Oral Answers to Questions

Iain Duncan Smith Excerpts

Thursday 16th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Matt Warman]

The right hon. Gentleman is right to raise a hugely important issue. I and this Government share his impatience to tackle it, but that is why we are talking, through the online advertising programme, about looking at every single option, whether it is to tackle user-generated content through one mechanism or, potentially, advertising through another. It is about getting that combination of measures right so that we can achieve the maximum possible effect.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

May I, through the Minister, pass on my congratulations to the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Ms Dorries), on her appointment?

In line with the whole issue of fraudulent adverts, there is also the big issue of the appalling behaviour of gambling companies and their advertising, which causes huge problems and addiction for many young people. May I, through the Minister, ask the new Secretary of State whether she would take a meeting with families bereaved as a result of gambling addiction?

[Matt Warman]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right to raise that terrible scourge. I am happy to tell him that my hon. Friend the Secretary of State would be delighted to take the meeting he suggests.

Telecommunications (Security) Bill

Iain Duncan Smith Excerpts

Report stage & 3rd reading
Tuesday 25th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Flynn (Aberdeen South) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure, once again, to follow the Chair of the ISC, the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis), as I did during the passage of the National Security and Investment Bill. He speaks with great wisdom and experience on these matters, and the Minister would do well to heed such advice from his Back Benches. It is also a pleasure to follow the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah), who also speaks with great experience in this field. I have been fortunate enough to sit on a number of Bill Committees with her, and it is clear that telecommunications is very much her forte.

Let us consider the Bill in a wider context, before I drill down on the new clauses. We are essentially looking at foreign investment in our critical, national infrastructure. In real terms this is not a new thing. We are all aware, I hope, of the ISC report from 2013 on that very matter, and Huawei, and its role within our infrastructure, did not necessarily come as a surprise to anyone. I read the Bill’s Second Reading with much interest. The Labour party was trying extremely hard to absolve itself of any blame in that regard, which made for light entertainment over the past evenings. Of course, the Government are just as complicit in that regard, and complicit with a small c, because they were not necessarily looking at things with the view that they have now.

From my experience in this House, the Government have not covered themselves in glory when it comes to this topic. When I came into this place in 2019, one of the first key issues that was talked about—aside from Brexit, of course—was Huawei’s role within the UK, and we have seen the Government flip-flop from one view to another. It is testament to the hard work of many Government Members that they got the Government to realise just how serious this topic is and, indeed, was in years gone by.

Although there are concerns, the only thing that has really changed in the many years since 2013 is the seriousness with which the Government are treating this matter, and that seriousness extends to my colleagues and me. As my hon. Friend the Member for Gordon (Richard Thomson) made clear on Second Reading and in Committee, we are supportive of the Government’s efforts in this regard, as we were with the National Security and Investment Bill, but there are a couple of areas where the Government still need to provide a level of assurance. Notwithstanding the remarks that have rightly been made in relation to scrutiny by the ISC, importantly we need to be clear that the Government are going to pick up the tab in Scotland for all the equipment that will now be made surplus to requirements. We cannot have a situation where that is not the case, because it is their actions that have led to the situation we are in. We also need to ensure that the replacement strategy is both safe and secure, so that we do not find ourselves in a situation such as this ever again.

Notwithstanding the justified security concerns that we all have, perhaps the key thing lies in and around the issue of telecommunications. As was referenced by the shadow Minister, although not in the same detail, there are around 1 million people in rural Scotland who do not even have access to 4G. Of course, telecommunications is reserved to the UK Government—it is the responsibility of the Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Matt Warman), and he will be cognisant of the fact that the 4G roll-out has not been as good as it should be. We all want to see the 5G roll-out, to ensure that we are in as advanced a position as possible, but we must ensure that the same mistakes are not repeated. I would certainly welcome assurances from the Minister in that regard.

That leads me to the SNP’s amendment 1, which seeks to ensure that the Government consult in full with the Governments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. It is vital that we have that link and that, while we remain a part of the United Kingdom, the UK Government work in partnership with the Scottish Government on such serious matters.

