The statement made by Dominic Raab, the Foreign Secretary, on 19 November 2020.
Restoring cooperation is an important and constructive step towards peace. This is welcome progress and shows both sides are willing to put the needs and security of Israelis and Palestinians first.
We need to build on this momentum through further dialogue and compromise to move towards a lasting solution to the conflict.
The comments made by John Healey, the Shadow Defence Secretary, on 19 November 2020.
The PM promises a welcome and long overdue upgrade to Britain’s defences after a decade of decline since 2010. He is right to ‘end an era of retreat’ after the last two defence reviews have been a cover to cut defence spending by £8 billion and the size of the Armed Forces by 40,000 full time troops. This has weakened the foundations for this new funding.
The MoD’s challenge now is delivery, delivery, delivery. Ministers must make sure they put the new money to best use and avoid the mistakes of the past. They must close the £13 billion black hole in the defence budget, make good the big shortfall in troop numbers and build new military equipment in Britain.
There are big decisions that can no longer be ducked in the Integrated Review, including on tanks, aircraft for our carriers and the size of the Armed Forces.
Unlike previous reviews, Forces personnel must be at the heart of the Integrated Review. High tech weapons systems are essential but highly-trained Service personnel are indispensable.
The comments made by Nick Thomas-Symonds, the Shadow Home Secretary, on 19 November 2020.
These revelations could not be more serious.
This has all the hallmarks of a cover up from the Prime Minister and raises fundamental questions about his judgement.
His actions are all but condoning bullying in the workplace. In any other area of life this would not be acceptable. Yet again, it seems to be one rule for them and another for everyone else.
The report needs to be published in full immediately and both the Prime Minister and Home Secretary must come before Parliament to answer questions on this mess.
The comments made by Len McCluskey, the General Secretary of Unite the Union, on 18 November 2020.
I am astonished at the decision to withdraw the PLP whip from Jeremy Corbyn. This is a vindictive and vengeful action which despoils Party democracy and due process alike and amounts to overruling the unanimous decision of the NEC panel yesterday to readmit him to the Party.
This action gives rise to double jeopardy in the handling of the case and shows marked bad faith. The unity of the Labour Party around the need to implement the EHRC recommendations in full is being recklessly undermined.
The continued persecution of Jeremy Corbyn, a politician who inspired millions, by a leadership capitulating to external pressure on Party procedures risks destroying the unity and integrity of the Party. I urge Keir Starmer in the strongest terms to pull back from the brink.
The comments made by James Cleverly, the Minister for the Middle East and North Africa, on 18 November 2020.
Israel’s decision to advance the construction of 1,257 settlement buildings in the Givat HaMatos area of the occupied West Bank, would violate international law, and risks causing serious damage to the prospects for a viable Palestinian State.
We condemn this decision, which is incompatible with Israel’s declared goal of peace, and call for both the tender process and the advancement of other settlements in East Jerusalem and elsewhere in the West Bank to be suspended immediately.
The comments made by Wendy Morton, the Minister for the European Neighbourhood and the Americas, on 18 November 2020.
The impact of these hurricanes has been devastating, especially as the same region has been hit twice in a matter of weeks. Our thoughts are with those who have lost their loved ones and their homes.
The UK is increasing support to help those in need, through both our humanitarian and military assistance, providing life-saving shelter, clean water and medicine to people in desperate need.
The speech made by Ben Wallace, the Secretary of State for Defence, on 18 November 2020.
Good afternoon, it’s a great pleasure to speak to you at the end of what has clearly been a fascinating and wide-ranging conference.
The variety of speakers – over 45, from the UK and overseas, and military and civilian sectors, as well as academia and private industry – shows just how important space is, right across today’s society.
Such importance risks dependence and vulnerability, but it also creates opportunity and offers advantages.
That is why the Prime Minister has such a clear vision for the UK as a Great Science power, with credibility and ambition in Space at its heart. #F This conference has demonstrated how defence will play a central part in achieving that vision.
We’ve heard from the Chief of the Air Staff about modern society’s dependence on space services.
And we have been reminded how our adversaries are increasingly seeking to weaponise space.
In recent years more countries have used Anti-Satellite weapons.
Earlier this year, alongside the US Chief of Space Operations, I called out Russia’s aggression in orbit.
But space weapons are not our only concern. Ground-based lasers and jammers could also pose a significant threat to our satellites. And their supporting infrastructure on the ground also remains a serious target.
