My Lords, in moving this amendment I will also speak to the other amendments in my name in this group. I must first admit that I am a landowner, although I have not had any telecoms masts since 2017, when I sold a farm not very far from an area known to the noble Earl, Lord Devon—the uplands of Exmoor—on which I had three masts. One was a conventional commercial telecoms mast, one was an Airwave emergency services mast and the other was a community Airband mast under construction. I see this across the spectrum of what is necessary, what delivers something to the community—and to me—and is therefore of value and part of the incentive, and what fundamentally does none of the above.
The one that did none of the above was the commercial operator. I was encouraged to give consent on a piece of land because it had trees on it; an upland area was needed and the national park did not want the mast stuck in the middle of a piece of open moorland. That was fair enough, as the idea was that this would improve mobile communications in the area. It did nothing of the sort. Having set off with hope in one’s heart that that would happen, it was something of a delusion. Indeed, I used to have to walk up to the middle of a 30-acre field to pick up mobile phone signal from a different network—probably from south Wales on the other side of the Bristol Channel.
I thank a number of noble Lords from across the House who have been very helpful in formulating my views, as well as a number of external consultants whom I have spoken to. I thank the Protect and Connect campaign for its input and Jeremy Moody of the CAAV, which has already been mentioned, for his invaluable assistance. I also acknowledge the efforts and briefings of Speed Up Britain, although I do not agree with its explanations relating to site value or on matters of fairness and balance. I also ought to say that I am an ordinary subscribing member of the CLA, although I have not communicated with it directly on this Bill. So much for the declarations of interest and so forth.
For all the training and experience one has as a valuer—I am a registered valuer with the RICS—it is acknowledged to be an art, not a science. It is based on many constructs, including market sentiment, risk and a host of other internal and external factors, from which the valuer is seeking to interpret an end-result. They are interpreting what the market is doing and trying to codify and make sense of what is happening in what are sometimes quite random situations.
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In other words, it is the market that leads the process, regardless of how valuation theorists may try to analyse it. It is very important to bear that in mind.
One of the greatest influences on markets is government activity and the resultant expectation. It is a pity that government does not always seek the advice of its own internal expertise or, for that matter, that of independent bodies. Legislative history is sadly littered with the skeletons of failed initiatives.
One of the greatest impediments of government is the periodic belief in a limitless ability to control and direct markets, when, in fact, markets that function well are usually those that have the least interference and the greatest commitment by government to their operational proficiency. But like everything else, markets are overwhelmingly a voluntary undertaking. We all have choices. The Government intervene for reasons of overriding public interest, and traditionally for the benefit of public agencies, but this has morphed more recently because we now have private utility companies, and the working assumption here is that the big telecoms companies want to have the rights—particularly certain rights of compulsion—that have been accrued by the utility companies. However, I fear they wish to acquire them shorn of many of the protections of compulsory purchase in the Land Compensation Act, and other statutory provisions.
We have had a relatively free market in telecoms mast sites for about the last 30 years, up to 2017. Then the Government changed all that, and I admit that I had not anticipated the outcome of that change. The noble Earl, Lord Devon, explained to us, and we also heard on the first day in Committee, the results of that: namely, that market sentiment among site owners has to a material degree collapsed and there is a sense of disengagement. That can be measured by the number of deals concluded, and by the fact that disputes have escalated sharply in a manner never experienced in the pre-2017 period. If you look at who is taking who to a tribunal, you will see that it is seemingly driven by site operators taking cases as a means, one supposes, of driving home their version of a bargain.
The balloon has gone up, in that mast site operators and network operators are seen as having resorted to a slightly crafty inversion of law and practice. I think it is regrettable that there is a sentiment that suggests that site owners are a type of greedy usurer. I am unconvinced by this business of site rentals being too high. In many instances, it is no more than one would expect to pay for a handful of lock-up garages in a suburban location or a relatively smallish area of open storage land. The aggressive tactics that have been complained about arose because people can get away with it, and it is no longer seen as a good sector for the lessor. If you want good relationships, you do not resort to such tactics, particularly if you wish them to be long-term.