Dr Ben Spencer
MP for Runnymede and Weybridge · Conservative · United Kingdom
“However, her former partner requested that the DNA sample be taken at Woodlawn medical centre, a location that was not on Cellmark’s approved list of collection sites. Despite that, the testing kit was sent there.”
“Subsequent investigations by the Department for Work and Pensions and the police confirmed what had happened. An employee of Woodlawn medical centre, Robert Patel, had conspired with Mr Brown and tampered with the DNA testing process. Both Mr Brown and Mr Patel were subsequently convicted and sentenced to prison for fraud.”
“I would like to raise a deeply troubling case that highlights serious concerns about the integrity of DNA testing within the Child Maintenance Service and questions surrounding the existing safeguards in place to protect families.”
“Most importantly, what lessons have been learned to ensure that no other parent or child has to endure the same ordeal? People need to have confidence in paternity testing, whether in child maintenance or other forensic uses. The chain of evidence needs to be secure.”
“The A244 has always had too much traffic and too many heavy goods vehicles on it. It goes through Oxshott in my constituency, and following the roadworks on the M25 and A3, increasing numbers of cars and large vehicles are using it as a shortcut between the A3 and the M25. We need that to stop.”
“I start by thanking the Chair of the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee and its entire membership for the publication of a very interesting and timely report. Business, academia and the whole tech sector needs clarity, in some ways more than anything else.”
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“As a legislator, you should have quite a high threshold before you start saying, “The solution is putting in another law. Let’s create another regulation,” or, “Let’s put another burden on business.” One of the challenges I had when looking at the Bill when it was first published was understanding why we need it in the first place. What is its starting point? That is something that I have been exploring and thinking about as we have been preparing for this Committee stage. Why is our industry not doing it itself and sorting this out? Why is the Minister here today bringing forward these regulations on business and why is that necessary in the first place as opposed to business sorting it out?”
“I also take the point about the overall benefit to society and the business network of having confidence that there are secure and working data centres and that the large load controllers—which we will talk about presently—have control. This Bill is a full-fat compendium of cross-regulations and links. I feel for any business looking through the later chapters and finding themselves subject to those requirements. We have to keep that in mind: all of us in this Committee want our businesses to succeed and do well, and we also want stable and flourishing infrastructure. Going back to my medical roots, the starting point should be, “Primum non nocere”. That is often misinterpreted as, “First, do no harm”; actually, not doing harm is the main thing that we should do.”
“I will expand my words a bit if that helps in explaining the logic. The starting point is that it is an extra burden and a harm, but then benefits from other angles can outweigh that harm. It is getting businesses to do something more; if they were doing it anyway, we would not need regulations. It is an additional thing that business is being asked to do. It might be that we have decided that overall it is in the best interests of the sector. Individual businesses cannot regulate and change the sector themselves, so we have decided, “For the good of society, we think businesses should do this.” I am always a little careful when we politicians say that we know what is better for business in terms of what they are doing. I take the point about how regulatory certainty can be helpful in itself.”
“The hon. Member for Lichfield may be aware that my background is in medicine; I used to be a doctor before I came to this place. One of the skills and challenges in medicine is that any medical intervention—apart from a small handful—always has a risk of harm or side effects to the patient. It is always a balancing act between the harm and the benefit. My bread and butter before I came to this place was balancing harms and risks in the best interests of the person in front of me. Although I have never been a businessperson, and I have certainly never owned or run a data centre, my approach to business burdens is to see the extra things that the Government make businesses do—which are not necessarily what businesses would normally do or see as in their direct interests—as a prima facie harm.”
“Worse, we will have given ourselves a false sense of security, rather than delving into some of the real challenges and problems in the sector, which include overall education, encouraging businesses to take the issue more seriously and encouraging people to do Cyber Essentials.”
“In one bad world, we have regulations that are completely disproportionate and place a huge and unnecessary burden on industry. But in some ways the worst of all worlds, or rather another problem that we would need to deal with, would be for us to legislate, produce this wonderful cyber-security Act, and go away happy as legislators—“Hey-ho, it’s all sorted and finished; we can sleep well in our beds about the cyber-security of the UK.” But if the companies cannot follow the legislation, will not follow it or do not have the resources to do so, then all we will have done is waste our time.”
