Telecommunications (Security) Bill

Bob Stewart Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Monday 8th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

I thank colleagues in the other place who have worked hard to improve the Bill. National security is the first duty of any Government and Labour will always put our country’s security first.

The pandemic has shown how important telecommunications networks are. I declare an interest as a former telecoms engineer, but I am sure I speak for the whole House in thanking all those who have kept our networks going during the pandemic. We have been dependent on them to work from home or to keep in touch with family and friends. This House could continue its important work thanks to telecommunications networks, as well as the hard work of House staff and the Speaker’s support.

A secure network is of the utmost importance. Labour welcomes the Bill’s intention while recognising its limitations. I am pleased that the Lords amendments that we are discussing reflect issues that Labour has been raising.

Lords amendment 1 seeks to improve transparency in the use of the Secretary of State’s powers to issue codes of practice to communications providers through the negative procedure. It reflects amendments that we tabled in Committee in response to the sweeping powers that the Bill gives to the Secretary of State and Ofcom. As the Comms Council UK said,

“the Minister will be able to unilaterally make decisions that impact the technical operation and direction of technology companies, with little or no oversight or accountability.”

The House has a duty to ensure that those powers are proportionate and accountable, so we are happy that the Government have bowed to pressure from Labour to strengthen parliamentary scrutiny, even if, in our view, it does not go far enough. Two consequential amendments to Lords amendment 1 set out the conditions for the 40-day scrutiny period and ensure that that time cannot be disrupted by recess or Prorogation so that this House and the other place have sufficient time to scrutinise the code.

Lords amendment 5 is cross party and designed to ensure that the Government review a vendor that is banned in a Five Eyes country. We support the amendment and find the Government’s opposition concerning, as we believe it could threaten our national security.

I find the Minister’s arguments against the amendment somewhat confused. She claims that the amendment is unnecessary because we already monitor Five Eyes countries and would always respond to the actions of our closest intelligence partners, but if that is true, why not formalise it? We are stronger together, specifically with our Five Eyes allies. Instead of putting forward further arguments, I turn to the eloquent explanation of Conservative peer Lord Blencathra:

“All it asks the Government to do…is to review the security arrangements with a telecoms provider if one of our vital, strategic Five Eyes partners bans its equipment. We are not calling for a similar immediate ban, or an eventual ban, we are just saying let us review it and come to a conclusion.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 19 October 2021; Vol. 815, c. 99.]

We will support the amendment.

Lords amendment 4 requires the Secretary of State to report on the diversification strategy’s impact on the security of telecommunications networks. It would also allow for a debate in this House on the report to further strengthen parliamentary scrutiny. Labour supports the removal of high-risk vendors from our telecoms networks, and given the grave situation into which successive Conservative Governments have allowed our networks to fall, it is essential that the Government have the powers to remove Huawei at speed. However, we are left with only two providers, and as we heard repeatedly at every stage of this Bill’s progression, two providers is not diverse, is not resilient and is not secure.

We cannot ensure national security without a diverse supply chain, but I fear that the Government still just do not get it. Let me just take two of the Minister’s arguments. The first argument seems to be, as far as I could comprehend it, that requiring reporting would be “restrictive and premature”, but surely if the Government’s intention is to diversify the supply chain—and we have heard that we cannot have a secure network without a diversified supply chain—the only way a reporting requirement would be limiting is if the Government have no actual intention of doing anything about diversifying it.

The Minister’s second argument seems to be that this is too technologically specific. Lords amendment 4 says:

“The Secretary of State must publish an annual report on the impact of progress of the diversification of the telecommunications supply chain on the security of public electronic communication networks and services.”

Would the Minister tell me what in that is specific as to the technology? Indeed, the only specific aspect of technology is a requirement to include future technologies that may be used as a platform, such as cloud computing. I find the Minister’s reasons for not supporting this amendment concerning. I fear that the Government are just not serious about diversifying our supply chain, and that they do not really have a plan for it.

The Minister mentioned asking parliamentary questions. Just last week, I asked her what funding was available for 5G diversification, and she talked about

“a Future RAN Competition (FRANC) and opening the doors of the SmartRAN Open Network Interoperability Centre (SONIC Labs).”

I want to know how diversification is being achieved and how local sovereign UK capability is being built, not an acronym soup that is ad hoc, hard to digest and dangerously complacent.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

The hon. Lady is an expert in so far as she was, I understand, a communications engineer. As far as I understand it, there are three suppliers, but one of them we do not particularly want to use, and that leaves two. What other diversification can we do if we only have two? Can we try to build up something very fast, and is that what the hon. Lady is suggesting?

[Chi Onwurah]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, and I promise not to take advantage of it to set out at length what we could be doing to diversify. I would just say to the hon. Gentleman and the House that we only have two suppliers for 5G now, but the technology is evolving and there are new technologies for the next generation of networks—6G. As he will well remember, we have gone through generations of technology at quite a pace over the last 20 years.

Right now, we should be investing in great UK technologies from companies and start-ups that are working in the field of open RAN and other technologies. Rather than having just one vendor supplying a whole network, as has been the case with Huawei and others, we would have a diverse mix of vendors at every stage of the network—the core and so on—which would enable much greater resilience. We could be doing that. The technologies are there now, and with the support of a forward-looking Government, we could ensure that leaders in those technologies were UK companies. We would therefore have not only a resilient network, but a network with local capability, because I remind the hon. Gentleman that there is no UK capability or UK vendor in this area right now. That is what I hope to see from the Government. Network diversification should be a fantastic opportunity to support innovative start-ups around the country.

