic projects, in his expert evidence, Charlie Parton from the Royal United Services Institute told us:

“It is quite difficult to distinguish some of these and to know about them all, but a few weeks ago The Daily Telegraph did a story on, I think, Oxford University and Huawei’s commissioning of research. I think there were 17 projects. I looked at those, and I am not a technologist by any means, but some of them rang certain alarm bells.”––[Official Report, National Security and Investment Public Bill Committee, 24 November 2020; c. 6.]

He was suggesting that, of a number of those postgraduate and PhD projects, there were some that he might have put a question mark against and others not, but he was not sure which were which. Nevertheless he seemed to think that some of those research projects—although they were cited within the ordinary parameters of whatever the research project might be, and who might be collaborating with whom, and who might get what information out of that—might ring alarm bells. That was in terms of who was collaborating, how the information might be used and where it might be going.

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

I think I understand what the amendment is intended to achieve, but is not the hon. Gentleman concerned about the danger of almost explicitly building in a recognition that the powers in the Bill do not have to be used proportionately?

[Dr Whitehead]

The hon. Gentleman raises an important point. I will come to the word “proportionate” in a moment, because that is an important part of this clause. I hope I can satisfy him about my concerns about the word “proportionate”. He may want to come back when we have that discussion.

We heard from Sir Richard Dearlove, who said that,

“the Chinese are highly organised and strategic in their attitude towards the West and towards us. For example, some of the thousands of Chinese students who are being educated in Western universities, particularly in the UK and the United States, are unquestionably organised and targeted in terms of subjects”.––[Official Report, National Security and Investment Public Bill Committee, 24 November 2020; c. 19.]

Before we go any further, perhaps I should say that I have nothing against Chinese students coming to the UK. On the contrary, I think that in general, Chinese students in UK universities is a very positive thing, and spreads a very good element of international learning into the process. I also think we might be reasonably confident that those Chinese students are getting as much from us, in terms of our way of life and our way of organising things, as we are from them. I do not think Sir Richard Dearlove’s point was partial towards Chinese students, but he made the point that he thought that some of those students may have targeted, or have been targeted towards, particular subjects and areas in the UK and the United States. Again, that is extremely difficult to find out and go forward on.

I am citing those particular expert witnesses in the context of this area of information, particularly concerning somebody—a company, an organisation, or indeed a state actor—that has hostile, malevolent intent towards the information that they have. It is not very likely that they will simply present that information in a ring binder with coloured markers, specifying where the various bits are; it is a very different process indeed. The clause therefore appears to very much limit the extent to which the requirement to provide information can be carried out, and it does so by requiring the provision of information to be proportionate to the use to which the information is to be put.

The word “proportionate” is very important here, and is potentially a real problem in terms of ensuring that the search for information that may be necessary by diverse means can be carried out properly. On the surface, looking at the ordinary language, one might say that the use of the word “proportionate” is a thoroughly good idea. If we apply the ordinary language test—what is the opposite of proportionate?—the opposite would be unproportionate; we would not want the Secretary of State to go about this in an unproportionate way. However, in legal terms, the word “proportionate” has rather a different context,

Proportionality as a legal term is a relative newcomer to the legal lexicon. It entered the legal arena—I am not saying that it had not been used before, but it was put forward as a concept around which a lot of other matters might turn—with the civil litigation reforms introduced in April 2013, known as the Jackson reforms. They covered the concept of proportionality in legal terms as it relates to costs in legal cases, but the question of proportionality was discussed in a wider context. The concept of proportionality, which had not been a particular issue in legal matters before, stuck itself firmly into the legal lexicon. Since then, there have been a number of debates about whether ways of apportioning legal costs were proportionate, even if they might otherwise be seen as reasonable.

Up until that point, the guidance on the issue of proportionality came from Lord Woolf in the Court of Appeal in—I am sure hon. Members will remember the case well—Lownds v. Home Office, where he concluded that if the legal steps that had been taken had been reasonable and necessary, the other party could not object to the cost of these steps on the grounds of proportionality. The test of reasonability and necessity overrode the question of the grounds of proportionality.