“In view of Ofcom’s current regulatory workload and the challenges with recruitment, which I mentioned earlier and highlighted in the evidence session this week, what ongoing engagement is the Minister having with Ofcom more broadly to make sure that it is sufficiently resourced to play its role? Before I move on to clause 6, on large load controllers, I feel I need to go back to the discussion about proportionality and the purpose and need for these regulations in the Bill. One of the biggest criticisms of the NIS regulations is that they have not really been enforced. I am not saying that a certain rate of enforcement is a marker of efficacy or compliance, but it is curious, and it has been raised to me, that the level of enforcement indicates that the NIS regulations have not really had teeth or changed anything.”
“The Conservatives therefore welcome that this vital element of our national infrastructure will be subject to cyber-security regulation. However, for regulation to be robust for cyber-resilience and regulator data centres it is essential that there are high rates of industry compliance. The Government stated in their impact assessment for this Bill that there is an ongoing engagement with the data centre sector. Could the Minister lay out what feedback he has received on the sector’s preparedness to meet the cyber-resilience standards set by the NIS regulations? Likewise, in terms of ensuring effective regulation, Ofcom will have a dramatically increased role in terms of cyber-security regulation when these provisions come into effect.”
“I am certainly going to come back to it a few times—if not other Members—and I will invite the Minister to come back to it a few times. Returning to the point about the dependency on particular sectors, I mentioned the impact that Amazon Web Services had on our society and systems; interestingly, the AWS outage was caused not by a cyber-attack, but it demonstrates the disruption to our lives and businesses that could occur in the event of such an attack. The last Government recognised the vital and growing importance of data centres to the UK economy and people’s lives, as well as the risks of serious interruption to these services. That led to a public consultation on enhancing the security and resilience of UK data infrastructure.”
“That is something that I know will come up in debate as we go through the Bill. It is curious that we are receiving consistent feedback that some boards are not taking the issue of cyber-security seriously, in terms of allocating resource to it, especially in the light of the very high-profile cyber-attacks on businesses. Obviously, I am all over this issue, given my role as shadow Minister, but I think it is completely insane, certainly for larger companies, not to focus on the challenge of cyber-security. It is a challenge for businesses of all sizes, but I am mindful that implementation is particularly problematic for very small businesses.”
“What are they going to say, given that the Chinese Communist party is one of the main drivers of cyber-security threats in the UK?” Legislating in this area and deciding how to approach it as a society is a particular challenge, given that it is not merely criminals or hacktivists doing this stuff to our companies and institutions; there is also full-fat hostile state inference from Russia, Iran or the Chinese Communist party.”
“That is a stark message. Going back to my previous point, I struggle to think how many small businesses can really put in the necessary resource to take these sorts of steps on cyber-security. There is a broader point here, which goes back to my opening remarks. A chunk of this involves hostile state actors that are attacking our companies, Parliament and the Government, whether directly or through their intermediaries. I find it quite ironic that it was announced earlier this week that our security services are going to work with China’s security services to deal with cyber-security threats. I thought, “Well, hang on a sec.”
“I suspect we will come back to that, but I am glad that my hon. Friend introduced his ten-minute rule Bill. We need to have a solution, but at the same time, we should not put onerous burdens on companies that are already struggling because of the Government’s anti-growth agenda and the punitive taxes being imposed on them to pay for profligate spending. This goes back to the discussion about prima facie harms. Taxation is the best example of a prima facie harm.”
“In other parts of the country, the focus might be on Marks & Spencer or the Co-op. The Bill does not fix that, so what needs to be done? Should there be a threshold based on turnover, so that the process is not so onerous on certain companies, or something to support the insurance industry? The Bill is silent on this issue, and the Government need to come up with some answers. I totally understand what they are trying to do with the Bill and how it is taking us forward—of course the NIS regulations need updating—but it does not fix the big stuff that has had a huge impact on people’s lives and required a massive bail-out of several billions of pounds-worth of taxpayers’ money. How many more JLRs can the Government afford to bail out until they have to do something to resolve the issue?”
