Oral Answers to Questions

Chi Onwurah Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Amanda Solloway]

As I have previously mentioned, the discussions around this are ongoing and the funding will be announced in due course. I would like to point out to the hon. Lady that we have an ambition to be a science superpower and, in fact, we have committed £22 billion by 2024-25.

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab) [V]]

Everyone who has had a coronavirus vaccine knows of the deep sense of gratitude to scientists. In facing the challenge of climate change, future pandemics and technological change, we look to science. At the general election, the Prime Minister promised to double science spend. Instead, we appear to have a £1 billion cut to the science budget plus a £120 million cut to our overseas development science as part of a “new settlement” that protects

“the most effective research programmes.”

Can the Minister say which programmes will be cut, which scientists will lose their grants, and which institutions will close? The Government who clap the NHS but impose a real-terms pay cut now plan to praise science and cut scientists.

[Amanda Solloway]

BEIS regularly has talks with Her Majesty’s Treasury on these issues. Let me reiterate that we plan to be a science superpower by 2024-25, with a £22 billion investment. We also have a Second Reading debate today on a high-risk, high-reward agency. Furthermore, in terms of the spending review, more than £40 billion across Government was spent on science.

Research and Development Funding

Chi Onwurah Excerpts

Wednesday 17th March 2021 Westminster Hall

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab) [V]]

It is a real pleasure to serve under your chairship for the first time, Mr Dowd. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner), who called today’s important debate. He is a passionate champion of science and his constituency’s science strengths. In his excellent opening remarks, he set out today’s R&D landscape, and where the Government must do better. Indeed, there has been cross-party agreement in the debate about the importance of research funding. It is unfortunate that the Government do not build on that consensus.

From the gravitational constant to the structure of DNA, and from jet engines to the worldwide web, the UK has a proud tradition of science, innovation, research and development that is renowned across the world. Our university research base contributes £95 billion to the economy, supporting nearly 1 million jobs in science institutes, charities and businesses of all sizes across the country. Twenty per cent. of the UK workforce is employed in a science or research role, and those are good, high-wage, high-skilled jobs that are helping to solve key challenges facing our country and planet—climate change, disease and productivity—and helping to ensure that the UK stays globally competitive.

As the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Anthony Browne) emphasised, the pandemic has highlighted the importance of the UK’s science research base and shown the world what we can do, particularly through vaccine research and development. However, our world-leading science sector does not have the world-leading Government that it deserves. As we have heard, the Government’s warm words on science have not been backed by action. Industrial strategy seems to have been archived, with decisions on science made piecemeal rather than strategically.

The Chair of the Science and Technology Committee, the right hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark), mentioned the importance of science to yesterday’s integrated review, but the Wellcome Trust has commented:

“There’s a growing gulf between rhetoric and reality in the government support for science. The Integrated Review is full of fantastic and achievable ambitions, but the words are meaningless if they’re not backed up with funding.”

Funding our R&D sector makes economic sense. The Campaign for Science and Engineering found that, for every £1 of public investment in R&D, between 20p and 30p was returned every year. As my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe) and the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) emphasised, R&D is a key driver in building the economy of tomorrow, creating new jobs as others are overtaken by automation, and positioning the UK as a leader on the world stage.

I am sure the Minister will agree when I speak about the importance of R&D, but let us look at the Government’s actions. Reports in the Financial Times today indicate that the Government are likely to miss their 2.4% of GDP R&D spending target following the cuts to overseas development. Labour has called for a 3% target. To fail on 2.4% would be truly shocking and, as has been said, it would be on the backs of the poorest countries in the world. Imperial College London, where I studied electrical engineering decades ago, is one of the many bodies that have written to me emphasising the need for international collaboration to be a priority. Yet, as the hon. Member for Arfon (Hywel Williams) highlighted, the Government are cutting overseas development research. Why?

The Government promised to double R&D spending to £22 billion by 2024—a move supported by key stakeholders. However, as with many a prime ministerial promise, we do not have the detail. I have tabled many written questions on that, but the Minister has successively hidden behind the spending review, the Budget and, now, departmental budget reviews. As the Chair of the Science and Technology Committee mentioned, just this morning the Business Secretary admitted that UKRI’s 2021-22 budget had not yet been agreed. When Labour calls for a long-term funding plan for science, our ambition is orders of magnitude greater than three weeks.

During the Brexit negotiations, the Government sowed uncertainty and anxiety among researchers as they refused to commit to Horizon alignment. I am pleased that the eventual deal did make that commitment, but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge pointed out, the Government continue to be evasive over the funding details. The Wellcome Trust says:

“Researchers in the UK welcomed the decision to continue the UK’s”

Horizon commitments, but

“they will be immensely frustrated, and with good reason, if it’s going to be paid for by cuts to other research. We urgently need reassurance on this.”

Can the Minister tell me whether the UK’s estimated £2 billion of Horizon contributions will be taken from the promised £22 billion science spend, as the right hon. Member for Kingswood (Chris Skidmore) implied? Will funding received back from the Horizon programmes be counted as part of that £22 billion, and which departmental budgets will pay the Horizon contributions? Science spend increases are a positive break from the decade of austerity inflicted on our economy, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge explained, we need direction, not a destination-less road map, in the absence of a clear strategy.

The Government have failed to protect our research sector from the impact of the pandemic. The hon. Member for St Ives (Derek Thomas) highlighted the importance of charity medical research, which invests £1 billion into university research and development but has been consistently ignored when it comes to pandemic support. Modelling by the Institute for Public Policy Research predicts that lost charity income could mean that medical research charities invest £4 billion less in health R&D between now and 2027, with a knock-on effect on private investment of up to £1 billion. The British Heart Foundation and Cancer Research UK have announced thousands of lost research jobs and cut hundreds of millions from R&D budgets as the Government have turned a blind eye. Why have the Government been prepared to risk those jobs and that investment?

The failure of the Government to respond to the pandemic is costing jobs and risks creating a lost generation of researchers. There are 17,000 early-career researchers whose long-term future in research is in jeopardy. In January, researchers from the Northern Ireland and north-east doctoral training partnership, representing universities across the UK, wrote to the Government calling for them to provide security for PhD students. The Government have merely shifted the cliff edge six months back, and only for some. Will the Minister tell us what the Government are doing to support early-career researchers and the next generation of science researchers?

My hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge and others have highlighted concerns about the new high-risk, high-reward research body ARIA. Although we welcome it in principle, today’s Select Committee hearing reflected our concerns that, without a clear mission beyond the ideological eyesight of Dominic Cummings, ARIA could become a vanity project vulnerable to cronyism.

If R&D is to drive our recovery and provide high-skill, high-paying jobs, it must do so for all regions. In 2018, 72% of R&D expenditure was in the south-east and south-west, with the north-east receiving the lowest per-head funding in England—just a quarter of that of the east of England. Recent decisions may make things worse. Chris Day, the vice-chancellor of Newcastle University, has written to the Chief Secretary to the Treasury to say:

“The decision to reduce the budget for international development projects is deeply concerning. If funds are cut such that the Hubs contracts are terminated this will lead to immediate redundancies in North East England.”

What is the Minister doing to ensure that R&D investment is shared fairly across the regions of the UK? The Labour party would champion R&D as an engine of regional progress, strengthening regional economies by rebalancing R&D investment.

Finally, we will never unlock the full potential of our research sector if we do not use the talents of everyone. There are real issues with diversity in the UK’s science and research sectors. Diversity is an economic imperative, especially as we face a shortfall of science, technology, engineering and maths workers, so what is the Minister doing to increase diversity, and how is that reflected in the Government’s funding model? Labour would build on the UK’s science successes and ensure that we continue to be an innovation nation that draws on the talents of all.

The Royal Society said that the Government’s actions are undermining their ambition for the UK to be a science superpower. Government indecision and inaction have made the impact of the pandemic worse for our critical research sector. They must now provide the long-term funding needed for the recovery.

Oral Answers to Questions

Chi Onwurah Excerpts

Tuesday 9th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab) [V]]

We are all grateful to Britain’s world-leading scientists for blazing a trail of hope in this terrible pandemic, but how are Government protecting science’s future? Medical charity research is predicted to fall by over £4 billion after Government refused support. University research has only been offered loans to cover losses from international students, while 90% of UK researchers are excluded from support, even though the virus prevents them from finishing their research. Postgraduate research students from the nine doctoral training programmes have written to demand action, given the escalating scale of the crisis, and there is a massive reduction in funding for early career researchers. Why are Government not protecting the future of the science that is protecting us?

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

The hon. Lady seems to be living in a parallel universe. If we look at the vaccine roll-out—we have seen 12.3 million, or nearly 12.3 million, people vaccinated as of this morning—we can see that the strength of the UK science base is really impressive. It is looked on throughout the world as something to aspire to. We are a world-leading science power—a science superpower. I have already mentioned the £14.6 billion that we have committed to R&D, and this is an area where we are confident and world-beating.

UK Space Industry

Chi Onwurah Excerpts

Thursday 4th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab) [V]]

I thank the hon. Member for Midlothian (Owen Thompson) and the Backbench Business Committee for bringing forward this very important debate today. There have been so many excellent and well-informed contributions from all parts of the House and I am sorry that I cannot do them justice in my comments, but I will try to emulate their conciseness.

Space and its many unanswered questions inspire awe and excitement. For nearly 70 years, the official British space programme has been seeking to answer the big questions of our universe, drawing on the expertise of our world-leading science and research sectors. In fact, the British Interplanetary Society is the oldest space advocacy organisation on Earth. As a nation, we have a proud history of space exploration and international collaboration. In 1957, British Skylark rockets were launched from Woomera in Australia. At the turn of the millennium, the British National Space Centre was the third largest financial contributor to the European Space Agency.

The space industry is worth more than £14.8 billion per year and has grown five times greater than the wider economy since 1999. The success of this sector helps to drive prosperity across the UK. As we have heard, our UK space businesses spend around £750 million annually, with around 1,500 UK suppliers, based across every region of the UK. Many of the jobs created in space manufacturing are also highly productive, with the average salary of an Airbus UK space employee standing at £51,000, nearly 50% higher than the UK national average.

The UK’s proud history in space exploration, research and development makes it an excellent launch pad for future growth, with the right leadership. The UK and its place in the world is changing. We have left the European Union, which meant turning our back on the Galileo project that we did so much to bring about, at a cost of £1.2 billion to the taxpayer. The Government then U-turned on their plans to develop a rival sovereign satellite system, at a cost of a further £60 million.

