Telecommunications (Security) Bill

Bob Seely Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons & Carry-over motion & Carry-over motion: House of Commons & Money resolution & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion & Programme motion: House of Commons & Ways and Means resolution & Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Monday 30th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Wantage (David Johnston). I noticed that he was speaking without notes, which was very impressive. Sadly, I still rely on mine. I thank the Minister for bringing forward the Bill, and I thank the ministerial team for talking to us and engaging with so many colleagues. It would be great if other Departments could do that. What can I say? Hint, hint!

When the Henry Jackson Society and I produced our “Defending our Data” document back in May 2019, many Members had yet to form an opinion on Huawei. I am therefore grateful to the 60-odd members of the Huawei interest group who took an interest in this subject, and to the 36 people who voted to show their concern to the Government back in early March on the Telecommunications Infrastructure (Leasehold Property) Bill. I am aware that that Bill was not necessarily the right place to express those concerns, but with hindsight I think it sent an important message to the Government from those 36 Members—plus two tellers, of whom I was one. The United States moving its position in subsequent months was also important. I think the change would have happened anyway, regardless of whether there was a Republican or a Democrat Administration. A combination of Back-Bench concern, quite rightly, and the United States’ understanding of the geopolitics being perhaps a little ahead of that of the United Kingdom and on a par with that of Australia helped to shape Ministers’ understanding of the problems.

I am slightly concerned that the situation came to this in the first place, because there were so many warning lights about Huawei’s deepening relationship with BT. My hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Anthony Mangnall) spoke about Nortel. We must remember that Huawei had a supply contract with Nortel, during which time it hacked its way into Nortel’s systems and stole everything, like a parasite within a body. Nortel was one of the great, spectacular Canadian bankruptcies of the early 21st century. Why? Because it went into partnership with a business that deliberately collapsed it after stealing its IP. If that is not a lesson for us, it is difficult to know what is. Huawei never was and never will be a private firm. It is 99% owned by the Chinese state via trade unions. When I heard Ministers—not this Minister, but others—using the line about Huawei being a private company, I felt that it was a deeply naive thing for the Department to say.

[Dr Julian Lewis]

Just for the record, a former Prime Minister said that as well, repeatedly.

--- Later in debate ---

[Bob Seely]

It was very concerning that those who govern us were calling a part and parcel of the Chinese state a private firm, which it clearly was not.

The Government claimed that Huawei could be safely limited to the periphery of the network. That is a dubious argument that is still being debated and is not believed by many experts in many other countries. Were there espionage issues with Huawei? Well, as my hon. Friend the Member for Wantage said, we do not expect a state threat to come from Sweden or Finland. But we do expect a potential threat to come from one-party totalitarian states such as China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. China is clearly one of those. So the Nortel example was a good one.

As we know, China has a dreadful reputation for intellectual property theft and cyber-attacks, so there were many reasons to be deeply concerned about what was happening in our relationship with Huawei. Yet at the same time it became incredibly powerful in this country. Why? Because it had a very aggressive lobbying network. It was throwing money at lobbyists and senior people who used to be at the heart of Government, at very senior levels. This really concerns me about the state of our democracy, and it is one reason that I would like to bring in a foreign lobbying Act. We need to have a much clearer idea of what those companies or oligarchs—those who act on behalf of other people and states—are up to in this country. We did not really know the extent of the Huawei lobbying operation.

[Sir John Hayes]

My hon. Friend is painting a picture of a strategic view of China and other powers that has prevailed under successive Governments. It is born of a kind of determinism: “We can’t stop them, so we’ll have to live with them”. There is a predetermined inevitability about the domination of these states, and that is a misconception that needs to be challenged fundamentally, in the way in which he is doing so tonight.

[Bob Seely]

I look forward to being as eloquent and well dressed as my right hon. Friend one day. Before I come to the point that he mentioned on the need for a consistent approach and better understanding, let me say one more thing about Huawei.

A few other Members have touched on this matter: China’s human rights issues. The excellent Australian Strategic Policy Institute has presented credible evidence of significant human rights forced labour issues, with people from Xinjiang province being used not only by Huawei, but by other significant Chinese firms, or by firms producing goods for western consumer markets and western branded goods. This point brings us to the National Security and Investment Bill—although I know that we are not talking about that at the moment—and the need for a definition not only of national security, but of national interest as well. Do we really think it is in our national interest for us to be accepting slave labour products in this country, whether through Huawei—allegedly—or other firms, including well-known branded names? That human rights aspect is well worth playing up.

