I thank the Minister for her introduction. I should declare an interest as chair of Ombudsman Services, which deals with customer complaints regarding telecommunications.
I was delighted to hear the noble Baroness extol the virtues of an EU directive, which I think was a bit of a novelty, coming from a Minister. It is sad that we have only three speakers on such an important SI. After all, it encompasses a whole Bill’s-worth of changes to our communications laws. When I first looked at it, I thought, “Well, all I can do is to try to stop the ship sailing on regardless and stick an oar in here and there”, because quite a few substantive issues are involved.
The Government response to the consultation on implementing the European electronics code states:
“a ‘copy out’ approach to the Directive”
is being taken
“where we consider change is needed in UK legislation”,
but in line with
“our overarching approach of a minimal transposition”.
I am not quite sure that we can have it both ways. I am going to kick the tyres on the “minimal transposition” aspect, because the Minister seemed to be quite positive about the impact the directive will have on investment and rollout of our 1 gig capability.
The response also says:
“In some cases, we will adopt an alternative approach to transposition to certain provisions in a way that is tailored to UK markets. We take this approach where there is sufficient justification and evidence for doing so, for example, where it would contribute to the government’s ambitions for digital connectivity.”
We heard some of the positive approach, but I am not quite sure whether we fully heard the more minimal approach. We have heard about further aspects—I think the Minister said that there are two categories they are considering—but we did not hear in the interim about where a minimal approach had been taken.
The Government set out three categories in the response:
“Articles which we consulted on given their potential to support the UK’s digital ambitions”—
fine;
“Incremental changes to the existing framework which we intend to transpose in a minimal way”—
again, there is the use of the word “minimal”; and
“Deprioritised from 21 December 2020 deadline”.
The problem is that there is a rather inadequate approach to this issue in both the Explanatory Notes and the response to the consultation. There is no easy breakout of what changes fall within the three categories. You have to rather laboriously cross-refer when you get to the table which glosses annexe A of the response. I therefore hope that the Minister will forgive me if I go through a few aspects of the statutory instrument and ask a few questions.
The fundamental flaw is where the consumer comes in all this. The list of respondents to the consultation consists solely of telecoms companies. As we go through certain areas, can we be sure that the way the Government have transposed the directive is acting in the best interests of consumers?
The Government say that the transposition of the code
“recasts the objectives and regulatory tools of the current”
European framework on electronic communications
“to place a stronger emphasis on incentivising investment”.
They say that:
“The Regulations support the government’s digital ambitions and plans to deliver nationwide gigabit-capable connectivity ... This will enable Ofcom to support deployment and investments in gigabit-capable networks … These include ensuring that Ofcom’s use of specific market regulatory tools promotes very high capacity networks. Ofcom are also required to promote measures that facilitate a competitive retail market for consumers.”
It would be useful if the Minister could unpack some of those statements. Are they going to speed up rollout? Are they going to make up for the fact that Covid-19 seems to have delayed that 1 gigabit capability rollout?
I can see the benefit of transposing Article 22 in terms of survey information and designation of areas where there is no planned coverage, but what are the other benefits? For instance, what substantive difference will these changes make to rollout of 1 gigabit capacity? Why only the minimum transposition of Articles 76 and 79? The Explanatory Memorandum states:
“There are specific conditions known as significant market power … conditions, which can only be imposed on providers with market dominance. Ofcom must analyse markets on a regular basis in what is known as a market review.”
The Government seem simply to have decided to swallow Article 61 whole and extend the market review to five years, increasing the maximum time between market reviews from three years to five. In a sense,
they are therefore making the situation worse from the competitive point of view. Of course businesses that were consulted prefer this, but what about consumers? Does that not precisely show up the problems with the original consultation?
Surely when major developments occur with great speed, as with a consolidation of digital assets—for instance, specialised mast companies such as Phoenix Tower with its significant market shares, or the joint venture between Liberty Global’s Virgin Media and Telefonica’s O2—these kinds of reviews are required at very regular intervals. There are some aspects which I unreservedly welcome, such as the new protection for certain end-users who purchase a bundle of services. There are the social affordability aspects, too.
When we come to the universal service obligation, we see a certain amount of changes. There is no change to the inclusion of affordability requirements, but it should be said in passing that the 10 megabits per second universal service obligation is still miserably unambitious. We have made that point many times before on these Benches and it was, of course, criticised by one of our own Select Committees. I hope that the Minister will give an indication of when it might change. It seems extraordinary that we have this ambition for 1 gigabit capacity, yet we are still hobbling along on 10 megabits per second as a universal service obligation.
What about the impact assessment? If all these provisions are to be so beneficial, as I hope they will be, why do the Explanatory Notes say that there will be an impact of less than £5 million on the economy? Surely the idea is to incentivise investment. Were we doing absolutely fine before we adopted this directive or was the Minister engaging in a bit of hyperbole? Where do we stand on the impact of these new regulations and what are the substantial changes? Will it mean faster rollout and, if so, in what respect?
It is interesting that the Minister’s colleague, the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, wrote a very percipient piece in the Telegraph in July. I think the headline was “It’s high time we fixed Britain’s patchy mobile networks”. How will all this contribute to that, or are the Government really just making a virtue out of necessity?
4.02 pm