Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Rosindell Excerpts

Thursday 18th April 2024 Commons Chamber

[Lucy Frazer]

Through our investment via the Football Foundation in England, we are actively supporting teams such as Cromwell Athletic up and down the country to get new artificial grass pitches. We funded the goalposts at Barrow Hall Primary School and put in a new artificial grass pitch at Cardinal Newman Catholic High School. It was a pleasure to visit my hon. Friend’s constituency, and I would be happy to meet him to discuss this issue further.

[Andrew Rosindell (Romford) (Con)]

7. If she will make an assessment of the potential merits of bringing forward legislative proposals to regulate the use of national symbols by commercial and other entities.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Stuart Andrew)]

The correct use of many national symbols, such as royal names, state emblems, the royal arms and the Government coat of arms, is already subject to Government regulation.

[Andrew Rosindell]

I think many people would be quite angered by the way certain national organisations have tried to change our national flags, the cross of St George and the Union Jack. Is it not time that we protected and cherished our national symbols by appointing a Minister of the Crown from the Cabinet Office to oversee that? Will the Minister also look at the Union Flag Bill of 2008, which would enshrine in legislation the protection of our cherished national flag?

[Stuart Andrew]

The Union Jack should be a unifying symbol for the whole country. It has looked the way it has for the past several hundred years and I see no point in messing around with it. I am not sure that we need legislation; we just need some common sense.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lucy Frazer]

Tragedy chanting is absolutely abhorrent and has no place in football, or indeed in any sport. The Government fully support the football leagues and the police in their efforts to identify and deal with the culprits. Tragedy chanting can be prosecuted as a public order offence, with guilty individuals being issued with football banning orders preventing them from attending matches in the future.

[Andrew Rosindell (Romford) (Con)]

T3. Will the Secretary of State join me in congratulating the amazing success of Romford football club, which has now got through to the FA vase final at Wembley on 11 May? Given the proud Essex town that Romford is, does she agree that BBC Essex and the regional TV and radio channels really should promote that in their broadcasting, instead of saying that we are not Essex? Does she agree that we should be given that prominence?

[Lucy Frazer]

First, I extend my congratulations to Romford football club on reaching the final of the FA vase—it is a wonderful achievement and I wish the team the best of luck at Wembley. On the issue of BBC Essex, as my hon. Friend will know, the BBC is operationally and editorially independent of the Government, but I know that my hon. Friend has raised his concerns directly with the BBC, and I am sure that it will get back to him.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Rosindell Excerpts

Thursday 6th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Media, Data and Digital Infrastructure (Julia Lopez)]

We have put forward an important piece of legislation on this, to get our ambitions out there on improved wireless and broadband connectivity. I would be keen to engage with the hon. Gentleman further on these issues, but we think we have struck the right balance between the mobile network operators and those who receive rents.

[Andrew Rosindell (Romford) (Con)]

I know that my hon. Friend the Minister will agree that the singing of the national anthem is something that provides a great sense of unity and pride in our nation. In this year of the Queen’s platinum jubilee, will he take steps to encourage national broadcasters to play the national anthem and ensure that the BBC restores it at the end of the day’s programming before it switches to News 24?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Chris Philp)]

We fully support the singing of the national anthem, Her Majesty the Queen and other expressions of patriotism, including the flying of the Union Jack. The more we hear the national anthem sung, frankly, the better. Of course, organisations such as schools are free to promote it, and the more we can do in this area, the better it will be.

Telecommunications (Security) Bill

Andrew Rosindell Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Monday 8th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

The Bill seeks to enhance security provisions that all Members of this House must recognise are much needed. Clear consensus has been achieved—it has been hard-fought—that cyber-attacks on the telecommunications infrastructure pose a significant threat to national security and that legislation is needed to strengthen the security framework. The Government and the Minister are endeavouring to protect the state and its citizens. This is an absolutely necessary law that will make a clear improvement, but more can and must happen.

I believe that the Bill is needed not only to safeguard this great nation from cyber-terrorism, both domestic and external, but to ensure that we can continue to attract jobs and investment from those who seek to utilise the skills and experience of our workforce. As I have said numerous times in this House, Northern Ireland is fast becoming the cyber-security centre of the world, with companies from Europe, America and elsewhere making use of our low business rates and our high skillset. To continue to attract that investment and those jobs, we must really be on top of our game; I believe that the Bill will play an important part in that. Could the Minister give some indication of her discussions with Ministers in the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy on the Bill’s economic benefits for all regions, particularly Northern Ireland?

We all want to secure jobs, but we cannot allow any and all companies to have access to our networks. I believe that the protections in the Bill are imperative against those who may unscrupulously seek to carry out espionage on either a corporate or a national security level. Along with many others, I had concerns about the Huawei deal and its impact on the essential Five Eyes agreement; I was pleased by the decision that the Government ultimately made for all our security. There is a lesson to be learned and I trust that we have all learned it.

I agree that it is imperative that a clear and precise code of conduct is permitted, so I support the Government’s further amendment to ensure that a code of conduct is encompassing and far-reaching. That is right and proper, and I fully support it.

[Andrew Rosindell (Romford) (Con)]

I rise to speak in favour of Lords amendment 5, which was tabled by Lord Alton and Lord Blencathra.

The Five Eyes alliance is one of the most important strategic alliances that the UK shares. It is one of the world’s most comprehensive intelligence-sharing alliances, bringing together nations that have a strong bond forged through our shared history and values. The Government have recently taken a great stride towards strengthening our relationship with two of our Five Eyes partners, Australia and the United States, through the AUKUS agreement. I believe that Lords amendment 5 would further strengthen our ties with those great allies and ensure that we look to the future of the security and resilience of our telecommunications network.

