The Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure Bill, a relatively obscure piece of legislation, returns to the House of Lords tomorrow. Its effects however – if passed unamended – will be far from diminutive.
It will hand mobile phone companies further power to decide how much rent they as tenants pay for the properties on which mobile phone masts are located, and the terms of the lease of such properties.
It would be an unprecedented reversal of traditional property rights – a cornerstone of western liberal democracy and conservative values – serving to enrich some of the wealthiest and most powerful companies while eviscerating the rights of site providers. This should be anathema to all true conservatives who instinctively understand the healthy and symbiotic relationship between property rights and democracy as an assertion of individual freedom against tyranny.
This Bill matters because many of the parties who will be adversely affected by the changes the Bill promotes, including a forced acceptance of reductions of up to 99 per cent or more, are small community groups, including sports clubs, social clubs and churches.
They are the social glue that binds communities together, invariably run and managed by volunteers who give their time for free. Already ravaged by Covid, for many of them current rent agreements, although not large, are a financial lifeline, entered into in good faith but now open to unilateral manipulation by large corporate entities.
If we are not careful the PSTI Bill could lock in unfettered power for telecoms firms to rip up existing agreements and dictate the terms of their renewal. My honourable colleague Desmond Swayne made a fine point when he described it in Parliament as the most unconservative measure he had ever been asked to vote for.
Until recently, hard-working farmers, community groups, charities and churches were paid adequately and fairly for hosting telecommunications equipment on their land. The value of that lease was theirs to negotiate, based on market principles.
Changes made in 2017 distorted those market principles and, with them, the rights of property holders. It incorporated into legislation the principle that site provider and telecom operator must, under law, negotiate these leases as if the site and equipment had no special financial value to the telecoms networks. In other words, as if the mast weren’t there, and the two parties were merely bargaining over an unremarkable parcel of land.
The ostensible purpose of this change was to give the operators a monumental payday for them to reinvest in infrastructure. Yet there is little transparency or agreement over where the savings might actually go. Almost all of the UK’s mobile mast infrastructure is owned by companies listed abroad, in Germany, Spain, and Canada. Cryptic accounting makes it difficult to tell how much ends up in shareholders pockets. The law also fails to acknowledge that the thousands of small property owners across the UK are the true drivers of digital connectivity – they are hosting the equipment that keeps the modern economy moving.
Rising inflation combined with annual price hikes (cynically calculated in some cases by the antiquated measure of RPI rather than CPI) will see internet and telephone bills skyrocket over the next year, likely rising by an astounding 17 per cent. Operators are set to profit from conditions that frustrate the rest of the economy and leave consumers out of pocket. We must proceed carefully with legislation that has the potential to infringe the property and consumer rights that define what modern conservatism can offer families across the country; choice, freedom, and individuality. The State interferes with them at its peril.
This Bill provides an example of areas in which I believe the Conservative Party must tilt towards governing in favour of communities and of individual choice and rights. Conservatism recognises its roots in communities as the building blocks that make up our values, principles and beliefs.
This isn’t to say that better connectivity and the roll-out of 5G aren’t vitally important. To the contrary, Conservative governments have led the way on these issues, and must continue to do so. But, as the Prime Minister has already made clear, the values that have always formed the bedrock of Conservative political identity are not mutually exclusive with economic growth. They are in fact aligned – and together could win the Conservatives an election. This work starts in the House of Lords tomorrow.
Marco Longhi is the Conservative MP for Dudley North