Just this weekend, it was reported that the Secretary of State had decided to take control of strategy and policy away from the UK Space Agency, handing the almost £600 million budget directly to the Government. We are concerned that this constitutes a reactionary power grab following the controversy over the Government’s acquisition of OneWeb. Will the Minister publish the information that drove this decision, and set out the new remit for the UK Space Agency? What will she do with these new powers?

The Government talk excitedly about “global Britain”, but Labour wants to see an interplanetary Britain powered by a booming space sector. Space is not just for the stars. As we have heard, it impacts every household in the country—from climate change and rural broadband to transport and agriculture. From our smart phones to our credit cards, the UK space sector helps us all to prosper. The Government have made commitments to develop a new space command, designed to

“enhance the breadth of our space capabilities”

and help to fund high-risk/reward innovation projects, but there has been no clarity on the support provided to space research from this new ARPA-style moonshot programme.

Without a clear long-term space strategy, the hard work of our space sector—in developing spaceports and rocket launch pads, and space domain awareness projects and military-grade software, and embarking on satellite projects critical for our vital infrastructure—will not be fully realised. If we are to ensure the success of these programmes, we must understand whether we have the industrial capability to do so. Part of unlocking the potential of our space industry is knowing how we organise our industrial base to achieve our goals, and in turn where we will need further investment and finance to encourage outward investment in UK businesses.

There is no strategy for external investment, no strategy for skills—in particular diverse skills; space requires everyone, regardless of gender, ethnicity, region or age—no strategy for industry and manufacturing, and no strategy for sovereign satellite capabilities, or whether and how we will compete with SpaceX and others. Instead, we have the manifesto of a Government with their head in the clouds. Down on earth, as we have heard, the sector is still waiting to hear about the future of the new regulations introduced under the Space Industry Act 2018, particularly those dealing with administrative burdens and liabilities.

Nothing better illustrates the lack of strategy and transparency than the purchase of OneWeb, despite the advice of experts and the concerns of the UK Space Agency. First we were told it would be part of our sovereign GNSS—global navigation satellite system—programme, then it was not. We do not know what the Government have planned for OneWeb or whether this huge investment will even support jobs in the UK space sector, with the satellites continuing to be manufactured in Florida.

The space sector provides the UK with so many opportunities to grow our economy, push technological boundaries and boost our soft power by developing strategic interdependence with our allies. What discussions has the Minister had about progressive partnerships in space exploration and research and development?

A year ago, UKspace set out the urgent need for a coherent cross-Government space strategy. We still have not seen it. Labour would seek to support our sovereign capability in the space age and build on the UK’s proud history of technological innovation and space exploration. Labour is passionate about the long-term future and potential of the space sector. It provides high-skill, high-paid jobs, which are needed to address the major challenges of our time, but the absence of a clear and focused long-term space strategy raises many questions about how far we will benefit from the boundless possibilities of space.

Oral Answers to Questions

Chi Onwurah Excerpts

Tuesday 15th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Nadhim Zahawi]

The recent Small Business Saturday event meant that the spend from the Great British public rose to £1.1 billion this year, which is a 38% rise on last year. The Government will continue to champion small businesses, through our unprecedented support schemes, as they begin to recover from the impact of covid-19. As the Secretary of State has just reminded me, the spend is not £200 billion—it is £280 billion of support for small business.

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab) [V]]

Of the £5 billion of new online spend because of the pandemic, 40% has gone to one website, Amazon. Many small businesses are afraid that they will not make it through the winter because of a lack of Government support, and they have Brexit and climate and technological change to deal with too. So I want to ask the Minister this: what is the plan for small businesses to survive covid and build back smarter and greener? I am talking not about vague promises, but about firm commitments to help businesses invest in new technologies, as Make UK has called for, or to target procurement to support net zero businesses, as the Institution of Civil Engineers proposes. Or are the Government just going to let business down again?

National Security and Investment Bill (Twelfth sitting)

Chi Onwurah Excerpts

Committee Debate: 12th sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 10th December 2020 Public Bill Committees

Brought up, and read the First time.

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

[James Wild (North West Norfolk) (Con)]

[Chi Onwurah]

[Simon Baynes (Clwyd South) (Con)]

[Chi Onwurah]

[Andrew Griffith (Arundel and South Downs) (Con)]

[Chi Onwurah]

The former head of the National Cyber Security Centre told us that the Government should have acted in transactions such as Huawei’s acquisition of the Centre for Integrated Photonics, rather than turn a blind eye because it did not seem to fit a narrow definition. We should not turn a blind eye any longer. With guidance from the new clause, the Government would act to protect our strategic security.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew Bowie (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (Con)]

[Chi Onwurah]

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

[Chi Onwurah]

[Peter Grant]

[Chi Onwurah]

[Peter Grant]

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Nadhim Zahawi)]

[Chi Onwurah]

[Nadhim Zahawi]

[Chi Onwurah]

[Nadhim Zahawi]

[Nadhim Zahawi]

[Chi Onwurah]

In fact—the Minister may want to intervene on me on this—he seemed to imply that that statement included a list of factors. I do not think that it does, but he seemed to say that the new clause is not necessary because there is already a list of factors in that statement, and that the statement and the new clause would be in some way contradictory. I do not feel that that in any way reflects what is set out in the new clause. The new clause contains a list of factors to guide the Secretary of State. It is not an exhaustive list, but it gives considerably more of a sense of the understanding of national security than is to be found in the Secretary of State’s statement of intent. The Minister said that that could be changed at least every five years, and he argued that the list in new clause 1 appeared to be growing—this is a new clause, so I do not think the list can have grown. Our national security has changed, and the factors that determine it have expanded significantly. If we look at cyber-security, at artificial intelligence, at the threats that are coming from many different areas of the world and at the different state and non-state actors, we can see that that is absolutely the case.

--- Later in debate ---

[Peter Grant]

[Chi Onwurah]

[Nadhim Zahawi]

--- Later in debate ---

[Sam Tarry]

[Chi Onwurah]

[Sam Tarry]

--- Later in debate ---

[Nadhim Zahawi]

[Chi Onwurah]

[Nadhim Zahawi]

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Whitehead]

[Chi Onwurah]

[Nadhim Zahawi]

[Chi Onwurah]

[James Wild]

[Chi Onwurah]

The Chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee, the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis), has written to you, Sir Graham, and the other Chair of this Committee to ask a number of questions that he did not feel had been had been adequately answered by the Bill or its supporting documentation, and to place his Committee at the disposal of this Committee. He writes that the ISC continues to have a very real interest in the Bill and would have liked to have been included in briefings on it, and he asks about the investment security unit.

[Nadhim Zahawi]

[Chi Onwurah]

Bill to be reported, without amendment.

National Security and Investment Bill (Tenth sitting)

Chi Onwurah Excerpts

Committee Debate: 10th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 8th December 2020 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Nadhim Zahawi)]

[Chi Onwurah]

[Nadhim Zahawi]

[Chi Onwurah]

[Nadhim Zahawi]

[Sam Tarry (Ilford South) (Lab)]

[Chi Onwurah]

[Sam Tarry]

--- Later in debate ---

Financial assistance

[Chi Onwurah]

[The Chair]

[Chi Onwurah]

The theme of the Opposition amendments is that we wish to protect our national security, and we think that the measures could have been taken earlier. Part of the social contract is that that should be done in a way that is fair, clear and certain for businesses, so that they understand the legislative framework as far as possible, and so that they feel that it is fair and in the interests of our national security and, as part of that, our national prosperity.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nadhim Zahawi]

[Chi Onwurah]

[Nadhim Zahawi]

[Chi Onwurah]

[Nadhim Zahawi]

[Chi Onwurah]

[Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)]

[Chi Onwurah]

[Nadhim Zahawi]

[Chi Onwurah]

[Matt Western]

[Chi Onwurah]

Clause 30 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

The amendment tabled by the hon. Member for Ilford South would require the Secretary of State, when publishing a direction given to the CMA under the clause, to set out the reasons for the direction and provide an assessment of its impact on any grounds for action by the CMA in relation to the merger. Let me reassure the Committee that I expect the use of such directions to be rare. Most mergers are unlikely to trigger both competition and national security concerns, and for those that do, the separate processes of the CMA and the Secretary of State will be able to take place smoothly in parallel with each other.

[Chi Onwurah]

[Nadhim Zahawi]

[Chi Onwurah]

[Nadhim Zahawi]

--- Later in debate ---

[Nadhim Zahawi]

[Chi Onwurah]

[Nadhim Zahawi]

[Chi Onwurah]

[Nadhim Zahawi]

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Whitehead]

[Chi Onwurah]

[Dr Whitehead]

[Chi Onwurah]

[Dr Whitehead]

--- Later in debate ---

[Nadhim Zahawi]

[Chi Onwurah]

[Nadhim Zahawi]

[Dr Whitehead]

[Chi Onwurah]

[Dr Whitehead]

--- Later in debate ---

[Nadhim Zahawi]

[Chi Onwurah]

[Nadhim Zahawi]

[Chi Onwurah]

Adjourned till Thursday 10 December at half-past Eleven o’clock.

National Security and Investment Bill (Fourth sitting)

Chi Onwurah Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 4th sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 26th November 2020 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

We now come to our third panel. We will hear oral evidence from Mr James Palmer, senior partner from Herbert Smith Freehills. This will last until 2.30 pm. Mr Palmer, welcome; thank you for joining us. Would you be so kind as to introduce yourself for the record?

James Palmer: Thank you very much, Chair. I am James Palmer, a corporate mergers and acquisitions, and investments, partner at Herbert Smith Freehills. I have been doing that work for 34 years. I have worked with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy on business regulation for over 25 years. I also chair our global board; we are an international firm.

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

Q107 Thank you very much, Mr Palmer, for sharing your expertise with us today. I see that you were on the takeover panel for SoftBank’s £24 billion takeover of Arm. Did you consider at the time that that might raise concerns for economic security and national security? More generally in your experience of takeovers and mergers, how would you—or would you—distinguish between economic security and national security on a current and forward-looking basis, if I can put it like that?

James Palmer: I was advising the takeover panel and the regulator, not one of the parties, so our thoughts were more about their role in ensuring appropriate regulation of that takeover—not from a foreign investment perspective, obviously, but there was a foreign investment angle to it. I am not a technical expert. My read of that—nothing to do with the work I did, but obviously I followed it and all the other transactions that have been looked at—is that it was more about economic security and positioning than necessarily about national security per se, but I am not the expert on it.

