Telecommunications (Security) Bill

Chi Onwurah 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

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

I start by thanking Members from all parts of the House for a well-informed debate with many impressive contributions. My first job as a hardware engineer was with Nortel, which has been mentioned by a number of Members. Having spent 23 years in the sector before entering the Commons, I am thrilled that the main debating chamber of our parliamentary democracy should spend so many hours dedicated to our telecommunications infrastructure. I regret that Members who wanted to take part in this debate, particularly from the Opposition Benches, and who could have done so remotely, were not able to do so because of an arbitrary decision by the Leader of the House.

However good the debate is, it cannot make up for the wasted decade under this Government. Successive Tory Governments have squandered the world-leading legacy position on broadband infrastructure left by the last Labour Government. Since then, we have seen delays in the roll-out of networks and the development of a dependency on high-risk vendors. The UK’s sovereign telecoms capabilities and our national security have been neglected, resulting in the Huawei debacle and ultimately this Bill.

My hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff Central (Jo Stevens) put it so eloquently: national security is the first duty of any Government, and Labour will always put that first. The point was made strongly by a number of Members, including the right hon. Members for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) and for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith).

Given where we are, we support the aims of the Bill. National security should be the priority of any Government, and our telecommunications infrastructure is clearly critical to our defence, our security and our economic prosperity. That point was made by a number of Members, including the hon. Member for The Wrekin (Mark Pritchard).

We must make sure that we do not find ourselves in a similar position again and that our telecoms network and supply chain are resilient and protected in future, even, critically, as the geopolitical environment evolves. Our telecoms infrastructure lacks security and resilience. We have taken no steps to maintain or develop a sovereign communications capability, and the Government’s broadband strategy, if we can call it that, has far more U-turns, dither and delay than meaningful policies. We want to work with the Government to get issues of national security right, but the Bill is far from perfect.

Members have raised many issues, and I will focus on just three: cost, resource and diversification. I have found telecoms operators to be extremely responsive to the need to take action on the issue of, and in the cause of, national security and to replace high-risk vendors, but six months since the decision to strip out Huawei was finally made, we still do not know how the Government plan to achieve this. They seem to have decided that that is for the private sector to sort out.

The impact assessments, of which there are two, admit that the Government cannot figure out what the impact will be. They have chosen not to give operators any legal protection on existing contracts, but have again not quantified that impact. The Government are apparently happy to pass on the costs of their mistakes, indecision and poor planning to the operators, stating that the costs of removing Huawei are

“commercial decisions that are for the mobile operators to make.”

Yet clearly there was a failure Government here, as 5G security was not sufficiently safeguarded, in the ways that the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) set out so clearly. Will there be a delay in 5G roll-out? Again, we are not clear, and depending on what is factored in, various research projects have found the costs to be anything from £6 billion to £18 billion. If the Government plan to leave this entirely to the mercy of the market, I would say that all the information-gathering skills Ofcom has will not give us an accurate integrated view of progress and effectiveness. There is no mention of working with local authorities to ease this or to make it quicker, cheaper or more effective.

I joined Ofcom in 2004, just a few weeks after it was born, when it was to be a light-touch regulator, small and nimble. Over the years, it has acquired responsibility for critical national infrastructure; the BBC; the Post Office; soon, we understand, the entirety of online harms; and now, it would appear, national security as well. As Members have pointed out, this Bill refers only to the Secretary of State and Ofcom when it comes to making these key decisions. Of the two, I have to say that I would have more confidence in Ofcom, but the Bill says very little about the resources or the skills that will be provided. This is a huge job, an issue that my right hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) set out so clearly in what was a truly excellent contribution. One still has to ask: is it sufficiently well scoped? It is a huge job, but is it actually scoped? Is it the role of Ofcom to consider the security of our current networks, or should it be forward-looking? Members have set out what kind of a challenge that would be. Members also touched on the importance of human rights with regard to China’s record. How is that to play on national security decisions?

[Sir John Hayes]

The real point about Ofcom is whether it acquires those skills or what the processes will be for it to access them from the intelligence community and the National Cyber Security Centre, which would seem to be a much more straightforward way of quickly tooling up to do the job the hon. Member describes.