“I thank my hon. Friend for his interesting proposal, which attempts to crack the nut of one of the problems subsumed in the Bill. The Bill cherry-picks certain sectors that need to be regulated entities, and there is a whole host of definitions. Then the Secretary of State can allocate some of the bits that they want to tag on through secondary legislation or the designation of a critical supplier. Then we have the MSP component. But there is something the Bill does not deal with. If I were to ask to the man in the street to identify the biggest cyber-security attack they have heard of in the past year or so, their answer would probably depend on where they live. If they live in the west midlands, they would talk about JLR, which has had a catastrophic effect on the local economy.”
“The Minister has been trying to ensure flexibility elsewhere, and understandably so—let us not go back into those debates. I just want to understand his reasoning behind that a bit better. That is certainly not a criticism, but I want to know why those particular sectors have been pulled out, and why it has not been left for secondary legislation.”
“Why are data centres and large load controllers the two sectors that he has decided to put on the face of the Bill? I say that with particular reference to the NIS2 regulations, which are expanded a bit more. How does he envisage this area expanding in the future? Is he confident that the scope of the clause is sufficient to cover future technologies that are coming down the track? I am thinking of EV charging apps. The list is prescriptive, but does it have sufficient flexibility? Is the Minister able to come back with secondary legislation if he needs to expand the list in the future, given that it is in the Bill in that form? Would it not be better to put that on the face of the Bill and to use secondary legislation to lay it out, in order to have flexibility?”
“Smart EV devices—I have a smart charging electric vehicle device myself—used system-wide could cause big grid disruptions, particularly as we integrate infrastructure into our homes such as solar panels, batteries and other energy-related smart devices. In fact, we need the grid to become more smart device-integrated over the next 10, 15 or 20 years. When we look at projections of energy consumption, we see that we will need to enable people to use the grid by expanding technology such as vehicle-to-grid energy supply, so that we can manage peak load. That is part of expanding our energy, reducing energy costs and supporting renewable energy and the transition to net zero. If anything, this issue will become more important and expansive over the years. On that basis, I have some questions for the Minister about the clause.”
“As I risk getting into trouble with Mr Stringer, I will not respond to the hon. Member for Lichfield. I look forward to the opportunity to debate this issue again, perhaps in the emergency Budget in the next couple of weeks. Clause 6 brings large load controllers, which provide the flow of electricity in and out of smart appliances, within scope of the NIS regulations if the load is above 300 MW. I understand that the threshold has been decided through consultation, given that that pressure could have a substantial impact on the grid. There is a challenge in managing peak demand and supply in the grid and big changes in it, so I entirely understand why the Government are introducing this provision.”
“Before the Minister moves on—I was a bit nervous that he was going to finish—I have an additional question about the Crown data centre. What happens if a data centre is providing services commercially to both the public and the Crown? How is that operated within the scope of the Bill?”
“It is obviously difficult—if it is possible at all—to predict how the tech sector will evolve, but what powers will the Government have to adjust these provisions as the cloud ecosystem changes, and what consultation has the Minister done on that within the scope of the Bill?”
“Clause 7 amends the definition of cloud services, which have been within the scope of regulation since the NIS regulations came into force. The expanded definition emphasises remote accessibility and the “on demand” nature of cloud services, and that services may be delivered from multiple locations. It also excludes managed services from the scope of cloud services to avoid duplication of regulatory requirements and oversight. The Minister proposes changes to this provision in Government amendment 13, which sets out further details regarding the features of in-scope cloud service provision, including common access by multiple users, with each having access to separate processing functions. My question to the Minister builds on the one raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton.”
“If I might just help a colleague, I think the grouping and selection of amendments has changed, so the hon. Member for Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe may have the previous iteration.”