That is what changed in 2013 with the civil litigation reforms. An interesting commentary was made in an article published on 12 March 2014 in The Law Society Gazette, entitled “Proportionality and legal costs”—I am saying all this because I am not sure I will get the article to Hansard easily.

The author had this to say about the meaning of proportionality:

“However, the meaning of proportionality is not straightforward and the new rules do not provide clear guidance on how proportionality should be applied. The suggestion seems to be that a body of law will develop on a case-by-case basis until gradually the meaning will become clear. Until that happens, litigants, legal advisers and judges will have to guess at what costs will be considered proportionate in particular circumstances.”

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[Dr Whitehead]

Yes, it is. Only one Member has left the room, so we are still in good order.

[Peter Grant]

I fear that the hon. Gentleman is taking the definition of proportionality into a context very different from what is mentioned here in the Bill, because this is not about whether the costs of civil proceedings are justified by the likely outcome, or even how those costs should be divided among the parties.

My reading is that subsection (2) is there to prevent a future Secretary of State—obviously, no one in the present Government would ever do this—from imposing extremely onerous requirements on a business, when it was perfectly possible for the Secretary of State to do due diligence and do the checks he needed to do without that information’s being provided.

I have not heard anything from the hon. Gentleman that would explain why he wants that protection to be taken out. He has said a lot about Chinese students, who may or may not collectively be working against our national interest, but this clause does not protect against that. What does the hon. Gentleman have against the idea that the Secretary of State is not allowed to put unreasonable and onerous demands on businesses when there is no clear benefit to national security of those demands’ being made?

[Dr Whitehead]

I hope that the hon. Gentleman will bear with me a few moments longer. Having unpacked “proportionality” in legal rather than colloquial terms, I want to put it back into the clause and see how it works, as far as the concerns of the Secretary of State go.

Indeed, the hon. Member for Glenrothes has questioned what we want to do on this clause in terms of the colloquial understanding of “proportionality”. I have mentioned how “proportionality” has come into the legal arena, specifically in terms of costs. Nevertheless, “proportionality” is now loose in the legal arena, so there is an interesting area of debate about it in general in the legal arena. That is not necessarily solely attached to the question of costs and civil litigation.

The problem is that there is virtually nothing to define that wider issue of proportionality in case law at the moment. Placing that word back into this particular clause suggests to us that the Secretary of State is restricted considerably on how that information may be gathered. The hon. Member for Glenrothes talked about research projects and various other things listed to us by our expert witnesses. I emphasise that I do not want to undermine those research projects or the presence of Chinese students. All I want to underline from that is that, on occasions, the process of getting hold of information and requiring people to give evidence can be convoluted. Indeed, it may require seeking information by going down paths that are not immediately apparent. As I say, it is not a question of someone turning up with a ring binder of things that can be perused.

In this clause, it appears that the Secretary of State may well have denied him or herself the ability to get hold of information, because it states that it has to be

“proportionate to the use to which the information is to be put in the carrying out of the Secretary of State’s functions under this Act.”

But he or she will not know about that information until it has been obtained. If there are difficulties in getting hold of the information, he or she will never know whether it is useful for carrying out his or her functions, because there is already a limit on getting the information in the first place.

I have brought the rather wobbly legal status of proportionality into the debate because it is potentially actionable through an obfuscation or refusal to put information forward by those actors. An actor who was required to give information could say, “It appears to me, your honour, that this request for information is not proportionate.” Of course, the Secretary of State may have a different point of view about what is proportionate from the person who is required to give the information.

There is also a vagueness in the application of the term “proportionate”. Although we think we know what it means in common language, that is not the case in the courts. That could be an additional issue that affects the Secretary of State’s ability to get the required information to make a judgment, over and above the fact that he or she may not know that until the information has been collected. So there are two procedural problems in the clause.

The hon. Member for Glenrothes said to me, to put it bluntly, “What exactly are you driving at? Perhaps it is not a good idea to appear to enable the Secretary of State to act disproportionately.” Of course, that is not what we are saying. We know that the Bill is more or less a giant amendment to the Enterprise Act 2002. Indeed, if hon. Members look at the back of the Bill, they will see that that is the only Act amended by it. Several amendments are made to the 2002 Act, but that is it—it is still sited within that Act. That Act was drawn up before the civil litigation changes to proportionality were put in place. The test set out in that Act, which is not amended by the Bill, is one of reasonableness, which is well understood, widely commented on and pretty clear.