I think the point that you are drawing out—I heard your question earlier today—is a really fundamental one, which is that there is a spectrum of things that can be regarded as matters of national security. Indeed, the Bill papers draw this out. On the one hand, you have things that are clearly national security, like the risk of infiltration of systems that the country’s security depends on or that the country’s systems depend on—critical infrastructure being an example—but I do think that there are aspects of the Bill that are touching on things that stray more into economic influence and stability.

Again, I am not the expert on this, but I think we all know that in the debate about what is a matter of national security, there is a question of economic dependence, supply chain dependence and so on. That is one of the most difficult areas for this legislation, because where you have a straight, obvious national security real risk of some cyber-infiltration or whatever, nobody is going to argue about that. The grey into issues of supply chain dependency and more economic security starts to raise some of the more difficult areas, which I am sure we can come to.

I do not think that there is a simple binary distinction, and I am not here to give you the answer as to what the right approach is for dependency on China for supply chains. All I would say, having worked out in Asia many years ago, is that the interconnectedness of the world is not going to reduce and we are going to need to find ways of navigating that.

[Chi Onwurah]

Q Thank you, Mr Palmer; those are very interesting and important points. In your answer to my next question, I would like you to reflect on how this could be better. You make points about the spectrum, and particularly about the need for expertise and wide-ranging consideration in this process. Do you have concerns or suggestions about how they could be better reflected in the Bill?

Also, we have heard a number of times today that under the Bill—this will be reflected in your experience—we are going from 12 call-ins to a much bigger number: 90 or 100. And the impact assessment estimates that, I think, 1,870 notifications might come in under the new regime. Could you consider how best to reflect that or to put in place the skills and the resources for the Bill, and say a little about what impact you think it might have on the attractiveness of investing in UK companies and, in particular, small and medium-sized enterprises?

James Palmer: I have focused on the same numbers as you. I hope the Minister will excuse my saying so, because I think the team have genuinely done a superb job of looking at a lot of granularity on a swathe of issues, but there is one data point I did not agree with: the suggestion that there will be an 18% increase in the reviews; it was framed quite narrowly. In my maths, 12 reviews in nearly 20 years going to nearly 2,000 a year is well over a 10,000% increase. I think that that is a very important context in which to look at this—as the world outside looks at this, it is potentially looked at as pretty seismic change by the UK. Again, there is lots that we can go on to as to the ways in which the detailed thinking around this has tried to mitigate that, and I know the Department has worked very, very hard in trying to mitigate it, but I think that we just need to be realistic.

In terms of the skills, there is a fundamental question, which the Bill papers have started to try to set out, which is this: how do we focus the debate so that it is not all-encompassing? Again, the Minister is aware of my views on this. I am extremely pleased—I know that some may not share this view—that the Bill does not catch a broader public interest test. The reason for that is what happens every time we introduce a power for the Government, for very sensible reasons—these things are always about competing tensions with sensible reasons —to seek to interfere, review something and decide who should own it, or whether they want to impose conditions on that.

Let me give you an analogy. Let us say that I invite someone to come and invest in this country to build a house. At the moment, if I invite them to come to this country to build a house—or a business or a small technology business—they know they can build that house, live in it and sell it to whoever they want. If I invite them in and say, “Come and live in this country and build your house, but I reserve the right to decide who you sell it to and what conditions I impose on who you sell it to,” that is a very different prism—a new prism.

The Bill team have done a really good job of trying to narrow that so that everybody does not think, “Help! If I come to the UK, there is a Government discretion,” but there is an innate tension between, on one hand, the desire to have a broad power to interfere in circumstances that we have not all thought about to protect something as important as national security and, on the other hand, a desire to give investors certainty. My unhelpful view is that there is not a simple route through that, and I do worry about, in particular, small technology businesses.

Again, the team have done a good job of trying to narrow the sectors. This is a very different proposition, in terms of granularity, from what we saw in 2017 and 2018. But I think a lot of further work may be needed. The Government have been clear that they want to receive further feedback on how to narrow the remit. One example is the breadth of the communications sector, which has no de minimis. Artificial intelligence is not a thing done by four clever businesses anymore; it is a thing done by thousands of businesses. I think an awful lot of businesses are going to get caught that are not actually what the ministerial team are worried about.

The second bit is that, even outside the mandatory regime, other transactions may be judged with hindsight to be a matter of national security. Under the regime, a Minister—maybe not the current Minister, but whoever it is in the future—may decide that it is a matter of national security. As you have already highlighted, there is a spectrum of where economics becomes national security. People are going to worry about the predictability of investing in this country.

I am thinking particularly about smaller businesses. Obviously, there will be huge attractions to investing in the UK for technology. We have skills and expertise that can only be exploited here. The UK has had a very distinctive position as one of the few countries in the world where businesses without a particular nexus to a country have chosen to go as a destination of choice. Those businesses are the ones I am most worried about.

There is also the cost and risk for small businesses. If I was a European venture capitalist, how comfortable would I be in investing in a technology business in the UK that I will be able to sell it to an American or Danish buyer—not the Chinese—in five years’ time, or at least to do so simply? In terms of the call-in power, why would boards take a 1% risk that in five years’ time somebody will judge your transaction as being one that should have been notified? Why would I take even a 1% risk of my transaction being unravelled? I think that the Department has worked very hard—this is not just ritual politeness; I really think it has—to try to narrow it, but I do not think it has done so enough, because I think that there will be a lot more than 1,800 notifications.

[Chi Onwurah]

Q Thank you. You made it clear that you are praising the Department for the work it has done, and I accept your reluctance to criticise it; I think you are right—there is a lot of work, and this is a very complex area. Do you have any direct recommendations you would make to the Department in terms of what might need to change and in particular the preparations it should make for dealing with this large number of notifications?

James Palmer: My partner, Veronica Roberts, appeared before the Foreign Affairs Committee on Tuesday, and she and I will be submitting a list to this Committee. I am afraid we do not have time to go through it today, but I will draw out a couple. Some of the mandatory filing sectors are very broad, such as communications. Again, the Government have said that they welcome narrowing those. There are not de minimises in a number of those sectors. It is true that there are other jurisdictions that do not have de minimises, but they are not jurisdictions with as large a proportion of their GDP linked to trade, and they are not jurisdictions that are as much seen as international business headquarters as well as centres of international business; there is a difference.

There is a de minimis for transport, for example, and it is very focused on ports over a certain threshold and on airports over certain levels of traffic. That is excellent, because those are the kinds of business that it makes sense that you would want to catch. The same layering has not been applied elsewhere. In particular, I worry about catching the sale or the licensing of intellectual property in relation to any of the technology areas. I think that that will catch an awful lot of things that people have not thought about yet, and I think that it will create a big burden for those small businesses.

I can conceive that in one or two very narrow areas—in some of the material science and so on, I am told—there may be low-value things that need to be caught. I am personally very sceptical that low-value things need to be caught in many other areas, because how can they be that important to the economy if they have a value that is below £1 million?

One of our concerns is that, although we know that the Government are very committed to a free trade agenda here and trying to make this work, I have worked with new regulators as they have developed for a very long time, and—forgive my saying so—I have never seen a regulator whose remit was only at the level that was predicted when it was set up. All remits expand exponentially, and that is one of the fears we have.

I would certainly advocate ensuring that the factors that the Secretary of State has to have regard to include, for example, impact on trade. The cost-benefit analysis sets out a sensible attempt—again, it is a much more developed piece of work than the, frankly, not-that-great cost-benefit analysis done in 2017-18; this one is a good and credible attempt—to work out what the actual cash costs are. But it does not address, as the Regulatory Policy Committee drew out, the real economic costs. It may all be okay, but the risks there are not hundreds of millions, but absolutely billions, and the UK’s competitive positioning there.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Nadhim Zahawi)]

Q I was going to ask you about whether the Bill is proportionate between being very focused on national security—albeit, as you quite rightly point out, there is a spectrum of that—versus public interest, but I think that you have answered that issue in saying that you would very much guard against expanding it.

James Palmer: I will just explain why. I remember working when the public interest regime still applied. The move away from the public interest regime started in the 1980s. Pre the 1980s, this country was not an international investment destination; it really was not. We have earned that position. Whatever one’s politics—I am not party political—this is something that the UK has earned. We have done that by moving to being pretty open-minded in foreign investment. We have actually not worried that much about national security considerations being controlled through ownership, because again this debate has been—sorry, let me first come back to the Minister’s point.

I am very nervous that if you open it up to public interest, you vest that authority in a politician; forgive me, but that is what leads to lobbying, to short-termism, and to completely inconsistent decision taking. I am afraid that whatever Ministers at the time may say about these decisions, there is no external credibility on the predictability of those. It does not matter whether Ministers think they are doing it in good faith or on security grounds. It does not come over that way.

On broadening it to public interest, I completely agree. I am very grateful—because I know that there was a debate about this—that it has been rightly focused just on national security, albeit with a broad ability to intervene to protect the national interest.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

That’s all right. Thank you very much. Shadow Minister, Chi Onwurah.

[Chi Onwurah]

Q Thank you very much, Sir Graham. Welcome, David, and thank you so much for sharing your expertise and experience with us and for giving me an opening, which I cannot resist: what are your suggestions for improving this Bill?

David Offenbach: Well, there are three categories. First, are the 17 subjects that are referred to in the paper sufficient? Sir John Redwood, in the debate last week, said that food should be included, because there is nothing more important than food security. Mr Tim Loughton said that pharma and biotechnology should be included. There is not really very much on energy in the 17 subject matters. So I would like to see those included.

The next is the definition. National security is not defined in the Bill, which I actually approve of, because once it becomes too closely indicated, then it is not easy to decide what should be in it, or what should not be in it. I would like to see a definition that includes what Lord Heseltine said when Melrose took over GKN, that research and development should be a subject of importance; it should be included.

The other thing I would like to see included, contrary to the last speaker, is a general definition of public interest. The reason for that is that when you look at recent examples, you see that it is very easy for things to slip through the net that actually might be both in the national interest and in the interests of national security as a specific point.