No wonder one of the constant refrains you have heard throughout this conference and, indeed, throughout this year of Covid, has been the importance of resilience.
Commander UK Strategic Command set out how we must become more resilient in space if we are to establish the ‘digital backbone’ and achieve Multi Domain Integration.
And we have now recognised space as an operational domain, driving the development of capabilities to increase resilience and competitiveness.
We are, of course, not the only ones and you’ve heard from many of our Allies in the US, France and NATO, are also alongside us, and they are going to be part of that journey as well.
But there are those steps through which I want the UK MOD to now lead on this journey:
First, our ability to mobilise.
We must recognise our vulnerabilities. Understand our reliance on space – whether for imagery, communications, or navigation. And, in the event that we lose access to our satellite services, have a contingency plan ready.
So, we’re working very closely with the UK Space Agency to create a National Space Operations Capability.
It will improve the way we share data.
It will help us act unhindered to secure our national interests in space.
And, alongside our UK Space Command, it will enhance defence’s ability to generate and operate its own equipment.
Second, resilience will be about modernising what we have – strengthening our existing capabilities.
That’s why we are bringing SKYNET into defence ownership. It will give our personnel the tools to operate a world-leading satellite constellation and ensure they stay at the cutting-edge of space experience and expertise.
And that’s why, back in July, we awarded a contract worth £500-million for SKYNET 6A. This new, more advanced satellite capability will provide continued communications support to the UK’s deployed forces for many years.
Meanwhile, we’re continuing the hunt for the latest space innovations.
I am delighted that our first ever International Space Pitch Day was so successful, and congratulations to the winning bids.
With innovations from space weather to space domain awareness, I wish these ten companies every success as they move forward with defence contracts.
Finally, resilience will be about transforming for the future. Going further and faster. Developing next-generation and generation-after-next, technology and the people and structures to exploit them.
That’s why we’ve created the Defence Space Enterprise Portfolio.
Bonding brilliant industry expertise with MOD’s Space Directorate and our world leading DSTL.
Transforming the latest research into game changing space innovations.
Not only deterring dangers but fast-tracking innovative kit to bring to the frontline of space.
Because resilience may be our watchword. But it goes hand in hand with opportunity.
Our evolving National Space Strategy will help us deliver those grand ambitions and defence will play its part – mobilising, modernising, and transforming.
So exciting times lie ahead. Last year we celebrated 50 years since the UK’s first venture into Space.
Since then the dynamism of you – our great British scientists, military and industrial experts – has not wavered.
And your continuing commitment will ensure that in the coming decade Global Britain takes its place as a Space Power in the new Space Age.
The comments made by Peter Kyle, the Shadow Victims and Youth Justice Minister, on 18 November 2020.
Any attempt to improve clarity on victims’ rights is welcome. However, the Government needs to go further and give these rights legal force, as the Victims’ Commissioner has argued.
It has now been five years since the Conservatives first promised a Victims’ Law. Through their inaction and mismanagement of the criminal justice system, this government has prioritised offenders over those most impacted by crime.
This cannot go on. There is no excuse for further dither and delay.
The speech made by Mark Logan, the Conservative MP for Bolton North East, in the House of Commons on 17 November 2020.
It is a great privilege to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat). I especially agree with him that the Minister and his team have been exceptionally good at communicating this over the past weeks, so long may that continue.
With the right clarifications, I stand to support the Second Reading of the Bill. It is incumbent on all of us here to think in terms of the contribution we can make to our collective livelihoods—a contribution of security, a contribution of transparency and a contribution of prosperity. On prosperity, the Minister and other colleagues have been working hard to assuage some of my concerns. I gravitate towards this side of the House because I believe in opportunity—the opportunity that overseas investors see in the UK to grow market share, reach new customers and develop cutting-edge technology, thanks to access to the brightest brains on the planet, and a confidence that a penny put into Britain today can become a pound tomorrow. We do not want the Bill to herald in uber-protectionism by stealth; otherwise I would have great difficulty in subscribing to it.
Foreign direct investment is a powerful contributor to the UK. Indeed, conservative estimates show that FDI has created over two Boltons-worth of jobs. That is 600,000-plus jobs, as the Minister actually told me last night, so I hope that is correct. Over 57,000 new jobs were created as a result of FDI in 2018-19 alone. The “World Investment Report 2019” showed that the total value of the UK’s inward investment stock was $1.89 trillion—the third highest in the world, and worth more than the figures for Germany and France combined. Indeed, the northern powerhouse has been one of the top winners from FDI. Manchester has been recognised as Europe’s fifth best large city for business, ranking ahead of places such as Rotterdam. Bolton is a significant recipient of FDI through, for example, the £250 million redevelopment of the Crompton Place shopping centre, and this is central to our town’s rebirth. We need to be on the ball, as the value of the UK’s inward FDI has been falling. In 2016, the value of inward FDI was equal to 10% of GDP, which fell to 2% in 2018. I welcome the new Office for Investment, as we must not lose out to friendly competitors on our own doorstep. FDI contributes so much to our economy and society.
