Telecommunications (Security) Bill

Baroness Healy of Primrose Hill Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 13th July 2021 Grand Committee

For the reasons that I have set out, I do not feel able to accept these amendments and I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Alton, will feel able to withdraw Amendment 1.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Healy of Primrose Hill) (Lab)]

I have received a request to speak after the Minister, so I call the noble Lord, Lord Fox.

[Lord Fox (LD)]

I congratulate the Minister on introducing the Barran scale of nuance, which will no doubt become a classic in future. She did not address the issue of componentry, if you follow my drift. It seems to me, in analysis, that what tipped the balance in the sense of Huawei was the absence of American-made chips. Were that not to have happened, the NCSC would not have recommended the widescale removal that we have seen. That appears to be the implication. There seems to be an element of component monitoring going on, although in this case the monitoring appears to have been done more by the Americans than by the United Kingdom. It comes back to that fundamental point: at what level is the Bill going to be applied? Will it be applied on the overall capability of the system? In other words, is it a systems capability issue? Is it a subsystem operational outcome view, the individual pieces that go to make those subsystems, or the software that drives the overall system? How will the Bill actually be put into process?

Telecommunications (Security) Bill

Baroness Healy of Primrose Hill Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 15th July 2021 Grand Committee

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Healy of Primrose Hill) (Lab)]

I have received a request to speak after the Minister, from the noble Lord, Lord Fox.

[Lord Fox (LD)]

I thank the Minister and other speakers for this debate, which is really important. The Minister was basically saying in her response, “Don’t worry, we’ve got this covered.” If the Government did indeed have it covered, I suggest that ripping out 40% of the 5G network at the cost of several billion pounds to the industry is a pretty poor cover. The point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud, that it took Back- Benchers to highlight this rather than the Government was particularly apposite.

The Minister portrayed the decision to remove Huawei almost as if it was a success of the process. Will she acknowledge that these billions of pounds are growth that we will not get, that they are investment in this country that has been wasted, and that it has put the country in danger in the process? Will she further acknowledge that there might be others who are able to help in the process of avoiding a repeat of what is a huge debacle?