Some of these examples have already been mentioned: SoftBank’s purchase of Arm. Now, that was world-beating British technology. It is in every computer, it is in every telephone and it came from Cambridge. It is now the subject of a bid by an American company owned by a Japanese bank. Do we really want to try and hang on to the research and development—as someone said in the House of Commons debate last week, the Crown jewels, or as Harold Macmillan said many years ago, the family silver? At this economic time, is it not desirable that we try and hang on to these important assets that are homegrown? Is self-reliance something that we should bear in mind?

Similarly, in 2014, Google bought DeepMind—world-beating British technology in artificial intelligence. Should that have been the subject of consideration? Recently, Lady Cobham was bemoaning the fact that Cobham had been sold to private equity for £4 billion. She said she only wished that the Act had already been in existence, and then perhaps the nine divisions that have now been reduced to four and the sell-off that started would not have happened. Of course, one of the problems is that the post-offer undertakings that can now legally be provided by companies to the takeover panel are fairly feeble and do not really deal with the issues to protect the necessary research and development and public interest.

At Immarsat, as those of you who drive around Old Street roundabout in the middle of London’s tech city will know, there was a £4 billion takeover of world-beating satellite technology. It started as a United Nations organisation, then became private and was quoted on the London stock exchange and has now gone to private equity.

Nvidia is buying Arm. When they bought Icera in 2011 in Bristol, they closed it down, 300 people lost their jobs and the technology went abroad. One that might now cause a bit of embarrassment is the case of Huawei, which bought from the East of England Development Agency the Centre for Integrated Photonics in 2012. Another piece of world-beating technology owned by the British Government has now gone abroad.

Those are just some of the numerable examples of assets that, at this difficult time, we really ought to try and hang on to. I do not want to decry the argument that Britain is open for business and that we believe in free trade. We do. There is twice as much foreign direct investment into Britain as there is into France and Germany. Several hundred thousand French people live in London. It is the fourth largest French city for French citizens. Why? Ask anybody. It is much easier to do business in London that it is in Paris.

As for the other argument—that if we do not make the business climate easy, people will start up their businesses elsewhere—the answer is that they will not, because in the other places where they want to open their businesses the regimes are tougher than here, so that argument does not wash. France has just passed its recent new law. They use a slightly different test that is strategic. Their test is not quite as wide as public interest. Of course, a right to intervene on strategic grounds is what Mr Tim Loughton and Mr Bob Seely suggested in the House of Commons debate last week, and Mr Tugendhat was very sad about the fact that Google had bought DeepMind and that SoftBank had managed to acquire Arm. For all those reasons, I think we do need to add to the definitions. That is the position.

[Chi Onwurah]

Q I have a quick follow-up question. Should we consider a separate test of public or strategic interest, or are you saying that our economic and security interests are intertwined, so it is the definition of security interests that needs to be expanded? What are your views on that?

David Offenbach: It is very difficult to separate these. When you look at GKN, for example, 50,000 people—even now, after covid—are headquartered in Redditch, near the Minister’s constituency. It is one of the largest industrial companies worldwide, 250 years old, and a defence contractor to the Ministry of Defence, but the question is whether the amount of defence work it does, apart from its other engineering, is sufficient for it to be called in under the existing legislation. Clearly, the decision was made that it was not appropriate, and it is the same with Cobham. Cobham clearly had a national security element, but it was not sufficient for it to be called in and blocked by the Minister, so I think it is very difficult to separate the economic from the national interest, because these companies are multi-layered; they operate in different markets; some of their work is sensitive, and some of it is not sensitive.

That is why I think it is better to try and improve this Bill than deal with it under a separate Bill. The problem is that it has taken three years to get to where we are with this Bill. If we are just going to say, “Let’s deal with it another time”, it might take another three or four years before we get to consider that, so while it is here, while it is on the table, let’s try to improve it now and make it really work for Britain, so that we can build back better—to use a phrase—going forward.

[Nadhim Zahawi]

Q Welcome, Mr Offenbach; thank you very much for making the time. I wanted to get your view on how you think the Bill deals with the range of sanctions available to the Secretary of State in order to protect national security. How do you see that?

David Offenbach: I am very pleased with it. It is much better than the previous regime, because now, rather than just having post-offer undertakings that are subject only to contempt of court criteria if they are breached, we have a proper statutory framework that will enable the Minister to impose orders so that for non-compliance, there is a breach of statutory duty, not merely a breach of an undertaking. Of course, one of the problems with the takeover code is that the object of a takeover code is to protect shareholders and to encourage fair dealing in takeovers. It is not there—and this has never been its job—to protect the public interest; it is there to protect the shareholders who are in receipt of an offer, so that they have been given fair treatment. For example, if you take SoftBank and Arm at the moment, we do not know whether or not they will have complied with their post-offer undertakings when the five years is up, because the price that is being paid now is more than was paid in 2016. There is no complaint. Public interest is irrelevant to the job of the takeover panel, which is why this new regime is a very welcome improvement on the old regime.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

We will now hear oral evidence from our fifth panel. We welcome Mr Creon Butler from Chatham House. We have until 4 o’clock for this session. Mr Butler, may I welcome you to the Committee? Please will you introduce yourself for the record?

Creon Butler: I am Creon Butler, the director of the global economy and finance programme at Chatham House. I am very pleased to have the opportunity to give evidence.

[Chi Onwurah]

Q Welcome, Mr Butler, and thank you for sharing your expertise with the Committee. Your expertise is considerable, given that you have advised on policy issues such as climate change, national resource security, global health security and economic security. There are clearly many aspects of security. Are both the distinction and the links between national security and economic security appropriately reflected in the Bill, or could they be better reflected?

Creon Butler: You get right to the heart of the matter and, indeed, to one of the points I wanted to make. Yesterday I looked at how national security is defined, and the “Collins English Dictionary” defines it as preventing a country from being attacked by hostile powers. One very important thing in relation to this Bill is that, first, while there is a good justification for having a broad range of powers to intervene, given the breadth of those powers to intervene and collect information, it is important that the Government define more clearly than they have hitherto exactly what those powers will be used for and, in those terms, use them in relation to national security. Specifically, I mean investments that could lead a hostile power to have technology that would enable it to make better weapons to attack us or would enable it to intervene in our critical national infrastructure.

There are other aspects of economic security, such as having a major industry in AI, renewable energy or something of that kind, that could be relevant to broader security in the future. You may well want to have a strategic intervention to ensure that the UK has that kind of industry, but I do not think this is the Bill for doing that. I think there are other tools you would want to use, including competition policy, strategic investments, contracting, R&D and so forth. That is one of the points I wanted to make.

[Chi Onwurah]

Q Are the other tools or powers needed to make interventions with regard to strategic capability in place under the Enterprise Act 2002, such as for the Arm takeover? I am not sure that they are. Given your experience, will you say a bit about the level of resourcing and expertise the unit would need to make such assessments?

Creon Butler: On your first question, I do not think we have that yet as a country. Actually, with the previous Prime Minister we had a clear definition of a number of sectors that were felt to be very important, but it is a continuing story in terms of exactly how we are going to intervene to ensure that those sectors are strong. We have some powers, but there are a range of tools. I previously mentioned public contracting, where we do our research and development, and competition policy specifically to make it impossible for British companies to develop in those sectors, and so on. There is a broad range of policies for ensuring we have those sectors, and I think they are continuing to evolve.

Your second question is a really crucial one. I guess a key point is that this is not an absolute thing: you cannot protect the country from all possible national security risks through this route. The only way you could do that, potentially, is by having every single investment notified and examined. That would create an enormous bureaucratic monster, which would really not be what we want.

The further point is that when you are looking at the right cases, you want to be sure that the judgments that are made trade off with the national security risk, as I have defined it, but also with the potential economic benefit of having an investment in that area. To do that, you need expertise among the people who are making such judgments, which spans security expertise but also economic, investment and commercial expertise. It is very important, first, that there enough people to do the judgments properly, and secondly, that you have a breadth of expertise. Certainly in the past, we may have swung from one side to the other. Sometimes you have had what people would describe as a securocrat approach: “There is a possible risk here. Let’s go for it—let’s eliminate it, whatever the economic cost.” Sometimes, on the other hand, you have had the alternative situation: “Let’s encourage investment, whatever the risk might be.” I think it is important that we get a balance between those two.

[Nadhim Zahawi]

Q Welcome, Mr Butler, and thank you very much for your attendance. Reflecting on the changing nature of the national security threats that we are now facing, which you alluded to in your answer to my colleague, the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central, how do you think the Bill builds on the Enterprise Act 2002? It has been 18 years since that legislation was introduced, so it would be great to get your take on that. Given your CV, it is worth getting your reflection on that while we have you here.

Creon Butler: I think—I am sure many people have said this—it is very clear that the previous legislation needed updating and was not fit for purpose, given both the way in which the global economy as a whole has evolved and the way in which the threats have evolved. It is both necessary and urgent to update that, and the way the Bill has done that, in terms of this first phase of creating the powers both to collect information and to intervene, makes a lot of sense. We have to fine-tune it and make sure it works properly, but this is a good first step. As I said, though, it is really important, if you are going to have such broad powers, to define exactly how you will use them—and much more precisely than the Government has done hitherto.

The further point is that this piece of legislation does not do everything. Alongside it, we need to strengthen our ability to collect the information we need about those threats. There are a number of elements. One that I have some experience of and that is really important is the question of who actually owns and controls companies that are operating in the UK—the question of beneficial ownership transparency. If you do not know that a hostile power is influencing a company that might be registered in an overseas territory or something of that kind, you will not be able to take the steps that you need to take.

A further area—it is a step in the right direction, because it gives us the powers to engage with this issue —is through international co-operation. Looking forwards, we need to strengthen and enhance our international co-operation with like-minded partners by going beyond the Five Eyes and including other really key partners, such as Japan, the EU and so on. That will enable us to do two things. First, it will enable us to share information about the things that can happen, such as the techniques that hostile powers are using. You may see it come up first in one country, and if we can share that information, we know that we can be prepared for that. Even more importantly, you may have a hostile power that does a number of things in different parts of the world, and it is only when you see the entire picture that you can see what the threat is.

Having that kind of international co-operation to do that is really important. These powers are necessary to get us in the same place as some of our key allies, in terms of what we can do. I do not think we are ever going to be able to standardise the areas of intervention or the nature of powers, but we should push very hard to enhance the sharing of information in the way I described.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

We have until 4.30 pm at the latest for this session. Mr Jackson-Moore, will you introduce yourself for the record?

