Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure Bill — House of Lords, 2022-06-29
Topic: Technology
Edward Vaizey (Independent, Unknown): My Lords, a cup of tea lies gently cooling in the tea room, unpaid for as I sprinted to move my amendment—and failed to arrive in time. It would never do for me to blame the Liberal Democrats for the mess that I find myself in; I take entire responsibility for not following with due care the moving of the Statement on the Metropolitan Police. Although the finely crafted Amendments 17A and 17B will not be debated, I have the chance to address at least some of the issues they raise in my response to my noble friend Lady Harding’s excellent exposition of Amendment 18 We are talking about the ability to upgrade telecoms infrastructure. It is worth taking a step back to think about what the Bill is about in its focus on telecoms infrastructure and reform of the Electronic Communications Code. As I pointed out at Second Reading, when I was a Minister I had the opportunity to change the Electronic Communications Code, and I freely admit that I did so after extensive representations from infrastructure providers of all kinds who made the point that the rents that they were being charged by landowners, both in the countryside and on buildings, were extremely high and were affecting their ability to invest in infrastructure. The time had come to redress the balance so that the rents charged were proportionate to the investment being made in infrastructure. However, in the Bill we are trying to revise it further so that the infrastructure can be upgraded much more easily. We find ourselves in a slightly invidious position where, every time a telecoms provider wants to upgrade the existing infrastructure, in theory it has to start all over again on how it negotiates the rents Amendment 18, and, had they been moved, Amendments 17A and 17B, address essentially the same issue, which is existing infrastructure and the ability to upgrade it with as little fuss as possible. All of us in this House know that telecoms infrastructure is constantly being modernised and changed. Indeed, sometimes political issues come into play: for example, the decision to remove Huawei from our telecoms infrastructure will require a great deal of changes to existing infrastructure It is quite clear that all the infrastructure providers and indeed the Government support some kind of amendment that will allow infrastructure providers to upgrade infrastructure on telegraph poles. That is without dispute. The question we face is whether we can craft a suitable amendment that balances the rights of landowners and infrastructure providers to allow that to happen as smoothly as possible. What I find strange is the fact that multi-dwelling units do not attract the same support. However, I think I understand why telegraph poles are uncontroversial and multi-dwelling units controversial. That is because of a perceived monopoly of Openreach in multi-dwelling units but not telegraph poles. As my noble friend pointed out, telegraph poles fall under the public interest infrastructure access regulations, which means that a telegraph pole that is, as it were, owned by Openreach but on somebody’s land can still be accessed by a competitor, whereas a multi-dwelling unit cannot be accessed where Openreach has its infrastructure I ask the Minister again to take a step back and think about the purpose of the Bill and what he and his colleagues are trying to achieve in terms of the £5 billion subsidy to support the upgrading of infrastructure to full fibre, particularly in rural areas. As I said on Second Reading, this is all about planning, not about technology. It is trying to remove as far as possible all the obstacles that exist when it comes to planning. The Minister must ask himself: what is the reality on the ground? It is that Openreach is indeed present in many premises where its competitors are not. There are something like 1.5 million multi-dwelling units in this country that are at risk of not being upgraded because people cannot get access. Openreach tells me that there are something like 620,000 flats to which it has not been able to gain access and 165,000 flats where it has had no response from landlords at all for six months. Those flats will be left out if we do not consider the position of multi-dwelling units. That is not the subject of this amendment but I posit that it is exactly a parallel case.