It seems clear that the China that we had all hoped for —indeed, the golden era that we were meant to welcome under David Cameron and George Osborne—is not the China that we are getting. We need to be realistic. When it comes to international relations, in the west we are effectively liberal internationalists. We take a positive view of humanity—maybe a liberal, rather than a conservative one, if one is being philosophical about these things, but a benign view of humanity. That is not necessarily shared by the hard-nosed realism school of thought that we see in Russia and China, which is much more of a zero-sum game: we win, you lose. China plays that more subtly than Russia, but there are enough similarities between the two that it should be of concern to us. We need a clearer understand that some people out there with whom we do business do not necessarily wish us well and do not wish our values well. Finally on that, we are stumbling towards that understanding, but we need a more consistent approach to how we deal with China, along the same lines of how we deal with Russia.  They are not the same—they are very different—but we have been forced to take a more consistent understanding of the Russian threat, and we need to do the same with China.

I congratulate the Minister on his work on the Bill. The “no new install” date is the key now, and that is why everyone is on side with the Bill. We need that September date, because it shuts down any alternatives for Huawei in the short term. We need a consistent approach, whether it is the Huawei Bill or the National Security and Investment Bill, across Government. This is one of the very small number of truly significant policy packages that we will have to get right in this country for the 21st century.

There are two choices for humanity this century. We can go down our route of open, broadly tolerant societies where people control their Governments—that free open model—or there is the closed model of totalitarian or one-party states, which are building up, with Huawei’s help, this Orwellian state, where the state knows what you are thinking before you do. That is not a good avenue for humanity to go down and, without being antagonistic and too hostile to other people, we need to defend our version of the future of humanity with a little more resolve.

--- Later in debate ---

[Matt Warman]

As I said earlier, we would want to apply those standards not just to telecoms companies but to the garment industry and in a host of other areas where we know that there is the potential for similar abuses. I absolutely hear what my right hon. Friend says, but Britain can do better than focus simply on the relatively narrow aspect of telecoms.

[Bob Seely]

I hear what the Minister is saying, but I wish to follow up the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith). If the debate on this Bill is not the place to discuss human rights, I get that, but we are also told that the debates on the National Security and Investment Bill are not the place to discuss human rights. I may get that as well, but the Government need to say where significant national interest concerns that are outside national security can be addressed. We talk the talk on human rights an awful lot in this country and this Parliament, but we have to put some trousers on that, I think.

[Matt Warman]

I am not going to engage too heavily with my hon. Friend’s trousers, but I will say to him that, as I said a minute ago, we are committed to taking forward an ambitious package of changes to strengthen and future-proof the Modern Slavery Act 2015, and that is one of several significant avenues that are open to him.

On the important matter of diversification, the telecoms supply chain review asked how we can create sustainable diversity in our telecoms supply chain. That question is addressed by the new diversification strategy that we published today, which is crucial to ensuring that we are never again in a situation in which we are dependent on just a handful of vendors who supply the networks on which so many of us have come to depend. I wish to spend a little time on this issue. The Government have been working at pace to develop the 5G supply chain diversification strategy, which sets out a clear vision for a healthy, competitive and diverse supply market for telecoms and the set of principles that we want operators and suppliers to follow.

The strategy is built around three key strands: first, securing incumbents; secondly, attracting new suppliers; and thirdly, accelerating the development and adoption of open and interoperable technologies across the market. That is why, in the diversification strategy that we published today, we commit to exploring commercial incentives for new market entrants as we level the playing field; to setting out a road map to end the provision of older legacy technologies that create obstacles for new suppliers; and to investing in R&D to grow a vibrant and thriving telecoms ecosystem here in the UK.

I say gently to the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah) that we have directly addressed a number of the issues that she raised in Westminster Hall last week. I look forward to engaging with her more on the strategy because it is important that we should work together to try to make sure that we all derive the benefits of a serious £250 million Government commitment that will drive early progress and ensure that our 5G diversification strategy not only bolsters the resilience and security of our digital infrastructure but creates opportunities for competition, innovation and prosperity.