“The exclusion of organisations overseen by public authorities also applies in relation to relevant managed service providers. In many respects, clauses 7 and 8 provide necessary updates to reflect the changing nature and use of vital digital services. Once again, including within the scope of regulation companies that deliver services to the UK but are established or headquartered elsewhere helps to ensure that those companies report cyber-security incidents to UK authorities, rather than just authorities in their home states. That means that UK regulators and law enforcement are equipped with the most comprehensive knowledge of emerging threats.”
“Clause 8 provides a new definition of “relevant digital service” and makes it clear that this category includes online marketplaces, online search engines and cloud computing services. The definition of “relevant digital service provider” is updated to encompass all entities providing a relevant digital service in the UK, regardless of whether they are established here. Entities designated as critical suppliers are excluded from the definition to avoid duplication of duties and regulatory oversight from sector-specific competent authorities. However, the definition excludes from scope of regulation relevant digital service providers subject to public authority oversight, unless they derive over half their income from commercial activities.”
“I broadly agree. This is one of those difficult areas where there can be overlap. I have sympathy with the argument that it is important to use any opportunity, and in particular this Bill, to raise fraud. We focus on financial fraud, but this area is not limited to that, especially when we think about other malicious operators, and about ransomware and hacktivism, where the boundaries are particularly blurred. In a situation where a fraudulent operator, service, provider or organisation has material, whether on social media or subject to search engines, and the police or other competent authorities have flagged it to the provider as fraudulent—as illegal criminal activity—what duties does that provider have to remove it or take it down? Is that something that the Minister is aware of?”
“MSPs are critical to the functioning of the multiple businesses that they serve, offering contracted IT services such as helpdesk and technical support, server and network maintenance, and data back-up. In many cases, they also provide managed cyber-security solutions to their customer bases. Consequently, these businesses often have significant access to their clients’ IT networks, infrastructure and data, which makes them attractive and valuable targets.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McVey. Clause 9 brings within scope of the NIS regulations a new category of technology service providers, known as relevant managed service providers. MSPs play a critical role in the UK economy. Research conducted by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology under the last Government suggests that 11,000 MSPs were active in the UK in 2023, of which 1,500 to 1,700 were medium or large organisations that would be in scope of the Bill. Micro and small enterprises that offer managed services are excluded from the scope of regulation but have the potential to be designated as critical suppliers under other provisions, which we will come to shortly.”
“One can imagine that if a particular unique type of service was being offered, such as a cyber-security service, by a big company—Cloudflare and Salesforce, for example, had a substantial impact on the sector—not merely the size of an organisation, but what they provide, could be relevant in terms of producing systemic risks to our economy as a whole.”
“The amendment, and some of the debate that we have had, goes to the heart of some of the thresholds and metrics that are being used as gatekeepers in the Bill when an entity is or is not being regulated. As I mentioned this morning, at least 70% of Government cloud procurement goes to the three big US tech actors. Those are clearly huge operators, but when it comes to the criticality of an MSP, as my hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne mentioned, size does not in itself necessarily indicate its essentialness in the system.”
“It is conceivable that many regulated businesses, particularly smaller ones, will be forced to look for external expertise to comply with their obligations, and we would not want to artificially restrict access to expertise, even when done with the best of intentions. The point is rightly made that large MSPs and those providing services to the most critical sectors should observe the highest cyber-security standards. A relevant MSP must have regard to any relevant guidance issued by the Information Commissioner when carrying out the duties imposed on it, so will the Minister confirm whether and to what extent the important issues raised by the amendment will be covered in consultation and industry guidance?”
“The amendment relates to legitimate concerns about the compound risk that could occur when MSP systems are accessed by malicious actors, and those MSPs are providing services to a large number of entities within a regulated sector. Clearly, there are many reservations about the desirability of this particular amendment, including its potential to interfere with customer choice and the inconsistency with the approach to freedom of enterprise in other regulated sectors in the Bill. It is noteworthy that several witnesses who gave evidence to the Committee pointed out the lack of skilled cyber-security professionals available in the UK employment market to help regulated entities with the effective implementation of the Bill.”