If hon. Members consult the 2002 Act, they will see in clause 55 that the Secretary of State, in terms of enforcement, shall take such action

“as he considers to be reasonable and practicable to remedy”.

Therefore, we are not saying that the Secretary of State by acting disproportionately should act unreasonably. We are suggesting that the test that should be carried out is one of reasonableness, and should be in this particular clause. As the Enterprise Act already does, that would indeed prevent the Secretary of State going on fishing expeditions and undertaking actions that are wholly disproportionate because they would be unreasonable in terms of the definition of the Act. Our suggestion is to stick by that definition, which would be good enough to restrict the Secretary of State under the different circumstance that we are in today, in terms of seeking information. At the same time, it would give the Secretary of State the ability to take a path—I have said it is often a convoluted one—to obtain information that can be judged and used for the purpose of this Bill. I hope that the Minister will be favourably inclined towards that slight, but constrained, addition to his powers under this legislation.

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[Nadhim Zahawi]

The clause provides the Secretary of State with the power to require the attendance of witnesses.

The Government are acutely aware that many of the acquisitions considered by this regime will be complex and highly technical. In addition to clause 19, which enables the Secretary of State to require the provision of information, most likely in written form, this clause enables the Secretary of State to require the giving of evidence. A notice requiring a person to attend under this clause is called an “attendance notice”. The clause is complementary to clause 19, discussed previously, as it provides, for example, for the Secretary of State to be able to receive expert explanation, in person, from those involved in a trigger event, where the information previously provided does not provide sufficient clarity.

In responding to an attendance notice and providing evidence, a person is not required to give any evidence that they could not be compelled to give in civil proceedings before the court. That protects privileged information. In addition, the Secretary of State will only be able to request information through an attendance notice that is proportionate in assisting him in carrying out his functions under the regime.

We envisage a range of scenarios where the Secretary of State may require the attendance of a witness in order to gather further evidence to make an informed decision on the case. I will provide a few to illustrate. First, I expect that a number of cases will involve complex acquisitions, either because of the advanced nature of the technology in question, or due to their financial structuring. In those cases, the Secretary of State may require those who hold expert knowledge to provide him with an explanation. There may also be cases where it seems that parties are being deliberately non-compliant, or only partly compliant with information-gathering requests. I expect those to be rare but, again, it is only right that the Secretary of State has the power to require the attendance of those parties to provide further information.

The attendance of witnesses may also be a more efficient way to secure additional information in some circumstances, and limit the risk that further time will be needed to consider additional information. There will be criminal and civil sanctions available to punish non-compliance with the notices and the provision of false or misleading information. The attendance notice is provided under threat of such sanction as it is important that the Secretary of State receives the information he needs and can count on to come to a decision.

[Peter Grant]

A brief question: is it the Government’s intention to allow for witnesses to attend virtually, if it is unreasonable for them to attend physically at the Department, or the Minister’s office?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I suspect that the Government will accommodate whichever way is secure and provides the evidence.

I am sure that hon. Members will agree that the clause is crucial in allowing the Secretary of State to consider the fullest range of information in order to make informed decisions under this regime.

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[Nadhim Zahawi]

Clause 21 makes provision in respect of the persons on whom the Secretary of State may serve an information notice or an attendance notice outside the United Kingdom. The clause applies in relation to the two earlier clauses. Clause 19 provides the power for the Secretary of State to obtain information either before or after the call-in power is exercised. Clause 20 gives the Secretary of State the power to require the attendance of witnesses to assist him in carrying out his function under the Bill.

Those outside the United Kingdom to whom an information notice or attendance notice may be given are clearly set out in clause 21, which is technical in nature. The purpose is to ensure that certain categories of persons with a connection to the United Kingdom are caught by the information-gathering powers, even if they are outside the UK. These categories of persons are UK nationals, individuals ordinarily resident in the UK, bodies such as companies incorporated or constituted in the UK, and persons carrying on business in the UK. Perhaps more importantly, notices may also be served on persons outside the UK who have acquired, or who are in the process of or are contemplating acquiring, qualifying UK entities or qualifying assets that are either located in the UK or otherwise connected to the UK. In practice, this means that notices may be served on most parties from whom the Secretary of State may wish to require information or evidence.