It will come as no surprise to the Minister that we are supportive of the new clauses tabled by Labour on ensuring that there is diversification, that there is parliamentary oversight and scrutiny, and that the ISC plays a key role. I would like to hear from its Members that they are equally supportive of the view that the devolved Administrations should play a key role in telecommunications.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

It is always a pleasure to return to old arguments and ensure that they are still live, and I intend to do just that. From the beginning, I have supported the process and initiative taken by the Government; it was not without struggles early on. I do not intend to go into the details, but I will refer to them. Back in 2019 and early 2020, it became quite a battle over whose advice was better. It seemed to me at the time—and, in a way, I do not blame the Government for this—that the National Cyber Security Centre gave the Government poor advice about the security risk, which was tempered by the Government’s need to go ahead and get 5G moving.

That is always the problem that we face. If organisations are to give Government advice on security risks, it must be completely separated on the basis that that is their advice; they must not temper it to suit the Government. We have seen that happen all the way through—it is not just this particular Government. They have made the right decision, and I will come back to that, but if we go back, this has happened also with Labour Governments and Conservative Governments of the past. Successive Governments have underestimated the growing risk that is coming particularly from China, but also from other countries. They were already aware of the risk from Russia.

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[Ms Nusrat Ghani (Wealden) (Con)]

No, but I will never waste an opportunity, as it is obviously a joy to intervene on my right hon. Friend, who was asking how much deeper our relationship can go with a country that has sanctioned parliamentarians in this House for basically raising human rights abuses and security concerns.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

I am getting so used to just doing what I am told by my hon. Friend when it is necessary that she only has to look in this direction and I give way to her—my apologies.

What I was really trying to get to the bottom of is that I do not think that this is feasible any longer. The Bill illustrates the dichotomy that lies at the heart of the Government’s position. We are trying constantly to talk about these trade relationships, but at the same time we recognise that the country that we are discussing them with is a totalitarian state that is guilty of what many, including myself, believe is a genocide of a whole ethnic group—more than one ethnic group. It is a state that is intolerant, that is suppressing democracy and free speech in Hong Kong, that is threatening Taiwan and India, and that has said that it is in possession of the South China sea. I could go on with that list. We can recognise the compilation of all those things and that there is a security risk, and yet at the same time in the other place we are told, “Don’t worry. We are still trying to do trade deals.”

It is quite interesting that we have reopened an economic and financial dialogue under a JETCO—a joint economic and trade committee—which was originally paused because of the imposition of the national security law in Hong Kong. The discussions have now restarted, although we did not hear much fanfare. We sort of discovered that they had restarted, but there was no announcement from the Dispatch Box that we were restarting them. There are no dates involved, but the discussions are restarting, despite the sanctions against individuals and so on, and despite our sanctions against Chinese officials—although I still wish that we could do more.

I note also that the European Union was heading in the same direction with its agreement, only now, because of the sanctions on its MEPs and so on, it has decided that it is not going to do that. I simply raise the question: if we think that this country and this Government —the Chinese Communist party, the Government of China—are such a potential threat, should we really be trying to reopen those doors, despite the sanctions that we have in place, the sanctions that they have put in place, and the very clear threat that they now pose to our security?

I simply say to my hon. Friend the Minister that I was going to move my amendment, which would have said that the Government should immediately declare many of these companies high-risk vendors by the very nature of the security law that exists in China. However, I would also say, in support of what has been said already, that the Government need to use the internal possibilities in our Parliament. We have a Committee that is cleared to the highest level of security in these areas, and it is important that we use that Committee. If the Government get private advice from the Committee about what it thinks is going wrong with their position, I think that will benefit and improve them.

I therefore ask my hon. Friend to take my amendment into consideration and to answer that point, to think seriously about how we can strengthen the Bill further and, if he can, to make the reservations of this place felt to his colleagues in Government. We are deeply concerned about trying to ride two bicycles at the same time: recognising a deep and growing threat to democracy not just here but around the world from the Chinese Communist party, while trying to beg China to do trade deals with us, notwithstanding the fact that it behaves so badly.

[Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD) [V]]

It is a pleasure to join you, Madam Deputy Speaker, from the far north of Scotland. Before I make two points that will be familiar to the House, may I compliment the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) on a most interesting speech? I afford myself a wry smile; we are where we are today, which is rather different from where we were when I attended the Westminster Hall debate in which he made the same point. I think that he would be allowed some quiet satisfaction at having changed the Government’s course as significantly as he has, because—I shall return to this point—this is about the defence of the realm.