“Could the Minister clarify whether his Department will respond to concerns by consulting on a refined definition of what constitutes an MSP, to provide much-needed certainty to businesses operating in the sector? I will also take this opportunity to speak to amendment 10, which was tabled in the names of many Members, including the right hon. Member for Stone, Great Wyrley and Penkridge (Sir Gavin Williamson), who I know has a keen interest in this area. He represents an area in the west midlands, which, like many parts of the country, has suffered massively from the impact of the problems with Jaguar Land Rover.”
“However, as I said at the outset and as many people said during evidence, the devil really is in the detail as to whether the Bill is effective in protecting the sectors it seeks to regulate. Several industry stakeholders, including officers of MSPs and industry representation bodies, have raised concerns about the broad definition of MSPs in clause 9. As drafted, that definition has the potential to cause confusion among businesses as to whether they are in scope or not. These relevant provisions will be brought into force with secondary legislation before Royal Assent, allowing time for consultation with industry and specific duties.”
“The scope and breadth of the organisations regulated by these provisions is one of the most important parts of the debate. If the hon. Member can wait a moment, that point will form the bulk of my speech. It was also mentioned by my constituency neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne. The previous Government consulted on bringing MSPs within scope of regulation. Feedback on that consultation indicated strong support, with 86% of respondents in favour. As such, there is a sound policy rationale for imposing cyber-security and instant reporting regulations on MSPs over a certain threshold. Those MSPs will need to take appropriate and proportionate measures to manage risks to the security of the networks and information systems on which they rely to provide managed services in the UK.”
“Not only are there 14 regulators, or however many are operating—earlier this week, Amazon told us in evidence that it is regulated by four regulators—there is also confidential information going through, as my hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne pointed out. It gets even worse in the clause on critical supply networks. It is just incredibly confusing. The Committee—and, dare I say, the Government—should not ignore the evidence we have received from managed service providers time and again saying that although MSPs should be in scope and these regulations help, we need clarity on what exactly that means.”
“I thank my hon. Friend for the “get out of jail free” card that he gave me at the end of his question; indeed, I pass that question on to the Minister. The point is well made in terms of trying to dissect the interacting and relevant duties in the Bill. The Bill tries to chop up different actors in the digital ecosystem, as well as public an non-public organisations, although a commercial threshold is being used. The Bill also introduces confusion: it rightly tries to make a carve-out for Crown data centres, but what exactly is a Crown data centre? One could argue that a Crown service is something provided by the state. Is a data centre serving a hospital therefore a Crown data centre? There are so many different components within the Bill.”
“I thank my hon. Friend for that pertinent intervention. The burden she talks about is not just financial; companies could also find themselves in legal jeopardy should they become subject to overlapping and competing duties without realising when the Bill becomes an Act. More than anything else—perhaps even more than a low taxation regime—businesses want certainty about the regulatory environment they operate in. This is made even more complicated by the fact that many organisations operate in different jurisdictions and have to contend with different, competing regulatory frameworks. My understanding is that the majority try to take an approach in one jurisdiction that will also cover them in the other so that they have an overlap, but those are the big companies. They have more capacity and resource to do that.”
“Even for bigger businesses, the regulatory burden is critical, especially as they can choose, to a certain extent, where they incorporate and focus on doing business. We want to ensure that the UK has the best regulations, but the best regulations are often the ones that are least burdensome but that still provide certainty to allow businesses to operate. This is a highly competitive market.”
“Irrespective of their size, whatever definition or metric we use, businesses operate on fine margins for the majority of the time. Regulatory burdens not only impact their ability to operate; they are yet another cost, which means that the cost of services increases. That has a deleterious effect on our economy more generally. Burdens on businesses are passed on to consumers. That makes it more expensive to do business unless there are customers to receive it. Global business competitiveness, which we have not spoken about yet, is critical. I am very concerned about UK competitiveness in the digital and tech sector. It saddens me to say that we are dwarfed by US big tech in many areas. I want our digital and IT sector to be bigger and better than that of our competitors, but we need a framework to support it.”