Will Jackson-Moore: I am a partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers. I am responsible for our relationships with private equity, infrastructure, real estate and sovereign funds on a global basis. I started working in our Sheffield office, predominantly with small and medium-sized industrial organisations, before moving into our deals practice, where I spent the majority of my career working with corporates and private equity houses, undertaking transactions here in the UK and abroad. I then relocated with my family, while still at PWC to the middle east, where I spent a number of years —I got quite a lot of exposure to the sovereign funds there—before moving back to the UK and into my current role.

My areas of expertise are flows of international capital and the deals market. I am not a specialist in national security matters.

[Chi Onwurah]

Thank you for sharing your expertise with us, Mr Jackson-Moore. What impact do you expect the measures in the Bill to have on the sovereign funds and others you represent—the investors and potential acquirers of UK assets? You said clearly that you were not an expert in national security—why should you be? —but how will you identify those acquirers who may be considered to pose a national security threat? What kind of engagement would you expect to have with the Department for Business in order to make that sort of call?

Will Jackson-Moore: That is a two-part question. On how the proposed Bill will impact the flow of capital into the UK, generally these are sophisticated investors who operate across the globe, investing in territories that already have equivalent legislation, so the actual legislation itself will not come as a surprise or a barrier. It is in the application of it that there will be concerns, in that, quite rightly, the definitions are drawn quite broadly and we believe that a significant number of transactions and inbound investments will be brought into this—in many cases, voluntarily, so people can get guidance. That will be an area of concern, in terms of whether it will create a barrier, either through publicity or with the timing of bringing capital into the UK. That is probably one of the main concerns right now.

In terms of sovereign funds, I am not in a position to say whether an individual investor or fund is a threat to national security. That is not something I would be looking to comment on.

[Chi Onwurah]

Q Would you be expecting to advise your clients as to whether the proposals in the Bill might impact on them? Would you expect to be able to engage with the Department in order to establish that? Have you made, for example, predictions of the number of transactions in which you are involved that might be subject to the proposals in this Bill?

Will Jackson-Moore: In terms of how we might engage with organisations on the applicability of the Bill, I think we would be asked questions about the industries that are covered, the definitions of an industry and what a business actually does. Whether an organisation is drawn into the legislation—whether it is considered a national security threat—is not something we would be involved in. I would be pointing organisations in the direction of their legal advisers on that.

As I said, there are something in the order of 6,000 investments into venture capital in the UK each year. There are approaching 10,000 mergers and acquisitions transactions a year in the UK, plus a number of infrastructure investments, and many of those will fall into the definitions within the Bill. I do not think it is entirely clear to buyers yet whether they would be caught. A traditional private equity house or a venture capitalist looking to invest in a start-up in the UK, may well be owned by Britons, with a management team who are British, but they may have structures that include overseas entities, and many of their investors will be overseas investors. I think that many of those organisations will be wanting guidance as to whether they will be considered an overseas acquirer, even though on the face of it they appear relatively British.

[Chi Onwurah]

Q Specifically on whether they meet the definition of an overseas acquirer, I was also interested in this. I think one of the assumptions has been that there will be a large number of self-notifications in order to get guidance early on, but you seem to be implying that that might be considered to be declaring yourself as a threat to national security, and that might be a barrier.

Will Jackson-Moore: No. The way traditional fundraising for a start-up or a transaction takes place is that a business is either put up for sale or seeks investment from a number of parties; the entrepreneur wants to raise finance and have a competitive situation in which the providers of capital are making the most attractive offers possible to reduce the cost of capital for the organisation. I think there would be an incentive for them to be able to say to potential investors, “We are not going to be considered as an asset that is important to national security”. The definitions are quite broad and many organisations will have technologies that right now appear relatively benign and are used for purely civilian purposes but are cutting-edge and on a trajectory whereby in two years’ time they may have military applications or other things that could be a threat to national security.

[Chi Onwurah]

Q What that says to me is that, while the impact assessment looks at the cost to the acquirer, there will actually be a cost to the acquired party in terms of clearing themselves in advance or clarifying what their situation is, and I do not think that is covered in the impact assessment as it stands.

Will Jackson-Moore: Yes, in many cases it is a raising of finance for a partial stake. It is an entrepreneur looking to attract capital to expand their business, seeking to bring in an investor to provide maybe 25% of additional equity capital. They want to have a competitive situation where people are offering the most beneficial terms possible. Many of those investors will be overseas investors.

[Nadhim Zahawi]

Q Following on that, Mr Jackson-Moore, the current regime under the Enterprise Act 2002 stipulates that the assessment of transactions is dealt with on a case-by-case basis by the Government. This legislation effectively puts into law the timeline by which assessments are made. Do you think that and other provisions in this Bill will send a message to the industry and to the investment community of a slicker, more efficient way of dealing with assessment of transactions?

Will Jackson-Moore: For the vast majority of existing transactions, the existing legislation was not really a major factor; it only addressed a handful of transactions each year, whereas this is much more in the mainstream of the M and A market and therefore it will be much more on people’s agenda. We already have a number of organisations reaching out to us to understand the potential implications for ongoing transactions.

I do not think the timeframe in itself represents a barrier, since it is not that dissimilar to other jurisdictions, but again it is the application. If you look at Australia, for example, buyers have the ability to pre-clear themselves, and that type of amendment would be very helpful to ensure the free flowing of capital.

National Security and Investment Bill (Third sitting)

Chi Onwurah Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 3rd sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 26th November 2020 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

Q80 Before calling the first Member to ask a question, I should like to remind all Members that questions should be limited to matters within the scope of the Bill and that we must stick to the timings in the programme motion that the Committee has agreed. For this session, we have until 12.15 pm.

I welcome the two witnesses from Slaughter and May. Can I ask you to introduce yourselves for the record, please?

Lisa Wright: Hi, my name is Lisa Wright and I am a partner in the competition group at Slaughter and May.

Christian Boney: Good morning. I am Christian Boney and I am a partner in the corporate mergers and acquisitions group at Slaughter and May.

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

Q Thank you very much, Ms Wright and Mr Boney, for sharing your expertise and time with the Committee. It is indeed extensive experience of mergers and acquisitions.

I am sure you are aware that many countries—the US and Canada are just two—give some sense of the factors that might be considered under a national security assessment. Do you think it would be helpful for market participants to have greater clarity about the types of factors that would be considered? How could we give that clarity while retaining the sensitivity and discretion that are needed on those matters?

Joined to that, there are cases such as Arm and DeepMind where economic security became national security over time. When considering what national security is, what links do you see between national security and economic security or sovereign capability? Can they better be reflected in the Bill?

Christian Boney: Lisa, shall I have a go at that first?

Lisa Wright: Yes, go for it.

Christian Boney: Starting with the need for factors to help inform market participants’ decisions about whether, for example, their potential transaction presents risks, yes—in short, the more guidance that can be given about the kinds of factors that the Government will consider in determining whether a transaction presents a national security concern, the better. The statement of policy intent is very helpful in framing that, but clearly the more detail that can be included, the better.

The other thing that will be important in giving people a sense of whether their transaction should be notified or whether it falls within a mandatory notification sector is the interaction that will take place through informal engagement through the investment security unit. It is very important that the process for getting informal guidance from that unit is as streamlined, interactive and responsive as it can be. That will go some way to giving practitioners realtime guidance on potential concerns.

Lisa Wright: Can I just add a point to the idea of the desire for more certainty around what national security means? I think it is worth recognising that that is particularly important if you look at where we have come from. With the existing regime under the Enterprise Act 2002, there have only ever been a dozen or so interventions on national security grounds. There is not a widespread understanding of what it means and the circumstances in which the Government would intervene. That is the historical position, but we all know that this is constantly evolving.

When you take that and add to it the fact that the prediction now is that there will be, as it says in the papers, between 70 and 90 call-ins a year, that is obviously a huge increase against the 12 since the Enterprise Act. Any greater clarity that can be given around the circumstances in which the Government would be looking to, for instance, exercise the call-in powers would be beneficial, particularly at the beginning of the regime when everybody is trying to learn the ropes.

[Chi Onwurah]

Q You mentioned, and I think it is absolutely right, the issue about going from a standing start to such an increase in the number of callings but also in the number of notifications—the impact assessment estimates 1,830 notifications. That is on the acquirer and does not take into account the fact that almost every start-up seeks capital investment at some point and I imagine would, therefore, as a consequence have to think about this regime. What impact do you foresee on the UK’s investment climate and especially on capital sources for small and medium-sized enterprises? How could that impact be mitigated or encouraged to be as positive as possible?

Christian Boney: I think this question really divides into two. In terms of larger corporates, investment by, and in, larger corporates is very likely to be unimpacted in any meaningful way by this legislation, because large corporates and their advisers are very used to going through regulatory clearance processes. This will just be another thing that needs to be added to the list.

I think you make a very valid point in the context of start-up and early-stage companies. The concern I would have principally is with those companies that are in that phase of their corporate life and fall within the mandatory notification sectors. Given the kinds of companies that this country is trying to encourage to flourish—those that are active in areas like artificial intelligence, advanced robotics and quantum technologies—a reasonable number of start-ups, I would expect, would fall within those mandatory notification sectors. For them, this regime is going to make the process of getting investment more time-consuming and more complex.

Anything that can be done in the process of consulting on the mandatory sectors, and anything that can be done to pair back the regime to make it more workable for companies in that stage of life, the better. An example might be some form of de minimis threshold, which is included, such that really early-stage companies do not fall within the mandatory notification regime, but the Government can nevertheless rely on their call-in power down the track, should that early-stage company becomes successful and more strategically important within the UK. Those are my principal thoughts. Lisa, do you have anything to add?

Lisa Wright: Not on that point, no

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Nadhim Zahawi)]

Q May I return to the national security issue—as opposed to the wider public interest test, which is an important question—and get your view as to the Bill’s scope, which is very much focused on national security, versus the wider public interest, to which I think my colleague’s first question alluded?

[Chi Onwurah]

To clarify, my question was this: how would you distinguish between national and economic security?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

My question is more about your reflections on the Bill being narrow in its purpose to deal with national security versus the wider public interest.

Lisa Wright: It is already a very broad regime; it catches a lot of transactions, as we have just discussed. I therefore think it is important and right that it is limited, in terms of the substantive concerns that it is catching, to national security. That is already a necessarily, I think, uncertain or undefined concept. Corporates and investors can make it work as long as other aspects of the regime work efficiently. That may be subject to some of the points that Christian just made about the impact on start-ups.

