National Security and Investment Act 2021

Overview of the Act

Reproduced verbatim from the Explanatory Notes published with the Act on legislation.gov.uk (Crown Copyright, Open Government Licence v3.0). Explanatory Notes are prepared by the responsible government department and are not part of the Act.

The Act establishes a statutory regime for Government scrutiny of, and intervention in, investments for the purposes of protecting national security. The regime makes provision for: a power to issue "call-in" notices that the Secretary of State may use to call in acquisitions of control over qualifying entities or assets ("trigger events") to undertake a national security assessment whether or not they have been notified to the Government; the Secretary of State to publish a statement on how he or she expects to use the power to give a call-in notice; a mandatory notification system requiring proposed acquirers of certain shares or voting rights in specified qualifying entities to obtain clearance from the Secretary of State for their acquisitions before they take place; powers which enable the Secretary of State to amend by regulations the acquisitions which fall within scope of the mandatory notification system; a voluntary notification system which is intended to encourage notifications from parties who consider that their trigger event may raise national security concerns; the statutory process that is to be used to assess specific trigger events for national security concerns; remedies to address risks to national security, sanctions for non-compliance with the regime and the mechanism for legal challenge; and interaction with the Competition and Markets Authority.

In addition, Section 59 of the Act amends the overseas disclosure gateway in the Enterprise Act 2002 removing the restriction on UK public authorities disclosing information that comes to them in connection with a merger investigation under that gateway.