Let me make a second initial remark, with reference to the hon. Member for Aberdeen South (Stephen Flynn). As a former Member of a place based in Holyrood, in Edinburgh, I wholeheartedly support the notion of working with the devolved Administrations. It makes absolute sense. If we believe in the security of the realm, we all have to work together for the better good.

As I have said already, my two points will be familiar to the House. The first is that, having done the armed forces scheme, I know it is very useful in bringing elected Members face to face with the realities of the defence of this country. For me, it was something of a wake-up call. There is no doubt, as the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green said, that there are nations out there—Russia, China, North Korea and others—that do not concern themselves with the good health of the United Kingdom. We have only to look at the hijacking of the Ryanair airliner in recent days, or indeed the crime that was committed in Salisbury, to see that the actions of states can be very bad indeed for us as a country, so in some ways this whole debate is a bit of a wake-up call. We have to ask ourselves where we stand in the world, what we can do and whether we are going to stand up for what we believe is right.

The Bill has the support of my party, in that it helps to protect the vital interests of the United Kingdom and the people who live in and love our country, as we all do. The key point emerging from that is that, as others have said, there will have to be an element of co-operation with other countries that share our ideals and interests. We think of the Five Eyes countries, of our European friends and of other countries all over the globe—perhaps India, perhaps South Korea, perhaps Japan—that we could work with more closely to further the best interests of us all.

My second point—yes, I am going to talk about this yet again, so perhaps I should offer an apology to the Chamber—is on something that the hon. Member for Aberdeen South referred to: we talk about 5G in the UK, but there are parts of Scotland that do not have 4G. As the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah), said, there are bits of Scotland where connectivity is very poor indeed. In the past, I have made the perhaps not very clever joke that in parts of my constituency, we might even be better off with two tin cans and a length of string, so there is a lot of work to be done, to say the least.

BBC: Dyson Report

Iain Duncan Smith Excerpts

Monday 24th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Whittingdale]

The BBC is the British Broadcasting Corporation. It reports on activities across the United Kingdom. It is paid for by every person resident in the United Kingdom who has a television. Impartiality and fairness apply as much in its reporting of domestic politics as they do internationally. There are questions to be answered, as I agreed earlier, and the hon. Lady is correct. However, I do believe that the British Broadcasting Corporation should remain a beacon of impartiality for all residents of the United Kingdom.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

May I take my right hon. Friend back to the one bit of the Dyson report that has left us with a serious question? It relates to the behaviour of the then chairman and of Mr Bashir. Fraud is defined as a deception intended to result in financial or personal gain by false representation. There is no question from the report but that Mr Bashir made false representation to prey on a vulnerable woman to get her to do something that she would otherwise not have done. Furthermore, it refers to the fact, but does not conclude anything from it, that Mr Hall and others therefore covered up that process; again, I think that opens them up to the idea of fraud. Has my right hon. Friend decided to refer those people to the Director of Public Prosecutions?

[Mr Whittingdale]

The questions surrounding the employment of Martin Bashir are being urgently investigated by the corporation, as I said, and I expect a statement to be made very shortly. On whether any criminal offences have been committed, I understand that a request has gone to the Metropolitan police to examine the evidence that has been revealed and reach a judgment on it; it is a matter for the police to determine.

Gambling and Lotteries

Iain Duncan Smith Excerpts

Tuesday 8th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Nigel Huddleston]

I can confirm that the experience of those with lived experience will form part of the review. In fact, the Secretary of State and I have met many victims and their families, and we will continue to do so. On sport, if there is evidence of harm from sponsorship and advertising, we will act. On the other considerations that the hon. Gentleman mentioned, I can assure him that if people have evidence, for example, that a levy is an alternative model, we would welcome those submissions in the review. I welcome the scrutiny that he and others will give to the review as it progresses.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend for his statement, which marks the beginning of a real sea change in our attitude towards the gambling abuses that have taken place. On that point, I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris), whose chairing of the all-party parliamentary group on gambling related harm has been phenomenal, and to the vice chair, the hon. Member for Inverclyde (Ronnie Cowan). We have worked very hard together to try to drive this moment. I have to say to my hon. Friend the Minister that we want all the evidence we have taken over the last couple of years to be part of the inquiry. I would also like the all-party parliamentary group to appear in front of it.