Moving on to security and transparency, the Bill seeks to contribute by putting the UK on a similar footing to other major economies, such as the US, France and Germany. Indeed, the CFIUS regime in the US reviews certain foreign investments in businesses to determine whether such transactions threaten to impair US national security. That is a sound premise and one that every nation state should embody: protecting one’s core sovereign interest. Indeed, the Bill aims to offer more security for British businesses and people and protection from actors or, indeed, actresses harbouring malign intent.
I appeal to the Minister to ensure that the Government will only use their brand- spanking-new powers exclusively on national security grounds and not for broader economic or political measures. Mission creeping may lead to capital seeping. I encourage the Minister to articulate how to safeguard against spurious applications of the new powers. Some analogous screening systems are viewed as not transparent, such as those that do not give parties the opportunity to debate the conclusions. I understand the intention of our own UK version is to allow a quicker, slicker investment process for investors.
I also understand that a new digital portal will be made available to investors, and the Government have committed to a 30-working-day service timeline. Along with mandatory notification of investments in key sectors, that provides much-needed transparency for firms, while providing proportionate defence against those targeting sensitive UK assets.
Finally, my humble contribution to today’s debate will imminently fly towards the Minister, like a not quite national security-protected Airbus paper plane. Alas, I have penned a mnemonic. According to Hansard, the word “mnemonic” has only been used once in this House, and without actually producing one. This could be an epic fail, so the House should brace itself. I will give way to the Minister if he would like to intervene straight away or, indeed, anyone else in the Chamber who can rhyme off the 17 industries that may feature in this final legislation. If not, forever hold your peace. Silence—great. It goes like this, and it does not roll off the tongue. It is CQC—which we are all very familiar with—CASCADED MS TEAM. C is for communications. Q is for quantum technologies. C is for computing hardware. I could go on, but I will simply repeat again: CQC CASCADED MS TEAM. That, hon. Ladies and Gentlemen, along with the Bill’s contribution to security, transparency and prosperity, is how I would like to personally contribute to today’s debate.
The speech made by Darren Jones, the Labour MP for Bristol North West, in the House of Commons on 17 November 2020.
Before I begin my remarks, I should declare my interests as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on technology and national security and the parliamentary internet, communications and technology forum APPG, whose members will no doubt have interest in the Bill; as the chair of a global network of legislators interested in artificial intelligence regulation called the Institute of Artificial Intelligence; and lastly, in my capacity as Chair of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee, I have had discussions with the management of ARM, its founder Hermann Hauser and the CEO of Nvidia about the proposed takeover.
I support the Bill and thank the Secretary of State for briefing me on its contents last week. The ability to scrutinise foreign investment and to intervene when there are national security interests is not only a critical function of the state but an increasingly important one, given the impact of technology and data on every part of our economy and our infrastructure, and the use of that avenue to cause harm to Britain’s interests. It is on that basis that we should have a robust scrutiny function, but it should also be finely balanced with the transparent, clear and pro-investment framework brought forward under this Bill. I agree with other colleagues around the House that, by international standards, Britain has been a bit of a laggard in recent years in bringing forward a robust foreign investment regime, and that is why we support the Bill, but I have a few questions today, which I hope the Minister might try to answer in summing up.
First, on the definition of sectors, the 17 sectors identified include some dual-use functions such as quantum computing, which at this point in its development seems obvious and indeed is in line with the recommendations of the Science and Technology Committee inquiry into quantum computing in the last Parliament, when I was a member of that Committee. However, as has been noted, other sectors are identified merely as “artificial intelligence” or “energy”. Artificial intelligence, for example, is a general purpose technology that will increasingly apply to every aspect of our economy, so how we ensure robust and clear definitions will clearly be important.
