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

Richard Graham Excerpts

Wednesday 8th July 2020 General Committees

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

The Minister has laid out the case for why there needs to be a public interest addition to section 58 of the Enterprise Act 2002, and he mentioned the context: of the 20 interventions so far, none has been carried out.

None the less, the impact of this change is in the direction of growing protectionism. We are seeing that trend across the world, and it can only have a negative impact on inward, and indeed outward, investment. Will the Minister tell us the extent to which some of the partners with whom we are trying to do free trade agreements have similar provisions in place—in other words, specific considerations of public health emergencies added to their public interest constraints on buying companies? To what extent does he believe that that trend is going to grow?

In an earlier statement, the Minister said:

“It is difficult to imagine that the need to maintain critical UK public health and crisis mitigation capabilities will become less important over time.”

That implies that there will be more intervention, rather than less. It would be valuable if we were all clear about the direction of travel, given that this party of Government believes strongly in creating a global Britain that allows our businesses to go overseas and, if need be, to buy companies to help expand British interests overseas. As the Minister said, we benefit hugely from inward investment.

[The Chair]

We get a double portion of the Minister.