May I press my hon. Friend on one particular point? He knows about the abuse of VIP schemes and about the behaviour of the gambling companies, which have been appalling in the way they have used people. Is it not now time, instead of looking only at the powers of the Gambling Commission, to get rid of the Gambling Commission altogether and institute a body as powerful as, say, Ofcom or all the other bodies that monitor and regulate these industries? Now is the time to make bold moves, to make sure we get proper control and that the abuses and the addiction end.

[Nigel Huddleston]

I thank my right hon. Friend for all his work in this important area, and the people he mentioned who have also campaigned for such a long time. We know that there have been problems with VIP schemes. We have acted on them already, but that does not mean that further action is not necessary. I am confident that the evidence-led review may reveal further options and avenues. I welcome his input into all areas under consideration. As I said, the Gambling Commission’s scope and resources are part of that review. I welcome his further comments.

Telecommunications (Security) Bill

Iain Duncan Smith 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

[Oliver Dowden]

I am pleased to say that the Minister for Digital Infrastructure has met every one of the parties my hon. Friend named; indeed, I have met many of them. Essentially, we are working across three strands. First, we are working with the existing vendors—there were three, now to become two—to secure them and make sure we do not lose a further one. We are also working with new potential incumbents such as NEC and Samsung. In addition, we are working across a range of countries, in particular the D10, to ensure that we work together to improve standards in telecoms.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend, who is being customarily generous in giving way, but can I just make a point to him and hear his answer? This situation has constantly been wrongly described as a market failure. It was not a market failure; the failure was in the reality of one country abusing and breaking World Trade Organisation rules on subsidies. The key problem has been that China has subsidised its providers dramatically, even over 100% on contract, which has killed this market over the last 10 years. Once we release the market by stopping that, the private sector will come back into this industry because competition will be real competition, not broken competition. That is the key point.

[Oliver Dowden]

My right hon. Friend highlights one of a range of different market distortions that have been going on. To a certain extent, there will be some market correction, but the Government also need to intervene, and our diversification strategy addresses that. If we are to get existing vendors who are not currently in the UK market back in, or to create a new open RAN solution, we need to provide financial incentives, and the diversification strategy touches on many of the steps that we propose to take.

We are taking concrete steps towards a solution, but diversification is not just a problem to be solved. It is also an opportunity to be seized. As part of our strategy, we will invest in homegrown solutions that will put us at the forefront of developing 5G technology and all the transformative benefits it brings. The next phase of this work will be taken forward by the Telecoms Diversification Task Force, chaired by Lord Livingston, formerly of BT, and others. I am grateful for the work that he, industry and academic experts have done in developing the strategy and in taking it forward.

The Bill has not been designed around one company, one country or one threat. Its strength is that it creates an enduring, flexible and far-reaching telecoms regime, one that keeps pace with changing technology and changing threats, that supports billions of phone calls, email exchanges and file transfers in this country every day, and that is essential to the UK’s economy and its future prosperity.

I listened carefully to the concerns of Members on both sides of the House in designing the legislation, and I have sought to address those concerns head on in the Bill as it stands before the House. I genuinely hope that the Bill will command cross-party support and that we will be able to work together in the national interest to ensure the security of our telecoms networks. I commend the Bill to the House.

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[Jo Stevens]

I do not want to step beyond my brief and interfere in that of my shadow Cabinet colleague, but we certainly should not be doing business with any companies that breach both human rights and workers’ rights. We have international labour standards in place and these are not companies with which to do business.

Turning now to broadband and 5G roll-out, and the delays and the costs layering on top of them, we have already seen delays in the roll-out of second and third generation fixed broadband, and we are now at the bottom of the OECD tables. In fact, only last week the Government sneaked out in the Chancellor’s spending review plans to water down their broadband promises. Instead of keeping to their manifesto promise to roll out gigabit-speed broadband to every home in Britain by 2025, the Chancellor revealed that the Government are now aiming to have a minimum of 85% coverage by that date. The budget for that plan remains the same, but now only £1.2 billion of the £5 billion will be made available up until 2024, so this will impact on the so-called levelling-up agenda.

