National Security and Investment Bill (Third sitting)

Mark Garnier Excerpts

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

[Peter Grant]

Q Thank you. I will focus a bit more on the definition of a trigger event, and in particular the catch-all provisions that define when somebody becomes a person with significant influence or control over a company.

The Companies Act 2006 has similar requirements for a company to notify Companies House if certain things happen that put someone in a position of significant influence. From a lay person’s point of view, such as my own, some of those provisions are almost word for word the same in the Companies Act and the Bill. Some appear to have the same effect but the wording is different, and therefore there will potentially be occasions when the definition is different. Would there be benefits in completely aligning both pieces of legislation so that a particular event either has to be notified or does not have to be notified? Otherwise, there is the possibility that some events will have to be notified under the Bill, and other events will have to be notified under the Companies Act but not the Bill.

Christian Boney: In short, I think there would be benefit in having as much alignment as there can be. Clearly, the two pieces of legislation are not necessarily designed with the same intent and focus in mind. Yes, I think there is merit in having as much alignment between the two as there can be.

If I may, there is just one point about the trigger events that is worth considering. One of the points in the statement of policy intent in the context of trigger events is the Government considering the risk of espionage. That seems to me to be something that is worth thinking about in the context of this regime. At the moment, the trigger events are focused, as you were saying, on the ability to influence a particular company, but there are certainly circumstances where, without acquiring a level of shareholding that enables a person to influence the company, the person can nevertheless gain very significant access to information—for example, through a board seat, which might come at a shareholding of lower than, for example, 15%. That would give that person considerable access to information within the company.  If they were a hostile actor and they wanted to act in a nefarious manner, it would enable them to feed that information back to another hostile party. We have spoken about narrowing the scope of the regime, and I appreciate that that would be an amplification of it, but I think that is a point that is worth considering.

[Mark Garnier (Wyre Forest) (Con)]

Q I will carry on with the line you took just now about an investor’s potential influence over or access to a company. A little earlier, you were talking about start-ups who sought to get staged financing in order to try to build their businesses. Of course, there are more ways of getting investment than just getting equity. We know that if a business has a relatively small amount of equity but a huge amount of debt, the provider of the debt has much more influence over the company than perhaps the shareholders do. We saw that on the banking commission when we looked at the role of bondholders in influencing banks, compared with equity holders. Clearly the bondholders, in effect, had much more influence.

The other thing is that a start-up company can raise money in other ways. The Bill tries to make sure that we are not losing intellectual property, but a business can raise finance by licensing the intellectual property that we are trying to protect—I am not sure that that would come within the scope of this Bill—or even sell the intellectual property and license it back again. There are various other ways in which a company can raise finance, over and above equity, where there is a huge amount of influence or it falls outside the Bill. Clearly, crucial national infrastructure is a very different thing, but intellectual property is something that is very difficult to grab hold of; it is like trying to grasp a handful of sand. Given the objectives, I wonder how the Bill tackles those other areas, which seem to allow malign investors a way through.

Christian Boney: I think an important aspect of the Bill—this is one of the reasons why Lisa and I have described it as a broad regime—is that it does allow policing of the acquisition and control of assets, including intellectual property. In my experience, at least, that is quite different from what you see in other international regimes. Clearly, the acquisition of control of assets does not fall within the mandatory notification regime; nevertheless, it is helpful that the Government have the power potentially to exercise a voluntary call-in in respect of, for example, an acquisition or a licence of intellectual property.

[Mark Garnier]

Q And the debt issue—the fact that debt holders can be more influential over businesses than equity holders?

Christian Boney: That is certainly fair. I think the level of influence and control that a debt provider will typically get in what I will call the ordinary courts means that it is less likely—I am certainly not saying it is impossible—to be at the level of getting such granular, sensitive, let us call it operational information, which is the kind of thing we would really be concerned about. It would more be focused on getting access to financial projections, financial performance and that kind of information, which, although it can still be sensitive, is probably less sensitive than operational data. A balance needs to be struck, it seems to me, in the context of this legislation. Not having debt providers obviously within scope does limit the legislation, but does it strike an acceptable balance? My personal view is that, on balance, it probably does.

[Nickie Aiken (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

Q From your professional point of view and experience to date, what could be the long-term impact of the Bill on UK business and investors? Will the Bill help or hinder the global position on investing into the United Kingdom?

Lisa Wright: In many ways, the regime just brings the UK into line with major international peers. From that perspective, for people doing deals around the world who have already experienced those other regimes, it ought not to have any real negative impact at all, provided that BEIS can deliver on the aspiration set out of a slick and efficient regime, turning around notifications within sensible deal timeframes and providing the kind of informal advice and early engagement promised. That will be critical, particularly in the early stages of the regime. From that perspective, I do not think this should have a long-term negative impact on people wanting to do deals in the UK. As Christian was mentioning earlier, it may be a slightly different picture for the start-ups and the smaller companies where they are caught up in the mandatory sectors, but overall I think it is right that this can be viewed as the UK bringing itself into line with what else is going on around the world.