[Peter Grant]

I certainly would not seek to oppose this clause, but will the Minister go into a bit more detail about how it works in practice? What if a notice is served on somebody who is not in the United Kingdom, who is not a UK citizen or UK national, who has never set foot in the United Kingdom and quite possibly never intends to, as might happen if a big multinational is seeking to acquire a business intertest in the United Kingdom? Is the intention to create an offence that can be committed by somebody with otherwise no connection with the United Kingdom under UK law? That would mean that the person had committed the offence in a different sovereign territory, not even by something they did, but by something they did not do—not responding to a notice and not attending when required.

I understand why the requirement has to apply to everybody, and I understand that there is no point in serving a statutory notice if there are no consequences to refusing to comply with it; I am just not sure about the practicalities. Has the Minister considered alternative sanctions in those circumstances? For example, the person could be disqualified from being a director or a shareholder in significant UK undertakings. That would potentially have the same effect.

It seems to me that, generally speaking, we would create a criminal offence for the conduct of somebody in a different sovereign territory only in specific circumstances. If somebody is serving with the UK armed forces, for example, they might be covered by UK law even when they are serving abroad. The other circumstance is if the crimes are so heinous as to be regarded as crimes against international law—crimes against humanity and war crimes, for example. I understand that the Education Secretary thinks that Britain is just the best country in the word and nobody else can touch us, but I doubt even he would think that failing to respond to a notice from the UK Secretary of State constitutes a crime against international law.

Is the Minister concerned about setting a precedent whereby we attempt to apply domestic law to the actions or non-actions of people who, in normal circumstances, are covered by the laws of the country they are in and not the criminal law of the United Kingdom? Given that this might create a difficult precedent, is he satisfied that the Government have looked at every possible alternative sanction? This could create a precedent, and other countries could start legislating to say that what UK citizens do in the United Kingdom is contrary to their laws, which would therefore make any of us subject to arrest and prosecution by the authorities of another country. I am a bit concerned about the reaction that might be provoked from Governments elsewhere if we get this part wrong.

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I think the hon. Gentleman is referring to parties that are abroad and have a business in the UK—what if notice is served on them and they are non-compliant? Obviously, under UK law that would be a problem for them. I certainly think that, if an information notice is served, the timeline for the Secretary of State’s assessment of a trigger event is paused until the information is provided from the individual in whatever jurisdiction they or the entity happen to be at the end of the time period provided for compliance in the information notice.

If a party does not comply during the assessment process, that may lead to more onerous and stricter remedies being imposed by the Secretary of State than would otherwise be the case, including the acquisition being blocked or unwound where appropriate. It will therefore plainly be in the interest of those involved directly in the trigger event to provide information in a timely manner to the Secretary of State in order that a speedy decision can be taken. That is where the leverage lies.

[Peter Grant]

I am grateful to the Minister for that clarification. As I say, I fully understand what the Government are attempting to achieve. I would expect that, in those circumstances, the Minister would block the acquisition if there was a serious failure to comply by anybody who was in practice beyond the reach of UK criminal prosecution. I would certainly hope that in those circumstances the Secretary of State would use the other powers to ensure that they could not become a controlling influence on any strategically important UK undertaking.

As I said, I do not want to divide the Committee. I did not even feel it was appropriate to table an amendment, partly because I could not think of a way of amending it that would make it any better. Having made those points, I am grateful for the Minister’s clarification, and we will leave it to future Secretaries of State to implement it as best they can.

[Matt Western]

I will pick up on one issue, which concerns subsection (3)(a). I would like some clarification from the Minister. I am trying to get my head around what is meant by

“a qualifying entity which is formed or recognised”.

Could he give an illustration of what is meant by “recognised”? I assume that this is about some takeover, merger or acquisition. Could it be some sort of shell company or some other form? Perhaps the Minister could clarify what is meant by recognition under the law.