“As a general point, regulations will cause footloose industries to move and operate in different sectors, which will mean less taxation revenue and more costs for clients, making it more difficult to do business. We need to make sure that our economy is as nimble and free as possible, both for those trading as an MSP and more generally. I cannot labour the point enough: the costs that we impose on businesses under the Bill, in particular in the cyber-security and tech sector, will be felt by our economy as a whole. We will have to pay for that through increased inflation in food, energy or anything else that our critical suppliers provide. Even our NHS provision costs will increase as a consequence of the regulatory burden on businesses as disparate and distant from the NHS as those that we see in the Bill.”
“I thank my hon. Friend for pointing out that discrepancy in the costings. It goes back to the key principle that business and business modelling are best left to businesspeople, not to Government. The Government have a facilitatory role, but fundamentally their role is to get out of the way of business so that it can succeed and our economy can thrive. We need to ensure, for the good of our economy as a whole, that the critical elements of it are regulated in that way. Given the interconnected operation of MSPs in our digital sector, any burden that we put on business will limit the growth that we all need and will limit competitiveness. In this footloose market especially, that could result in organisations and companies operating in other sectors, notwithstanding the fact that they will have to comply with UK jurisdictional rules.”
“The cloud providers I have spoken to talk about several things. They talk about the crippling cost of energy in the UK, something that we need to drive down—”
“As legislators we should ensure that the thing we have direct control over, which is the legislation in front of us, imposes as small a regulatory burden as possible while still ensuring that it is sufficient to meet our aims. We must listen to businesses and hear their concerns. We hear time and again that the lack of clarity, particularly in this part of the Bill, is putting them at financial and legal risk. That is a very substantial concern.”
“There is a sense in the UK that we are getting gummed up by regulation and obsessing more and more about limitations and restrictions to businesses. In that environment, people and organisations that do well financially, succeed and grow are seen as either targets or cheats—as something that we can go for, tax and punish. We have lost or diminished our can-do attitude when it comes to supporting the risk takers and the entrepreneurs, who are the people and organisations building the MSPs and data centres on which our economy relies. Over and above that, there is a cultural issue that is impacting our IT and tech sector.”
“The cloud providers tell me that the energy costs are crippling, which is highly problematic, and that is why we need to drive those costs down. They talk about the challenges of getting data centres built and about planning considerations, which are a concern across the country. They talk about the taxation environment and costs on businesses more generally, particularly when they are footloose, and they talk about the regulatory framework. Pretty much all of those things are not specifically in the Bill, with the exception of the regulatory framework, so there is a lot that is suppressing the opportunities for cloud providers and others in the sector and hindering them from doing business and succeeding. There is a broader point to make about the Bill and the philosophy behind it, because there is something that we have to avoid.”
“It is all well and good for the Government to say, “We have an action plan and we’re going to sort out Government IT and the cyber-security risk for Government services,” but it is not playing out that way. Our biggest risks, and the most vulnerable components of our digital IT infrastructure, are those that are linked to Government services. Change is needed. My sense is that when a company interacts and shares data with Government and public sector services, the biggest-cyber security risk is likely to be in the aspects that are provided by Government services. We are making legislation that puts a host of burdens on the private sector, yet we are largely silent about what is happening in the public sector. Putting people at risk in that way is really not good enough. We need to support our overall cyber-security.”
“I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. Legal clarity is important. I have absolutely no issue with lawyers, but we do not want to make a load of money for lawyers as a consequence of the definitional challenges around the Bill’s implementation. That is not good for businesses, which need certainty as to how to apply the regulatory framework under which they operate. Regulatory uncertainty will not help a business to make decisions. My assumption is that the default position will be for businesses to assume that they are not regulated entities, which means that they will not take actions that we would like them to take as a result of the Bill. Again, we will be making laws under which everybody loses out. My final point is about the carve-out in respect of public authority oversight.”
“On a point of order, Ms McVey. What mechanism is available to Members who are concerned that there is a factual error in the impact assessment? How can that be corrected?”
“As part of the planned consultation, will the Minister commit to considering whether there are alternative approaches to regulation for increasing cyber-resilience in companies below a certain size?”