I think that once you broaden the regime out from national security into other considerations, you do risk introducing quite a degree of unpredictability, which possibly would impact on people’s assessment of the investment climate in the UK. My understanding is that the existing intervention regime under the Enterprise Act is planned to remain in force, so the national security considerations will come out of that and will be dealt with under this new regime. But there will still be the ability for—[Inaudible.]

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

Q Would you mind, Professor Martin, just introducing yourself for the record and for the benefit of the Committee?

Professor Martin: Thank you. My name is Ciaran Martin. I am currently a professor of practice at the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford, but until August of this year I was the founding chief executive of the National Cyber Security Centre and a member of the executive board of GCHQ, within the Government. I should also declare for these purposes, although I am not sure it is relevant, that I serve on the advisory board of a US venture capital company called Paladin.

[Chi Onwurah]

Q Welcome, Ciaran; it is great to see you here. Thank you so much for sharing your expertise: as the founder of the National Cyber Security Centre, you have a great deal of expertise. I want to ask you to talk about a question that I have raised a number of times and that your expertise should be able to give us a real view on, which is about understanding the distinction, if there is a distinction, between national security and economic security concerns. You will be familiar with a number of cases, such as Arm and DeepMind, to name just two, that involved an economic security issue, you could argue—in terms of sovereign capability in artificial intelligence in the case of DeepMind, and of mobile silicon in the case of Arm—but that pretty swiftly turned into national security concerns. This Bill identifies a number of different sectors or areas—up to 17, I think— where a notification will be mandatory. How can we look at understanding or reflecting a distinction between evolving economic security and, ultimately, our national security?

Professor Martin: Thank you for your comments, Ms Onwurah; it is nice to see you again. I speak as someone who thinks that the Government have broadly got this issue correct, in terms of their proposals in this Bill. That is not to underestimate the sheer complexity of dealing with the core, fundamental question that you rightly identify of balancing economic security and national security and of where one stops and the other begins. That is a very complicated and difficult thing to do. I think one starts with an attempt to define a core principle, which is essentially around the freedom to act. I think that if you look at something such as Arm—I would say this probably more in the case of Arm than DeepMind—and its potential ultimate sale to Nvidia, you see that the UK has less freedom of choice in a key strategic technology, which undermines its own ability.

I think there is an analogy with the little known but quite long-standing—for more than a century—work on sovereign cryptography. That is one of the areas that has long been covered by national sovereignty requirements. There are things in information security, as we used to call it, cyber-security, as we do call it, that have always needed to be fully sovereign, entirely British-made—they are not very many areas. The problem has been that as technology and communications have changed, it has been quite hard to keep up, and there are always pressures to expand that in a way that is economically harmful to competition and so on. So it needs a clever buyer within Government to identify what will be the strategic areas and what will not be.

In the area of sovereign cryptography, we end up trying to keep, depending on the era, around half a dozen or a dozen companies viable, because it is not a lucrative market. You can see the problem, but the key issue is whether there is enough, first, sovereign, but if not sovereign, friendly capability that allows us the freedom of choice to adopt key technologies. That means identifying the key technologies in the first place, evolving them over time and then having a very difficult to achieve but necessary intelligent function within Government that can evaluate the notifications that it gets. Of course, at the moment we do not have the power to do that, and that is what this Bill correctly seeks to remedy.

[Chi Onwurah]

Q Thank you. I am very taken by your definition of sovereign and friendly capability. Indeed, that is exactly what we do not have in our 5G networks, hence the mess with Huawei.

Moving on slightly, a comment made numerous times on Second Reading was about the role of the intelligence services. Indeed, my right hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) asked for more intelligence in the process. How can the Bill better ensure that the intelligence services, including the National Cyber Security Centre, have input and scrutiny and, indeed, provide their expertise as part of the process so that the appropriate decisions are taken?

Professor Martin: I think the essential, principal requirement is not the intelligence services’ involvement—although that is important and I will come to that in a minute—but the understanding of technology and technological developments within Government. These are fundamentally economic issues as well. Apart from anything else, if you look at some of the reasons why the Bill has come about, you will see that, in strategically important technologies, the Government have invested heavily in university-sponsored research and in private sector research, only to see the fruits of that research sold off. Even if that did not impact on national security, which in most cases it does, it is not a good return for the taxpayer in terms of long-term UK involvement if the intellectual property ends up being monetised elsewhere.

I have enormous respect for Mr Jones and I think he is on to something in terms of involving the national security and intelligence services, but I do not think this should be intelligence-led. In my experience—obviously, I cannot go into detail on this particular aspect of it—secret intelligence adds relatively little to your knowledge of intent. If we take Russia and China, the two big strategic threats to the UK, Russia does not have a strategy in this space. We have to worry about Russia and cyber-security because it attacks us, but it attacks us on the internet that the west has built.

China is very different. China has a technological, strategic dominance aim, but it is not a secret. It is published and has been translated into English in the Made in China 2025 strategy, as you know. Our knowledge about the precise, intricate details of how that is implemented gains relatively little from secret intelligence.

What secret intelligence does have, particularly in GCHQ and the NCSC within it, is a knowledge of how technology works in terms of the national security threat space. I think the UK has a head start on other countries, because the National Security Council innovations of the 2010s gave the intelligence services a much bigger voice at the table, and that is reflected in the structures that we have now. The UK should be well placed to be able to listen to the intelligence services, but I would encourage—not least to make sure that in this very delicate balance of trying to show that we still have an open economy and are not shutting the doors to investment—as much transparency as possible on the decision taking. It will not always be possible because GCHQ technologists will know about things—exploitations of particular bits of technology—that they cannot reveal. They will be able to tell that to secret forums within Government for consideration—I am quite confident about that: there will be a seat at the table for them.

My recommendation would be that, as far as can safely be done, the Government should be relatively open about why they make the judgements they make about strategic areas of technology and the interventions they will make once this Bill is passed—assuming that both Houses wish to pass it.

[Nadhim Zahawi]

Q Professor, that was excellent and I am very grateful for it. I will follow on from that thought and ask about the proposed powers within the regime for the Secretary of State to gather that information, which, as you quite rightly remind us, is not necessarily secret but about understanding the technology, or a particular piece of the technology, within the sector. What are your thoughts on the regime for the Secretary of State to be able to gather that information to inform a decision or to call in witnesses, so that they are able to really understand that particular issue and therefore make a decision on it?

Professor Martin: I suppose the mantra, if I had one, would be, “Broad powers, sparingly used, with accountability mechanisms”. It is incredibly hard to be specific about this, for two reasons: one is that new areas of technology crop up, as they invariably do, and the other is that sweeping categorisations are needed on the face of legislation.

I am not a deep technical expert—although others are available from my former organisation—but if you take sweeping, umbrella titles like “quantum” or “artificial intelligence”, there are huge swathes of that where, actually, not a lot of these powers in the Bill will be used. There will be companies that will be doing very interesting things—10 interesting things—of which only one would be caught by this Bill.

If you take areas like specialist quantum computing and so forth, I think the community of interest and expertise is actually relatively small and has relatively good relations with Government—not least because, again, while it is not perfect, the whole system of research council funding and Government investment in funding technological research is pretty good, by international standards—so you end up knowing these people. One of the reasons that this sort of policy evolution came about, which has led to the publication of the Bill before you—I remember this from discussions within Government—is that people were volunteering to come to us. World-leading experts, people who had been funded by the Government—I will not go into individual cases because it is commercially sensitive and possibly security sensitive—would come to Government and say, “Look, we’ve had this inquiry from a Chinese behemoth,” or even, “We’ve had this inquiry from a US company,” and so forth: “What do you guys think about this?” and, invariably, we would have to have an informal influencing discussion.

I do not think that some of the businesses to which this will apply will be screaming that this is horrible Government regulation and intervention in areas where that should not be made. There was already a dialogue; there was just no legislative framework. Of course, that meant that companies that felt a loyalty to the UK and so forth but that also had to look after their commercial interests were sometimes in a real bind.

To try to answer your question, I think that the powers should be fairly broad. I think there should be accountability and transparency mechanisms, so that there is assurance that they are being fairly and sparingly applied.

--- Later in debate ---

[Peter Grant]

To be fair, there is nothing to stop MPs from asking questions about international security, but the chances of us ever getting an answer may be somewhat less.

[Chi Onwurah]

Q You have placed a lot of emphasis on the right technological skills and said that they should be forward looking, for a number of reasons, including identifying new technologies, but also giving clarity and certainty to businesses. Where do you see those tech skills being located? How can the Bill ensure adequate appropriate access to them?

Professor Martin: I am not sure if the Bill will get in the way or help, one way or the other. I think Government technological nous across the civil service needs to be invested in properly. There is a deep, fairly sizeable reservoir in GCHQ. Again, without going into too much detail, more and more people are being transferred and seconded from there into other areas. That is a good thing, and we should welcome that rather than cast aspersions on this being all secret state stuff. It should be permeating normal Government activity.

There will be issues about how to pay for some of the specialists that are needed. I do not think we will ever compete with the big tech companies, but there may be scope for paying some specialists a bit more and bringing them in here. There is something about creating a career path for technologists in Government. There are big issues for the heads of the civil service and the permanent secretaries. If I were heading it, I would want an immediate infusion of seconded talent and private sector buy-ins relatively quickly. Government can do that quite well some- times, and sometimes not so well. There also needs to be a long-term strategy for technologists in Government.

National Security and Investment Bill (First sitting)

Chi Onwurah Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 24th November 2020 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

Thank you very much. I call first Chi Onwurah.

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

Q It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship in this Committee, Mr Twigg. Thank you very much for joining us, with your extensive background, Mr Parton. As you know, we have an investment screening regime under the Enterprise Act 2002 that has led to 12 interventions on national security grounds since the Act came in. Which security threats do you feel are not covered by those existing public interest powers? While we have been waiting for the Government to act on this front, are there specific instances where you think the Government should have acted but did not exercise their powers, or did not have the relevant powers to exercise?

Charles Parton: I would not profess to be an expert on individual cases, but I would like to make some general response to your excellent question. The first point to make is that the Government have not really been attending to the problem with the attention that they should, given the nature of the threat, particularly from the Chinese, although others may be relevant too. I do not think that there is the structure for actually assessing the degree of the threats; I think that 12 cases since 2002 is very few indeed, when you look worldwide at the Chinese programme for technology acquisition, both under and over the table. That in itself shows that there has been insufficient attention paid to the issue.

