Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure Bill — House of Lords, 2022-06-29
Topic: Mixed Topics
Christopher Fox (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, while we were debating the previous group, the Government seemed to be getting ready to embrace an influx of court cases by going from two judges to 100. The intention of the large number of amendments here is to avoid that eventuality. If the Government Front Bench is not happy with the words, it should be happy with the spirit of driving the alternative dispute resolution process. It would be good to have some acknowledgement from the Government, when we get to their response, that this ADR process will be central to avoiding the sort of things we were talking about in the previous group Amendment 39 is intended to force operators to give greater weight to Ofcom’s code of practice, which it is currently obliged to prepare under paragraph 103(1) of the ECC. Amendments 40, 41 and 42 aim to address non-compliance with Ofcom’s code of practice, and Amendment 44 deals with building safety. That could have been separated out into another group. I will speak specifically just to Amendments 42 and 44, because they are in my name Amendment 42 requires that Ofcom include in its code of practice guidelines on when operators must pay compensation to those affected by the operator’s failure to adhere to the code of practice. This compensation is limited to 100% of the total value of the contract to which the dispute relates. We do not expect that this would be the standard award and we have intentionally left it to Ofcom to draft guidelines on this issue. In fact, as my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones set out, Amendments 40, 41 and 42 work together with the aim of promoting consensus-based agreements, and to have a market that works effectively and is not stuffed up with disputes—which comes back to my first point In a gear change, Amendment 44 focuses on building safety, raised by the noble Earl opposite in the context of a previous group. The amendment would place a duty on network providers to ensure that any work done on communications infrastructure does not compromise building safety. Specifically, we are concerned about the interaction of digital infrastructure installation with the findings of the Hackitt report into building regulations and fire safety, which followed the dreadful Grenfell Tower tragedy As the Minister will be aware, in her report on the Grenfell disaster Dame Judith Hackitt recommends that the "creation, maintenance and handover of relevant information" should be "an integral part of the legal responsibilities on Clients, Principal Designers and Principal Contractors undertaking … work on" high-rise residential blocks. This matters because when a telecoms operator runs internal cabling in blocks, each hole is potentially a breach of a firewall. It seems to us that installation of gigabit-capable cabling is one of the most likely modifications a multi-residence high-rise block could face, and operators need to be obligated to meet safety requirements. If the Bill remains in its current form, digital contractors will have access rights that exceed those of the blue-light services, so where do they sit regarding their obligations to the Building Safety Act and in fulfilling the aims of the Hackitt report The purpose of Amendment 44 is to probe where telecoms and broadband contractors sit in the new environment of the Building Safety Act. I understand that, as a consequence of that Act, statutory instruments would be brought forward to compel certain actions from utilities contractors. My understanding is that the Government do not regard digital infrastructure as a pure-play utility function. Therefore, will there be a statutory instrument specifically to target digital infrastructure? In responding to this, the Minister may want to explain what statutory instruments are expected, with reference to which bits of which Act.