Telecommunications networks have become the foundation of our economy, allowing business, Government and communities to connect and share information. This ability to connect and communicate is now a fundamental part of the way in which our society operates. Only last year, however, the Government were still considering using the services of a Chinese company, Huawei, to manage the introduction of 5G technology in our country. That was deeply worrying, owing to the complete subservience of the Chinese tech companies to the Chinese Communist party. The unholy alliance of these so-called private companies and an authoritarian Government who have no respect for basic values such as privacy has allowed the CCP to increase internal surveillance to a level never seen before. We would be foolish to think that the CCP would not have used its access to the information accumulated by Huawei through its involvement in our 5G roll-out, given the immense levels of intelligence that it would have been able to gain from that.

This debacle of Huawei shows that we must be extremely careful in protecting the security of our vital infrastructure. Letting companies that are so intertwined with a malign Government manage the implementation of our telecommunications systems would be no less than an act of national self-harm. If one of our close strategic allies makes the decision to ban a telecommunications company from operating within its borders, it will have a good reason for doing so. Taking the time to consider the rationale for such decisions will cost us little, whereas I worry that not doing so could be catastrophic for our national security. I hope that this House will approve amendment 5, as it will send a clear message that technology companies that work against our national interest will not be allowed to operate in the United Kingdom. I hope that the Minister will reconsider the Government’s position.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

I will be brief, as much has been said already. However, I want to say a bit to my hon. Friend the Minister about Lords amendment 4. I also, by the way, want to recognise my hon. Friend the Member for Boston and Skegness (Matt Warman), who is no longer a Minister but who was in charge of much of the Bill’s passage. I thought that he did an excellent job. It is a very good Bill which is long overdue, and there is much to praise in it.

I think that Lords amendments 4 and 5 are worthy of a little more assessment. Lords amendment 4 does have merits, because it recognises that there is a real problem about diversification. The point that I was trying to make to the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah) earlier was not an argument against any kind of strategic review or industrial policies; it was the argument that if a nation is in a sense rogue, in terms of its ability to stay within the market, and subsidises companies deliberately for strategic effect, that is why the number of companies will fall from 15 to three in the free world, which is what happened in this case. I think the amendment is about the need to recognise the fact that diversification, if not pursued deliberately, will lead us into the hands of a country like China, which then forces us eventually to have only one vendor on price, because that country has subsidised it.

As for Lords amendment 5, I heard the argument of my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis), the Chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee, but I would not regard this as “gilding the lily”. I do not much like lilies and I think they could do with a bit of gilding, but I think that this is more a case of locked doors, and if the amendment is about putting an extra door into the security panoply, I think it is important. I will be brief, but last year, along with many others, I had very strong arguments with the Government about Huawei, and we were disregarded, disregarded, disregarded. The Government even led out all the great security experts who told them that they could control everything, saying, “Don’t worry, we can manage the risk”—until it finally became apparent to them that they could not. We faced that at the time. Other Five Eyes members had already said that this was not on, but we seemed to disregard their views. So I simply say that this is not about gilding the lily; it is about reminding the Government that they must abide by these provisions.

I should also make the point that there are many other companies to which we should be giving real consideration right now, and which are being looked at and banned by the Five Eyes—such as Hikvision and ByteDance—and I urge the Government to think again about those as well.

Live Events: Government-backed Insurance

Andrew Rosindell Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd March 2021 Westminster Hall

[Andrew Rosindell (in the Chair)]

I remind hon. Members that there have been some changes to normal practice in order to support the new hybrid arrangements. Timings of debates have been amended to allow technical arrangements to be made for the next debate. There will be suspensions between debates. I remind Members participating, physically and virtually, that they must arrive for the start of a debate in Westminster Hall and are expected to remain for the entire debate. I must also remind Members participating virtually that they are visible at all times, both to one another and to us in the Boothroyd Room. If Members attending virtually have any technical problems, they should email the Westminster Hall Clerk’s email address. Members attending physically should clean their spaces before using them and before leaving the room. Members attending physically who are in the latter stages of the call list should use the seats in the Public Gallery initially and move on to the horseshoe when seats there become available. Members can speak from the horseshoe only where there are microphones.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Rosindell Excerpts

Thursday 31st January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Michael Ellis]

What I can guarantee is that my portfolio involves looking after the interests of musicians and orchestras. The Department does that by lobbying where appropriate and by discussing such matters with the Home Office, which is ultimately responsible for immigration issues. I met the Association of British Orchestras only last week. We are ensuring that musicians are looked after. They are an important part of our economy.

[Andrew Rosindell (Romford) (Con)]

8. What steps his Department is taking to encourage more international sport to be played in the UK.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Mims Davies)]

My Department works closely with UK Sport and national sports governing bodies, as well as with local, regional and devolved partners, to ensure that the UK successfully bids for and stages a range of the world’s largest sporting events. We have secured over 100 major international sports events since 2012, and this will be an exciting summer, which will include the cricket world cup, the cycling road world championships and the netball world cup. Of course, we are looking forward to UEFA 2020, and not far off is the rugby league world cup in 2021.

[Andrew Rosindell]

Now that the FIFA bidding process is much more transparent, has the Minister considered the possibility of holding the 2030 World cup in England or in the United Kingdom, involving all the home nations of our nation?

[Mims Davies]

As the Prime Minister said last year, the UK Government would support a bid to host the 2030 FIFA World cup. I welcome that transparency and the football associations are free to decide whether to pursue that opportunity. The English FA is already working with the FAs of Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and Ireland to explore the feasibility of such a joint bid.