The delay in the Bill is also regrettable, because the threat has been fairly clear for some time. I would urge the Government, first, to research the question, which is the one you asked, of to what degree in the past have the Chinese in particular bought up technology companies, the acquisition of which was greatly against our interests? That work could and should be done.

I am an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, which has a team that has been looking through technology at a number of questions, but it could quite easily divert that team to look at this question, which needs China expertise and the ability to search through a lot of open data, which it has. I am not a member of the Government, but I am not aware that the Government have done that sort of research to establish the full degree of the problem.

From the point of view of the threat—if you will excuse me, as this is the first question, for putting a little bit of context to it in terms of the China thing—it is undoubted that there is nothing wrong with investment. In fact, that is extremely good. We want as much investment and good relations with China as with everyone else, but we need to recognise that there is a values war going on. I have written an article about that, which came out in the Conservatives’ China Research Group report a week or so ago.

This is not a cold war, because China is very important to us for trade, investment and many global goods, and it is a science and technology power, but we should not underestimate the degree to which Xi Jinping and the Communist party intend, as Xi said to the first politburo meeting, to get the upper hand against western democracies. He talks about us being hostile forces and about a big struggle all the time. When you add that to his policy of civil-military fusion—using civil in the military context—and the fact that he has set up a party organisation specifically to push that forward, and the change in investment policy away from things such as property, football clubs and other things, very much towards benefitting China and its technology, we have to be a lot more careful than we have been in the past.

The first step for that is to do the research. I am not aware of a really good assessment of just how much technology has been bought, the targets and so on. Maybe the Government have one—I don’t know—but I do not think that they do.

[Chi Onwurah]

Q Thank you very much for that response. I certainly agree with you on the delay in addressing this critical issue. I appreciate your experience, particularly with China, which obviously, as you say, has made a number of technology acquisitions.

I was particularly interested in the civil-military fusion, if you like, of China’s technology ambitions. Could you say a little more about how the Chinese see nascent technologies that are indirectly critical to downstream industries that supply our national security? I am trying to understand how, if you like, we differentiate between industrial strategy and technology to ensure that we have leading defence and national security capabilities. Is there a distinction that we can make there? Do we need to do further research, as you suggest? Do the Chinese make that kind of distinction? Do we need to address some elements of our industrial capability when we consider national security?

Charles Parton: We should widen this not only to companies, but to academia, if I could come back to your question from this angle. We have the phenomenon at the moment of Chinese companies, one might say, hiring our academics, in one way or other, to do scientific research on their behalf. Some of that is probably something that our defence establishment and security establishment would be pretty upset about if they were aware of it.

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. If you are researching, on behalf of the Chinese, drone technology, cryptography, gaits— Gait is very important for gait recognition. We have facial recognition and voice recognition, but in circumstances where people are wearing masks or there is bad weather, gait is an absolute identifier. Again, are these bad technologies? Well, there are perfectly good civilian uses for them, no doubt, but there also military and surveillance uses. I think we need to be very clear on what our academics, as well as our companies, are doing.

To give you another example, if you go on the website of one of the top Oxford mathematician professors, he has now retired and set up a company with a base in Shenzhen. He is an absolutely top mathematician and does the most abstruse things in cryptography. Should one of our top mathematicians be helping the Chinese in cryptography? Well, there are perfectly good and innocent uses of cryptography, I presume, for things such as banking and e-commerce, and there are perfectly not good uses of it, in military and surveillance and other things. I have no idea whether that is something we should be concerned about. On the face of it, it strikes me that we should be.

I think we need to broaden the scope—forgive me if this is outside the Committee’s scope; you are only looking at the Bill—because the whole question of defence of technology needs to be looked at, in terms of whether we are strengthening a hostile foreign power, but also let us not forget the reputation of British companies and universities. If you look at what is going on in Xinjiang, for instance, with the concentration camps there—activities that quite definitely meet the definition of crimes against humanity under article 7 of the International Criminal Court’s Rome statute, or article 2 of the UN genocide convention—should our companies and universities be helping with technologies that can be used to strengthen that surveillance and that repressive regime? What is the difference between that and South African apartheid or some of the other things that we have seen in the past? Increasingly, the excuse of, “Well, we didn’t really know what was going on,” has gone, and companies and academia will have to be much more careful of their reputation. I have slightly moved away from the nub of your question. Perhaps you could just push the tiller a bit and put but me back to the centre of it again.

[Chi Onwurah]

Q I think you addressed the core of my question. I really like your phrase “defence of technology”, rather than the technology of defence, because the question was around how you distinguish in the industrial strategy between specific security concerns and the development of technologies that give us capability in those sectors. Can we identify at what point that becomes a national security concern?

Charles Parton: That is sort of way outside my technical expertise, but I would certainly say that one major criticism I have of the Bill is that you have to set up the right structure to be able to do that. I am not sure that the Bill’s putting everything in the hands of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and its Secretary of State is the right answer.

Let us take Huawei and the debate we had over the last couple of years, as well as the various flip-flops that have gone on. One might add flaps, as well as flip-flops, actually. There has been a big a division between the so-called economic and security Ministries. It is right that both have a say in the decision. Economic interests are very much at stake, but so are security interests. If you put everything into the hands of BEIS, which probably does not have the expertise on China—certainly not in the defence, security and surveillance realms, although not unnaturally, since its job is to encourage investment—you will perhaps find that the security and repression elements are not given sufficient weight, and more to the point, the perception will be that they are not given sufficient weight. We might therefore go back to this sort of business with Huawei, where there is a fight back and another fight back and so on.

What we actually need is an organisation that is made up of people on all sides of the debate and that has some real experts who actually understand what the technology means. One specific example I came across a year or so ago was a very interesting computer game. Fine. What is wrong with that? Well, I understand that it was then bought up by the Chinese and used to train fighter pilots. You cannot defend against everything, but you at least need some unbiased experts—a sort of, if I can use the words, Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies—who would be there to advise, and then decisions would actually be accepted by all sides, not questioned.

On occasion, I am sure that questions would be put up to the National Security Council and the Prime Minister for decision if they were really important. However, the issue is often about very small companies with some very interesting technologies that have not been established. The Chinese are extremely efficient at hoovering around, finding them and buying them up early. I am not convinced that the structure and decision making of the whole process are right.

[Nadhim Zahawi]

Q Good morning, Mr Parton, it is great to see you. Without going further on your last point, I want to reassure you that the Bill is designed to deliver a quasi-judicial role for the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. The team’s infrastructure will be pulling in all parts of Government expertise. My question is this: how do you think the current challenge of covid has exposed national security threats through investment? What are you seeing? How do you see the behaviour of malign actors anywhere in the world at a time of covid?

Charles Parton: I think what covid has done is expose the nature of the Chinese Communist party, in answer to your question. I hope that it has brought home to people the nature of the beast. Looking at what happened, China did not do so well to start with, and its people were pretty upset with it. China then used its external propaganda machine to right its domestic problem, pushing forward the line, “Look how badly the foreigners have done, and look how well we are helping the foreigners out of the mess,” while hiding the fact that it had allowed the virus to propagate so fast in the first place. To many people in democracies, that brought home the fact that the Communist party of China is prepared to use that against us.

Where the Chinese Communist party was unhappy with how countries were acting, it started to put them under pressure and made threats about the delivery of personal protective equipment or whatever. Australia is really taking it in the neck at the moment because it had the temerity to ask—perfectly reasonably—for an investigation of the origins of the virus, which is essential for scientific and preventive purposes. Look at the political pressure on Australia. There is absolutely no doubt that where the Communist party sees an opportunity to use whatever is going on at the moment, it will do so.

The question that I have continuously asked is this: to what degree is investment threatened by a country such as the UK, Australia or Canada standing up for its own interest? We are not actually attacking China, but we are saying, “Sorry, but we have our own interests and our own security. You wouldn’t allow the equivalent in your country, possibly rightly, and we are not allowing it here because we are defending our security, in this case.” To what degree is the tool of depriving someone of investment a real threat? I have urged in a number of papers that the Government look at that in dispassionate terms. The China-Britain Business Council recently put out a paper, but I would not describe it as dispassionate. That is for the Government to do. My own feeling is that the likely conclusion is that, on the whole, the threats are pretty hollow. Chinese investment is not done for charitable reasons.

Since 2017—the high point was 2016—China has cut back on investment. Beijing was getting pretty annoyed at the way money was seeping out not in line with its policies, but investment is now more tightly controlled and aimed at the acquisition of science and technology. To what degree are we vulnerable? This is not charity. Money is very cheap at the moment; it can be got at negative interest rates. It is not as though China is the sole source of money. It invests because it wants technology. Surely we have to look at that carefully and ask where is the mutual benefit. If it is mutually beneficial, fantastic, let us go ahead. Let us not be too brow-beaten by this thing—that if you do not do x or y, or if you do not take Huawei, we will hit your investment. I think, in practice, if you look at that and then look at some of the other threats that China has made over the years, including to your exports, all those have grown for all countries, although they had been in the diplomatic doghouse historically—certainly in the past; we will see about the future—but I think it is greatly exaggerated.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Kinnock]

Q Thank you very much, Chair, for giving me another bite at the cherry. Mr Parton, as a final point, I thought it might be useful to remind the Committee of the symbiotic nature of the relationship between the Chinese Communist party and the Chinese business community. Based on your extensive experience in China, could you briefly outline how the Chinese Communist party in essence runs the business community; the role that it plays in ensuring executives are appointed who are sympathetic to the party; and the whole way in which the nomenklatura works? That will help us to understand the extent to which Chinese business interests in this country are, in essence, the same as the interests of the Chinese Communist party.

Charles Parton: That is a very good question.

[Chi Onwurah]

Could I just add to that? That is an excellent point, but could you also say a little bit on how China responds to proposed takeovers that might implicate its national security, if those takeovers are allowed? How does it respond to that investment into its companies?

Charles Parton: Those are both good points. First of all, divide it into the state-owned sector and the private sector. In terms of the state-owned sector, the top executives of the big state-owned companies are appointed by the central organisation department of the party. That is the organisation that is, as Mr Kinnock has said, in charge of the nomenklatura: the top 3,000 to 4,000 party officials. Of course, a lot of state-owned companies are also owned at the provincial and lower levels, and there, too, the top executives are party members and beholden to the party. Let us not forget that most foreign investment by the Chinese is state owned, so it is not just a fair bet but a fair certainty that any state-owned enterprise investing is fully politically controlled.

