Telecommunications (Security) Bill (Third sitting)

Debate between Lord Beamish and Sara Britcliffe

Committee Debate: 3rd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 19th January 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Sara Britcliffe]

Yes.

Lindsey Fussell: Yes, I think so. It is important to say that, across the scope of the whole Bill, it is not Ofcom’s role to make national security judgments. That is really important. Clearly, that is the Government’s and the Secretary of State’s role, taking advice from the NCSC and the intelligence agencies. In relation to telecoms security, that has enabled us to take the very detailed work and the threat assessment that the NCSC has done, which have been translated into a set of requirements in the code of practice, and to apply those and work with operators to monitor and enforce that compliance without having to make those national security judgments ourselves. On high-risk vendors, I think it inevitable that there will be more national security judgments to be made, so it is quite proper that that role sits with Government rather than the regulator.

[Mr Jones]

Q Your responsibilities are quite broad, and this is an expansion for you. You have already talked about recruiting staff for this task. How many of those staff will have to have STRAP clearance?

Lindsey Fussell: As I say, we have existing networks security responsibilities, so the issue of security clearance is one that we already need to deal with. I think the point that I have just made is important: we will not be making national security judgments, and that means that we will need access to less national security information than you might imagine. I do not think that we will be routinely handling national security information, but where the NSCS feels that it is required, there are clearly provisions in place for that.

Having said that, as now and in future, there are occasions when we have to handle sensitive information, and we do have the necessary security clearances in place at different levels for our staff to do that. As we recruit, we will obviously ensure that people have those necessary security clearances so that we can handle any sensitive information that we are given.