Lord Young of Cookham (Con)

My Lords, I added my name to the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Vaux. Like him, I served on the Select Committee on fraud, ably chaired by my noble friend Lady Morgan of Cotes, that produced a very substantial document indeed. After we produced our report, the Government published a consultation document headed Preventing the Use of SIM Farms for Fraud. In December 2023, the Government published their response to that document. I want to quote briefly from three paragraphs of that response. Referring to the responses they got, the Government said: “A few responses noted that banning physical SIM farms alone is likely to result in displacement to eSIM farms”, which is the point that has just been made. They went on: “However they acknowledged that if eSIMs were included to the proposed ban, the Government’s definition of SIM farms should be adapted to ensure it excludes smartphones that can hold more than four eSIMs”. The Government’s response to that section was: “Responses noted that the definition could also include eSIMs and mobile apps. However, we did not receive sufficient evidence at consultation to include them in a proposed ban, due to their complexity and ongoing pace of development. This could be further addressed by the proposed powers to extend the ban to other forms of telecommunications equipment and articles used to perpetrate fraud”. They referred to a further final paragraph headed “Government response”: “The Government considers it important to ensure that the ban is flexible and can be used to rapidly prohibit other types of technology where these are identified in the future. Some such technologies are mentioned above, whilst others may emerge in future and the Government will continue to review fraud methodologies closely for changing patterns and new technologies being used, such as eSIM farms and others. However, the Government agrees with respondents that any powers to ban through secondary legislation ought to have clear parameters for their use”. That was the last Administration, of course, and it would be helpful to know whether the Government agree with that line. The question I want to ask the Minister is this. Referring to the clauses on SIM farms, Clause 114(4) says: “The Secretary of State may by regulations amend this section (other than this subsection)”. Is that in effect giving the Secretary of State powers to introduce by secondary legislation something that the previous Government said should not be done by secondary legislation? I leave that question hanging in the air while the Government seek advice from the Bench to see what the answer is.