First, I thank the Minister and his officials for corresponding and meeting with me to discuss the Bill. That said, it is a shame that the Government in Motion A have set their face against Amendment 17, which is seeking a review of the Bill within three months, particularly as the festering problem at the heart of the Bill is the valuation method, which was not even a subject of consultation in preparing the Bill.
This legislation legalises extortion. It allows operators to strip site owners of their property rights and to confiscate their incomes, in some cases even retrospectively clawing back site rents paid under legally binding agreements. The Digital Economy Act 2017 has not led to the market being “settled down”, as the Government claim; it has, in fact, produced a steep rise in long and expensive tribunal cases. That rise would be far steeper but for the inequality of rights and resources between telecoms companies and the site owners, meaning that
very few can afford to fight their cases. The Government’s claims that agreements are consensual, or can be solved by voluntary alternative dispute resolution, ring hollow when the law is so one-sided and the site owner is threatened by operators throughout any so-called negotiation with expensive court action. The fact is that the pendulum of power has swung way too far in favour of the operators.
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DCMS claims that the money the telecom companies save by imposing rent reductions using this legislation is essential to achieving 5G rollout. It bases this claim on some shaky, secretive and one-sided evidence provided by the operators. The Government’s own predicted fall of 40% in rents, which the previous speaker referred to, has, by their own admission, been a 63% fall and, in some cases, 90% or more. As to whether this money is actually needed by the operators, when I asked DCMS even to estimate how much this sum would be for the large and profitable telecoms companies—how much they would actually save—DCMS had no idea of the amount, nor was it able to identify any guarantees that these savings would be passed on to consumers rather than simply enriching the telecoms companies.
This money, which had a huge impact on the site owners, is being removed from communities, small enterprises and farming families, thereby depriving them of much-needed funds to invest in their own businesses and activities locally. Are these operating companies really so hard up that they need to rob site owners in this way? I see in the Financial Times today that one of them is selling half its sites to a global private equity company. That should certainly raise a pretty tidy sum.
The House should also take note that the operators empowered by this legislation are not even regulated. At the heart of the problem is an absurd site valuation process that urgently needs to be reviewed and rebalanced so that site owners and operators can work as willing parties to achieve 5G rollout. As mentioned earlier, the House should note that this illogical valuation process was not included in the earlier consultation on this Bill.
I urge the Minister to listen to the concerns from all sides, notably from his own Benches in this House and the other place, as well as professional bodies in support of a review or at least to bring forward a meaningful government amendment to review the valuation method towards some valuation middle ground. He has not done so and no single amendment has so far been accepted by the Government. The telecoms operators which have lobbied so successfully for this opportunity to enrich themselves must be delighted with this early Christmas present. The families and the organisations being plundered may have a rather different view.