When it comes to the private sector, Huawei has spent a large amount of its time insisting that it is a private company—I really do not care. And I do not really care that the national security law says that any individual or organisation must help the party or security organs when called upon. The brute fact is that, in the way the system is run in China, if the party tells you to do something, the only response from private business to an order is to say, “Certainly, Sir. How high do you want me to jump?” so this debate is entirely irrelevant. The party is now pushing committees into all private enterprises—foreign and local—and it would be a very unwise head of a private company who said, “No, Mr Xi Jinping. I don’t think so.” If nothing else has been shown by what has happened with Jack Ma, China’s second-richest person, and the Ant Group finance company in the last few weeks—there are, of course, financial risk reasons they might want to control Jack Ma’s Ant Group—it is, “Sorry, you are beholden to the Communist party.” That was a very fierce reminder of it.

In terms of this debate, I do not think we should be under any illusion that if a party says to a company about its technology or whatever, “Well okay, it’s all very well that you’ve got that, but we want it fed into our People’s Liberation Army organisations and science and technology system,” no company is going to say, “Oh no, that’s not right. We won’t do that.” For instance, when Huawei says, “If we were asked to do something against our commitments, in terms of what we do abroad, that would threaten security, we would not do that,” it is rubbish. They know that.

[The Chair]

I am afraid that brings us to the end of this part of the session. Mr Parton, I thank you on behalf of the Committee for your evidence and the clear, concise answers you gave. We must now move on to the next session. If Members want to take a comfort break for a couple of minutes, I am happy to do that.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

Thank you so much for being a witness.

[Chi Onwurah]

Q Thank you very much, Sir Richard, for bringing your expertise to the Committee. The existing powers for intervening in transactions on national security grounds came in when you were chief of MI6. How have security threats evolved since then? Specifically, which security threats do you consider are not covered by existing public interest powers? It would be helpful to hear whether you think the Government have missed specific threats, or types of threat, by relying only on historical powers, and by not bringing in new legislation until now?

Sir Richard Dearlove: Wow. That is a massive question. Bear in mind that a large part of my career related to the cold war. In that period, our main concern was the Soviet Union and the members of the Warsaw Pact. It was characteristic of that period that there were heavy controls, mainly exercised through NATO structures, to prevent strategic material from leaching, as it were, into the economies of the Warsaw pact. I will not go into all the mechanisms. Historically, one does not need to worry about those now, but it was very much an issue that was at the forefront of people’s minds during that period of the cold war. Bear in mind also—I think this is important in looking at the broader context of what you are interested in—that the Soviet Union had hugely sophisticated what’s called S and T operations: science and technology. A whole line of Soviet intelligence of the KGB was devoted to obtaining strategic material that would help the Soviet economy, particularly in the military industrial complex.

This is now in the public domain: in the mid-1980s, there was a major intelligence success, which, interestingly, was conducted by the French, but in which the UK had an important role. We completely dismantled, or learned, exactly what the Soviet Union and its allies were up to on a global basis. We knew before, but we did not know the detail to that extent, and what we learned was pretty shocking. That case has not been greatly publicised, but it was probably one of the most important intelligence cases of the cold war.

With the break-up of the Soviet Union and the disintegration of the Soviet empire, particularly the economic structures that bound the Warsaw pact countries together, in the West our attitudes towards those issues changed very significantly. There was a much more laissez-faire situation and, as countries broke away from the Soviet empire, an enthusiasm to trade with them without the same degree of control.

During that period, you had the emergence of China, which was still very much a regional power but with aspirations to become a global power. To short cut, we have now transferred to China the concerns we had about the Soviet Union and its allies, but the problem with China in some respects is much more serious than the problem with the Soviet Union, although that was bad enough. Charlie Parton, who was talking to you before, is an expert on China specifically. I am not, and my view is maybe more strategic, although I had a lot to do with China when I was head of MI6.

If you look back at the emergence of China as a regional power, from the very start—when Mao was still alive and was then succeeded by Deng Xiaoping—its intelligence community focused on China’s economic growth. It was not particularly interested in what we would see as strategic or political intelligence. There is a famous passage in Kissinger’s book on China in which he is talking to Mao and Mao says to him, “We’re not interested in your politics because we have our own ideological view of the world, and I don’t really care what our intelligence service reports about what’s going on in the west.” What he did not say, but what was quite clear because it became evident subsequently, particularly under Deng Xiaoping, was that the primary purpose of the Chinese intelligence machine outside China was to contribute to the economic rebuilding of China.

We in the West have been, over a longish period of time, pretty naive and had forgotten the fundamental dangers of having a close relationship with China. I am not anti-Chinese or a cold warrior. I understand—and this is the complexity that lies at the heart of this legislation—that our economies in the West are tied to China’s. They are intertwined in a manner that did not exist during the cold war between the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union. Of course there were economic links with the Soviets but essentially the relationship was one of separation. But that is not the case any longer. We are intimately engaged with the Chinese economy. Our enthusiasm––I am using “our” in the broadest sense of the West’s enthusiasm––to trade with China and to have a close relationship and to build that relationship is thoroughly understandable, but in the process we have let down our guard and we have been extremely laissez-faire, as it were, in our attitude towards the commercial threat from China.

I remember very well on one of my visits to the far east, when I was coming out of China through Hong Kong, talking to a British lawyer who had been head of a legal office in Shanghai for a long time. He said, “Richard, you have got to understand one thing about the Chinese attitude to us: they don’t understand win-win. All they understand is ‘We win, you lose.’” However intimate and successful your relations with China may be economically, if you are too successful, you can absolutely guarantee that the Chinese will transfer that success to themselves in their own economic structures, having allowed you to run successfully for a period of time.

What we now know and understand is 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––I am thinking more about graduates, PhDs and post-docs––looking at areas of strategic interest to the Chinese economy, and they are organised by Chinese intelligence.

We need to conduct our relationship with China with much more wisdom and care. The Chinese understand us incredibly well. They have put their leadership through our universities for 20 or 30 years. We in comparison hardly know anything about China because we just do not have that depth of knowledge and experience. You have people such as Charlie Parton and many wonderful Chinese scholars who understand intimately, in particular, the workings of the Chinese state, but they are rare individuals who are now massively in demand in trying to educate people about the problem that we have on our hands.

I am not one who is saying that we have to hold China at arm’s length. It is impossible to do that because they are so intimately involved in our economy, but we have to understand where we restrict their access, where we control their access and where we do not allow them to build strategic positions at our expense and literally take us for a ride. If you go back a little way, we were incredibly naive about this, which accounts for the position we got into with Huawei. It was completely ridiculous that we should even have been considering Huawei to build our 5G. That is probably why you called me. I was heavily involved in lobbying MPs through these various structures. I am delighted that the Government have now taken a grip on this issue.

[The Chair]

Thank you. I have no leeway to go past 11.25 am, so please can we keep questions as succinct as possible.

Sir Richard Dearlove: Sorry. That was a long answer, but it is precisely the question one should be considering.

[Chi Onwurah]

Q Absolutely. I appreciate the response and I would like details of the Soviet case of the military-industrial complex that was dismantled, which you mentioned. That would be interesting to compare.

You have talked about the relationship between the military-industrial complex, in the case of Russia, and economic development, specifically in the case of China. We have essential industries that are critical to our economy and there has been concern that BEIS is going to be overseeing the security implications. Where we have industries and technologies that are critical for national security, they are also critical for our economic security, so our national and economic security end up being linked. You have talked about some of those links in the case of Russia and China. How can we reflect those links effectively in the Bill? Do we need structures within BEIS, or outside BEIS, to identify and reflect the overlap between economic and national security?

Sir Richard Dearlove: This is a really difficult question. I am expressing the problem, not the solutions. You have to bear in mind that I spent my life as a poacher, not a gamekeeper, so my view of these problems is mirror imaging. I was an offensive intelligence officer, not a defensive one. I spent my life trying to penetrate Chinese intelligence, if you see what I mean.

The problem is much bigger than just national security; that is one of the difficulties. It leaches into the whole future of our economic competition with China. I do not like to talk about it, but some people use the phrase “a new cold war”. I do not subscribe to that. We have to find some other way of talking about this. They are very serious competitors who are beginning to edge along the path of enmity in the way they treat us on some issues—witness Hong Kong at the moment—so you have to have some sort of flexible scrutiny arrangement.

The reason this is so difficult to comprehend is that areas like climate change and energy policy, which are national security issues but not right on the frontline, are so big that, I think, China has a pretty disturbing agenda for us. They will encourage us to follow policies that they think are disadvantageous to our economy.

If you take their statements on things like climate change, which is relevant to what we are talking about, China is going to go on increasing its carbon emissions up until 2030, if we look at the figures and understand its policies. China is going to completely miss out renewables. When it has generated enough wealth and success in its economy, it is going to jump from carbon energy straight to nuclear and hydrogen. It will have the wealth and the means to do that. Renewables for the Chinese are going to be rather peripheral, because they will not generate the energy intensity that the Chinese economy requires. China has a road map in its head that is really rather different from ours and there is no question but that, competitively, our green agenda is going to put us at an even greater disadvantage to China, if you take a 30-year view of that.

There are some very worrying aspects of this. That means that if we are gaily allowing the Chinese to walk off with all sorts of bits of our economy, we are going to pay possibly a pretty high price for that over a long period. We need to take a strategic view of this. China certainly has a strategy, and at the moment we do not really have a strategy. We are beginning to realise that we have to have one, and maybe this Bill is a healthy first step in that direction.

You will need sub-committees of some sort, with flexible thinking and experts to advise on where these problems lie. The difficulty is also that we do not want to ruin our economic relationship completely with China. We still need to partner with it in areas that are advantageous to us and our economy as well.

[Nadhim Zahawi]

Q The Bill provides for an annual report to Parliament, Sir Richard. What is your view on balancing transparency and ensuring Government can take national security decisions sensitively? Where does that balance lie in terms of our ability to be as transparent as we can without harming sensitivities around these decisions?

Sir Richard Dearlove: My view would be that the annual report has as much transparency as possible, but you are probably going to require a secret annexe from time to time. It is a bit like the reports of the Intelligence and Security Committee, which I dealt with frequently as chief. They and we were keen that they should publish their reports, but there comes a point where it is not in our national interest that some of this stuff is put in the public domain. I would be pretty clear cut on that.