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[Mr Kevan Jones]

I begin by thanking the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Matt Warman), who took the Bill through Committee very ably. Sadly, he was a victim of the cull of competence in the last reshuffle, but his approach to the Bill was refreshing.

The Bill is important and, as a member of the ISC, I fully support it, but aspects of it need improving. Lords amendment 4 on the diversification strategy is vital. I was not reassured by the Minister telling us that this would be kept on track. When people try to give the impression that the issue of telecoms security suddenly hit us like a bolt out of the blue because of Huawei, I suggest that they read the 2013 ISC report on critical national infrastructure. What was going to happen was all laid out there, and nothing did. I think that without this annual stocktake, as the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) said, there will be a tendency for future Governments to take their eye off the ball in terms of pushing forward the agenda that ensures that we are never again in a situation where we are beholden to, in this case, Huawei or any other vendor.

I have no problems with Lords amendments 1 to 3, but I think the Minister rather oversold this in saying that it is a demonstration of the Government’s commitment to parliamentary scrutiny. I accept that to a limited degree as it pertains to the codes of practice, but as the right hon. Member for New Forest East outlined, there is an issue that should concern Members on both sides of the House with this Bill and the National Security and Investment Act, in that there are elements of security now in two Departments that will not be able to be scrutinised by any Committee other than the ISC. As he outlined, although we have tabled probing amendments here and in the other place, we have given the benefit of the doubt to the Government, because of reassurances that scrutiny will be forthcoming. However, I say to the Minister that I would like a commitment tonight that she will feed that point back, because without this, no other Committee will be able to deal with the secret aspects involved. I have spoken to members of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee, who are still trying to wheedle out of the Government their memorandum of understanding about what they can and cannot see, and that does not bode well. This is one thing that we will come back to, if it is not done now.

The ISC has so far been constructive and responsible in the way in which it has approached this issue. It is now in the hands of the Prime Minister to ensure that the memorandum of understanding is amended and is, as the Chair of the ISC said, in line with the Justice and Security Act 2013, which envisaged that we would have oversight if security went into other areas. Without that, these matters will lack the scrutiny that they rightly need.

[Bob Stewart]

I, too, speak as a member of the Intelligence and Security Committee. My comments will be short, because my time is limited, but many of the views that I will express have already been stated by other hon. Members.

As the House has heard, the ISC broadly supports the Bill, although it remains concerned about the Bill’s lack of a role for it in providing parliamentary oversight of parts of the legislation that Select Committees are unable to supervise. The ISC has made that point to the Government, but they do not accept it.

As a Committee, we want this legislation and will not push the issue, but we retain reservations about the matter not being part of the Bill. However, as the Chairman of the ISC—my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis)—and other hon. Members have said, we have written to the National Security Adviser to suggest that the matter be addressed in a revised edition of the Committee’s MOU, which comes from the Prime Minister. Otherwise, we consider that there will be gaps in the supervision available to Parliament—that is our main point.

The Committee fully supports the changes to clause 3 in Lords amendments 1 to 3 about codes of practice and the new wording after clause 23 in Lords amendment 4. With regard to Lords amendment 5 on Five Eyes review, we believe that the intelligence community will naturally consider the views of Five Eyes partners as part of its reporting, so the new clause, although worthy, is not really necessary.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I am extremely grateful for your pithiness.

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[Julia Lopez]

With the leave of the House, I close this debate by thanking hon. Members for their contributions to the debate and for making a number of extremely important points about national security. I am keen to address those not only now, in this legislation, but in the future, through horizon scanning for some of the challenges that are coming up.

I appreciate that some of the trust in the system has been undermined by the Huawei situation, and I am sympathetic to concerns raised about reporting, diversification and resilience. My hon. Friend the Member for Solihull (Julian Knight) is absolutely right that this legislation is just one part of a wider security framework. The development of 5G and full-fibre networks brings new security challenges, which we must be prepared for.

This legislation sets up a strong regime for handling and removing high-risk vendors from our public networks, but it is just the start. Specific security measures will be set out in secondary legislation; there will be a lot of work to do in the next stage as we draw up that legislation, and we will be publishing a code of practice explaining the technical guidance that providers can follow to comply with legal duties.

The final secondary legislation and code will be agreed through public consultation, which I hope will provide another opportunity for hon. Members who have concerns in this area to provide adequate scrutiny. I am alive to some of those concerns, but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Boston and Skegness (Matt Warman) has outlined, MPs and Peers have had multiple chances to scrutinise and feed back on our diversification strategy, and we will continue to report on developments.

[Bob Stewart]

I remind the Minister that the members of the ISC present tonight have written to the national security adviser on the revision of the memorandum of understanding from the Prime Minister to the ISC. We really do expect some changes to that, so that we can close the gap on supervision of things that other Select Committees cannot look at.

[Julia Lopez]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that point. This issue has been raised throughout the passage of the Bill; I am alive to those concerns from the ISC, which bring particular expertise and scrutiny on matters on which others cannot, by virtue of their security importance. I understand that the ISC’s Chair has written to the Cabinet Office on the matters raised, but I wish to engage with the Committee on its important work. I believe I may—