Christian Boney: I agree with that. That is the right assessment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Simon Baynes]

Q Thank you for your excellent evidence, Professor Martin. You said, if I understood you correctly, that the process needs to be relatively open about why it is making decisions, but I foresee problems, particularly where there are issues of confidentiality and national security. Would you explore that a little? I note that within the terms of the Bill, decisions will be subject to judicial review or appeal, and the Government will be able to apply for a closed material procedure to protect sensitive matters in such proceedings. It seems to me that there is a potential problem there in relation to commercial and national security information sensitivity, so the “openness” of the system might be fairly limited and it might not be as respected as it could be.

Professor Martin: I get that completely. I do not think 100% transparency will be possible in this case. Obviously, it will be judicially reviewable, but I am entirely unsurprised that there is an explicit provision for closed material procedures. It will be a minority, but there will be cases in which the reason why a particular aspect of a particular piece of technology is really sensitive—it will probably be highly specialised, and there might be a dozen people, of whom four serve in government, who actually understand why—cannot be published. Then, of course, there will be commercial sensitivities.

Having said all that, if you take, for example—these are real examples—the current debate around the potential use of offensive cyber, or the sort of allegations Edward Snowden made against Five Eyes countries in 2013, or some of the defences that the Government had to use in the 2000s about their role in the aftermath of 9/11 and Iraq and co-operating with US forces, in my view there is a clear distinction between being able to describe the operating environment and the sorts of thematic issues that you are dealing with, versus individual cases, which often contain extremely sensitive detail. National security organisations can say much more about the former than historically they have been willing to do.

In something like this, where we are talking about business confidence and how the country looks to potentially very friendly and helpful outside investors who like the UK, want to come here, want to put money here and like the high-quality research and the brilliant innovators and individuals, it should be possible to give them something that says, “In the course of the last year, we have looked at quantum resistant cryptography and here are the types of aspects of this that we are reserving and here are the bits that are more open” or that sort of thing, without disclosing anything sensitive. That is all you need to be able to say—these are the judgments. Let us say that the Bill becomes law in the middle of 2021, for sake of argument. By 2025 and the beginning of the next Parliament, the tech landscape will look very different. You will not want investors to be looking back at the debates you are having in the House now as a guide to the latest way in which the Government are applying this, or looking at drip feeds of information. You will want something official. It should be possible to do that.

[Mark Garnier]

Q I want to refer back to some earlier questions about the skills within the investigatory unit that would be within BEIS. With your knowledge of Government, do you see any sort of experiences that can be carried over from the export control joint unit within the Department for International Trade? They do not have all the skills there, but they draw on skills from other Departments, particularly when it comes to arms export control and the eight consolidated criteria. Do you think there is potentially an opportunity in the day-to-day structure of the investigations unit for some lessons to be learned and carried across from the ECJU? Or do you think that is irrelevant?

Professor Martin: I do not know the ECJU that well, but it is relevant. I remember, although it was some time ago, being asked for specific inputs into that sort of point. The important thing is that the unit achieves a prominence and reach across the Government, because bits of Government will have to be involved occasionally and there will be bits that will be embedded. It needs a home—in our system of government, every organisation needs a home with a responsible Minister and an accounting officer and all that. However, I do think this needs to be broadly based and multidisciplinary. Export controls are one of the few areas where we have had to do that consistently for a number of years, so I agree that it is well worth a look.

[Mark Garnier]

Q Do you think it should be formalised or do you think an informal relationship with other Government Departments will be adequate?

Professor Martin: I think it should be formal. The Government are not new to this. There should be some sort of review board to make sure that it has the right resources, the right performance, the right skillset and so forth. I would encourage ministerial interest. It may be something that the National Security Council wants to periodically review. In my time in national security, there were standing issues that the Government would come back to twice a year, whether there was anything interesting happening on them or not, just to take stock. That might be an issue. In answer to the previous question about transparency, there may be a case for a formal presentation, secret detail and all, to the National Security Council every year, which would include all the potentially covert and sensitive stuff. It really needs to work with the grain of ministerial thinking as well. That will need to be done collectively, at some point, so there may be a role for the NSC.

[Peter Grant]

Q Good afternoon, Professor Martin. As part of the provisions for transparency and parliamentary oversight of the way the powers in the Bill would be used, the Bill would require the Secretary of State to have a statement approved by Parliament and then reviewed at least once every five years. Does that time period seem reasonable to you? Is there an argument for a shorter review period, especially in the early days when everybody will be feeling their way as to how the Bill works?

Professor Martin: There is a reasonable case for a more frequently reviewable point. There is also a cultural point about the way in which the political processes work. There are aspects of government about which questions are not routinely asked in Parliament, because they seem to be too secret. Again, it is a point about casework versus framework.

To my mind, there is no reason why the Secretary of State for BEIS could not be asked from time to time to update on this or why questions in the House should not be asked. I do not think technology changes fast enough that the whole framework of categories of regulated activity and so forth have to be updated more than every five years, but there will be a possibility of more frequent updates on working, approving listings and that sort of thing.