My Lords, I declare my interests as a site owner and NFU member. I agree with every word that the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, has said. I am astonished by this piece of legislation from a Conservative Government.
Amendments 19 and 22 aim to address the issue of valuation, one of the most significant concerns with the code. As other noble Lords have said, the “no scheme” valuation methodology introduced into the code in 2017 prevents courts taking into account sites’ potential use as provision for an electronic communications network. This allows operators to drive down the rents they pay to site providers, often by over 90%.
I was involved in negotiations for one of the two masts on my land and was lucky that I had only a 70% reduction. It was not so important for me, but this forces small businesses, sports clubs, community groups and hospitals to accept derisory amounts for the use of their land. It also reduces the motivation for operators to pursue consensual deal-making, in turn slowing down rollout as they can get greater discounts through the courts. As noble Lords have said, it also reduces the incentives for landowners to offer sites for masts in the first place—not an advantageous outcome for the Government’s mobile connectivity.
Amendments 20 and 21 are rather more impactful than Amendments 19 and 22, in that they would stop the Government’s “no scheme” valuation regime being extended to cover the roughly 15,000 telecoms sites governed by the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954 and the Business Tenancies (Northern Ireland) Order 1996. This would have the effect of ensuring that the rent on these 15,000 sites would continue to be set at market value, as is the case today. Importantly, this would prevent them being subject to the issues that have plagued sites governed by the code ever since the 2017 reforms.
Although I suspect the Minister will be opposed to these amendments, they are fully aligned with the Government’s repeated claim that this Bill does not address issues of valuation. How can the Government
possibly continue to make that claim if, by their own admission, 15,000 new sites will have their rental value slashed from the moment this legislation comes into force? We are simply trying to ensure that the legislation delivers the Government’s stated policy intent. Parties on all sides of the debate have acknowledged the significant challenges created by the 2017 reforms to the code. It is only right that these changes are not imported wholesale into the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954 and the Business Tenancies (Northern Ireland) Order 1996, when there is no evidence whatever that the 2017 reforms have delivered the Government’s intentions.
I was very grateful, together with the noble Earl, Lord Devon, to the Minister for the meeting yesterday, but one problem seems to be that information provided by the operators, for confidentiality reasons maybe, has not been disclosed to us even though we have asked for it; that is a very frustrating thing. I am also very sad that His Majesty’s Government have paid no attention to influential, independent reports from the IEA and the Centre for Economics and Business Research stating the problems with this legislation. The CEBR report says—
“The government’s ECC changes have not delivered a faster 5G rollout, and it is slower than the pre-2017 status quo. The new proposals do not remedy this. But for the 2017 reforms, 8.2m more people would have had 5G coverage by now than currently can access it. This will persist in the long-term: national 5G coverage by 2022 will be worse than if there had been no changes to the ECC at all. The government’s proposed changes to the ECC will cost UK GDP £3.5bn by 2022, and fail to bring 5G coverage to where it would have been pre-2017.”
The Government want more growth; this legislation does not seem a good way to provide it.