My Lords, I am extremely grateful to those who have contributed to this very important debate. As I listened to the noble Lord,
Lord O’Neill, voicing his warnings about this, my mind went back to when I instituted the privatisation of British Telecom in 1982. The chairman of BT was Sir George Jefferson, who sadly died earlier this year. He was constantly in and out of my office, very much supporting the privatisation. However, when I had to say very firmly that BT was not going to be allowed to take a majority position in any of the new mobile telephone networks that were coming up, Sir George was extremely angry. He felt that it was a very unfair restriction on BT. I said to him that he had a virtual monopoly of land telephony and perhaps he ought to concentrate on that, and that in the mean time the new mobile telephone industry should develop without BT having a monopoly position in it.
Years later, when I attended a farewell reception for Sir Christopher Gent, the retiring chairman of Vodafone, which by then was worth some £82 billion, somebody asked him, “To what do you attribute the huge success not only of the mobile telephone network but of your company in particular?”. He said, “That is very easy. It was one thing: the decision of the Secretary of State at the time that BT would not be allowed to compete”. I went up to him afterwards and said, “I don’t know if you are aware that it was me who took that decision”. He said, “Oh, that’s very interesting”. I said, “Where’s my dividend?”. Of course, no such dividend was forthcoming.
I do not think I need lectures from the noble Lord, Lord O’Neill, or anybody else about the importance of—