Huawei and 5G Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport
Graham Stringer
Main Page: Graham Stringer (Labour - Blackley and Broughton)Department Debates - View all Graham Stringer's debates with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport
(4 years, 1 month ago)
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Sir Iain Duncan Smith
I am grateful, as ever, to the right hon. Gentleman, who is in danger of making my speech before I do, because I am coming on to those points. He will find that we not do not just have cross-party support; we are absolutely linked in our concern about Huawei.
I will come back to this point later, but I am afraid that a lot of this issue is about the way in which the establishment at the moment in the UK has somehow found itself locked into this Huawei process, and we need to break it free; it is like getting somebody free of an addiction to heroin. We need to put it into rehabilitation, which is the point of my speech at the moment.
Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)
The right hon. Gentleman is making the case that security is paramount. Does he agree that there is also a commercial argument, in that the Government are going to reward Huawei, which has bought its way into the system? Its first tenders in the 3G and 4G networks were at a quarter of the costs of its commercial competitors in Europe and North America. We should not reward people who are basically trying to bankrupt our industry.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. This relates to my earlier comment about the linkage with the Government. I will come back to Huawei’s ability to draw on support finance—which we might call Government support.
I am aware that you want me to make progress, Mr Paisely, so I shall. I will also ask others to restrain themselves slightly, although I will not refuse interventions. That will not win me points from you, Mr Paisley, but I will not defy my colleagues.
Perhaps most bizarrely, I think that the rush by the Government is being driven by the fear that we will be left behind by others. It is worth tackling that point. I find it difficult to comprehend their position, given that a growing number of leading western nations, many of them our competitors in many fields, intend not to use Huawei—in fact, they will depart completely from Huawei, even if that means a delay—or any other untrusted vendors. Surely, therefore, it is inevitable that the worldwide roll-out of 5G must slow down. Given that so many nations are saying no to Huawei, this should be an opportunity for us to prioritise national security over the breakneck speed with which the deployment of 5G is being pressed on us.