[Chi Onwurah]

I thank the right hon. Member for that intervention, and indeed for his contribution to the debate. I agree with him, although I think that is something we need to work out and probe in Committee, because currently there is no reference to that, or no plan to do that. I think we should certainly be taking into account and using our existing resources, and we all know that these kinds of resources and skills are both expensive and hard to find at the moment. The right hon. Member makes an important point.

On 14 July, the Secretary of State, who is not in his place, said in this House that he had

“set out a clear and ambitious diversification strategy.”—[Official Report, 14 July 2020; Vol. 678, c. 1377.]

I asked him repeatedly over the summer when he would publish this clear strategy that he had already set out. Answer came there none, and I could only conclude that he had misspoken. However, I did think that today we would get that strategy, but unfortunately not. Yes, there is actually a diversification strategy, which has been published, but it is neither clear nor ambitious. It is far more concerned with bringing new vendors into the UK than with developing our sovereign technological capability. Indeed, as it diversifies opportunities for Nokia and Ericsson, we could call it an effective Scandinavian industrial strategy. Apart from a vague commitment to link the scale of home-grown suppliers to the Government’s broader growth and productivity agenda, there is no clear plan—no plan at all—to build UK sovereign capabilities, which the right hon. Members for Vale of Glamorgan (Alun Cairns) and for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood) emphasised as being important.

Just today, Mobile UK, the mobile operators industrial body, emphasised that the Bill and the 5G diversification strategy are intrinsically linked but not, it would appear, by the Government. The diversification strategy also does not refer to fibre, although the Bill applies to our fibre networks too and may impact the Government’s constantly shifting roll-out targets.

Network operators need to be confident in the maturity, performance, integration and security credentials of new vendors and technologies before they are deployed in their main networks. We agree with the Secretary of State that the Government can help accelerate that process, and in doing so there is potential to create opportunities for the UK to take the lead, as well as much-needed high-skilled jobs. The hon. Members for Totnes (Anthony Mangnall), for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and for Bracknell (James Sunderland) all agreed about the importance of diversification, but all the diversification strategy says about developing UK technology, jobs and capability is that it will be part of the industrial strategy, which we have yet to see. Clearly, we do not have a diversification strategy.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

Does my hon. Friend agree the Bill will have to dovetail closely with the National Security and Investment Bill? If new developments were taken over by foreign entities, that could be a security risk as well. However, as we were told last week, the responsibility for that lies with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, not DCMS.

[Chi Onwurah]

My right hon. Friend makes an excellent point. He is absolutely right. The question of how the diversification strategy delivers home-grown capability and protects that as it grows and strengthens has been avoided.

As the shadow Secretary of State said, it is important that everyone can benefit from 5G, both in our technological capability and in using it. There is a digital divide in this country: 11 million adults lack one or more basic digital skills and 10% of households do not have internet access. 5G has the potential to increase digital inclusion, providing greater access to broadband. As the hon. Members for West Dorset (Chris Loder) and for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) highlighted, digital technology can be a great leveller, but we need to ensure that the infrastructure and skills base exist for everyone to take advantage of the opportunities it provides. Digital inclusion requires political will, urgent action and a Government who understand the importance of universal digital suffrage. Government interventions on that have been brief—not quite as brief as the intervention of the hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat) in the debate, but far less eloquent.

As a chartered engineer, I want to finish by celebrating the potential of 5G, which can truly transform our businesses, our industries and our daily lives. It will not only vastly improve our connectivity and browsing experience but support new enabling technologies, from the internet of things to artificial intelligence. If the first industrial revolution was powered by engines, the fourth will be powered by data. As hon. Members have observed, 5G is essential for innovations from driverless cars to smart cities, and to addressing the climate emergency through monitoring and improving our energy efficiency. Some estimates predict that 5G could mean productivity savings for the UK of up to £6 billion a year on top of energy and waste reductions that internet of things devices could enable.

We must get this right. As we all agree, our national security is priceless, but until we see a detailed plan, a proper impact assessment and an industrial strategy, the Opposition will remain deeply concerned that the Government are not prepared to make the interventions necessary to ensure that our national security is safeguarded.