It has been noted that there is a risk under the Bill of over-reporting as an insurance policy. I wonder whether lessons could be learned from other regulators—for example, by introducing regulatory sandboxes within the units in the Department where interested individuals might be able to come to set forward in advance the transaction and get some initial advice on whether it falls within the definitions. If it does not, I think there will be a risk of over-reporting, but also of court cases that dispute the definitions, which, in their own right, can be fairly limited in statutory instruments and will probably not apply to every circumstance. I reaffirm the comment from the Opposition Front Bench on engaging with Parliament on the sector definitions under the statutory instruments—and not just with Parliament as a whole but with the relevant Select Committees, including my own. I also note the interest of my hon. and right hon. Friends from the Science and Technology Committee, the Foreign Affairs Committee and the Defence Committee in this matter.
Secondly, on the definition of national security, there has been some debate in advance of the publication of the Bill on whether the Government were intending to go beyond national security and to look at broader economic or jobs-related issues. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband), the shadow Business Secretary, said from the Dispatch Box, we think that there is some legitimacy to Ministers having a right to intervene when, for example, a major employer or a sector that is strategically crucial to the British economy is under threat from a legitimate overseas acquisition that could have an impact on British jobs or British industrial capacity. I welcome the comment that this is a broader industrial strategy conversation and note the Department’s intention to rewrite that, as previously advised before Christmas, although it will presumably now take longer. I look forward to that broader debate, but I agree with colleagues on a cross-party basis that at least some legal structure around the definition of national security would be helpful, for reasons I will come on to later.
Thirdly, this is not just about mergers and acquisitions; as the Government’s Project Defend assessment has shown, there are very long supply chains relating to critical national infrastructure, through which components are sourced from companies in jurisdictions about which Ministers might legitimately have national security concerns. I would be interested to hear whether Ministers plan to expand the scope of the Bill or bring forward other legislation in future to deal with supply chain intervention, in addition to or alongside merger and acquisition issues.
I also note that while clause 7 of the Bill covers all the corporate vehicles such as limited liability partnerships, trusts and limited companies, it excludes individuals. This is probably very limited, because individuals would not want to take on the liabilities of buying big companies, but I am sure there are potential cases where individuals will buy intellectual property or assets in their own individual right, whether it is a licence to intellectual property or actual property, as my right hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) mentioned, and they would fall out of the scope of this Bill. I would be interested in the Minister’s view on that.
Fourthly, the application of the Bill applies from the date of presentation, not from the date the Bill becomes law. It would be useful, given that this is now the regime in the UK, for the Department to set out what current takeovers will be subject to it. Colleagues have mentioned the ARM-Nvidia takeover, which of course is important to the British economy. I understand from press reports that the Department has not felt able to confirm whether that will be subject to this legislation, but I think it would be in Ministers’ interests to be quite clear about that.
Equally, I would stress again the comments from the Opposition Dispatch Box about the length of retrospectivity. Five years seems a very long time, and I would be interested to understand why a period of five years has been adopted by the Government. One of the attractive natures of the British economy is our policy stability and the way in which the rule of law functions, and I share the concern that five years is a long time. There could be a change of Government, a change of Ministers, a change in leadership in the unit in the Department or a change in the view on national security that could start to unwind a transaction many years after it had gone through. Ministers need to consider that carefully.
Fifthly, we are still waiting for confirmation of the Government’s intentions for our post-Brexit competition and state aid policy regime. Ministers have been quick to table statutory instruments to say that the European regime will not apply from 1 January but have not yet set out what will. The Bill is implicated in that process. It is the start of a post-Brexit state aid and competition policy. If the Minister feels able to give us a bit of a glimmer in his closing remarks about when the details of our post-Brexit competition and state aid policy might be published, I would be grateful.
Lastly, I am not entirely clear what the assessment process is under the Bill. In previous examples, such as the hostile takeover of GKN by Melrose, in which I declare a constituency interest, the national security assessments were undertaken by the Secretary of State for Defence and, perhaps for fair reasons, were done without much oversight or transparency. Given that all those sectors will now be subject to national security assessments, will it be the Ministry of Defence, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, the intelligence services or another body that undertakes them? It would be useful to have some transparency about who is making the assessment and how the Secretary of State will ultimately balance very difficult decisions.
In sum, I will support the progress of the Bill. I share some concerns about the speed and why it has been brought forward so quickly, and I reiterate my point about the statutory instruments, therefore, being an important part of parliamentary scrutiny when they are introduced. I hope that Ministers will engage fully in the consultation process with stakeholders to ensure that the new framework is not only fit for purpose but gets the crucial balance right between national security concerns and maintaining Britain’s leadership as a pro-investment economy that fits with our broader regulatory position post Brexit.