The Government’s delay in dealing with the issue of high-risk vendors until now has also meant that there will be added delays and costs to the roll-out of 5G. The Secretary of State accepted that in July, when he said that the cumulative delay would be two to three years. However, the Government’s impact assessment for the Bill does not establish the effect of removing Huawei from the core network on the timescale for the 5G roll-out, so has the Secretary of State’s position, set out in July, of a two to three-year delay changed at all, and why does the impact assessment fail to address that issue? Also in July, the Secretary of State predicted that removing Huawei would cost operators up to £2 billion, but that could be a huge underestimate, because BT alone is saying that it will cost it £500 million, and the costs could be far greater, including the knock-on effects in terms of lost revenue and wider economic benefits.

As well as those economic consequences, there is another impact, because the provision of 5G for most of the UK will increase the digital divide without significant measures to tackle it. The three central problems at the heart of this divide are lack of internet connection, lack of technological devices, and lack of the skills to use new technology in a meaningful way. The Government have promised, and so far failed, to solve the lack of connection, which is a particular problem for under-served communities. There is nothing about 5G that will make it a better option for those communities, who are already lacking affordable access to fast internet. In addition, there is the distinct possibility that in order to access mobile 5G internet, users will need newer and more expensive devices built for those increased speeds. The pandemic has highlighted these divides and thrown into stark relief the need for help and support for those whose lack of connection, skills and equipment is a real barrier both in terms of employment and other meaningful connections.

There is one other significant consequence to the Government’s delay, and that is the new 4G-based emergency services network. That is now unlikely to completely take over from the existing platform until 2024-25. This delay is costing taxpayers millions. If the Government are forced to keep airwaves going beyond 2022, every year of delay adds an extra cost of about £550 million. The core of the ESM network does feature Huawei equipment, but EE has said that it is already working to strip this out and hopes to complete that by 2023. However, can the Secretary of State reassure the House that the presence of Huawei kit in the 4G ESM network will not have any impact on its lifespan, financial implications or security status and safety concerns?

I turn now to the removal of high-risk vendors’ equipment from the 5G networks. For the purposes of this debate, it is probably easier to refer to it as the removal of Huawei equipment, because that is where everybody’s current focus is. This must all be removed from networks by 2027. There is the “no new purchasing” rule from the end of this month, and the Secretary of State has announced today that existing stocks cannot be used after September 2021. However, there are questions for the Government around the implementation of this that I hope the Minister will be able to answer.

I have five specific questions. First, given that the Bill is based on a distinction between the core and the edge of the networks, how confident are the Government of the durability of the barrier between the core and the edge? Secondly, what steps are the Government taking to prioritise the removal of any existing Huawei equipment from the more sensitive core part of the network, and how much equipment does Huawei have in it? Thirdly, are the Government proposing to provide help to businesses who have invested in Huawei equipment ahead of this decision, and will there be legal support, as many operators may have to honour contracts that they cannot actually use or possibly afford? Fourthly, what steps will the Government be taking to work with local authorities and others to minimise disruption to businesses and individuals when removing the equipment? Fifthly and finally, what steps are being taken to minimise the costs to business?

I have one other point, from a different policy angle. When Australia banned Huawei from participating in its 5G network in 2018, China imposed retaliatory measures on Australian goods. The Government’s impact assessment does not address the economic consequences of potential retaliatory measures, so can they explain what steps are being taken to plan for that possibility?

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

The hon. Lady makes reference to what the Chinese Government have been doing with regards to the Australians, which is appalling and breaches WTO rules. In a way, her request for the Government to formulate plans against such a breach is really a request of the WTO to act in this case, as it should have done earlier against China’s abuses and breaking of the WTO rules.

[Jo Stevens]

The right hon. Gentleman makes a valid point.

This Bill gives huge powers to the Secretary of State under the auspices of national security, but it does not define what that means. The Secretary of State will be responsible for making national security judgments and decisions in relation to potential high-risk vendors. The impact assessment suggests that he will not do so unilaterally and that he will consult with the NCSC, but it is incumbent on the Government to explain why they consider that the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport—I mean nothing personal to the right hon. Gentleman in saying this—is the appropriate decision maker on issues of national security. Would it not be better for the Secretary of State to conduct a multi-agency review prior to using these national security powers, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) has suggested in relation to the National Security and Investment Bill, which hands similar powers to the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy?

The lack of a definition of national security in this Bill raises particular concerns about the significant level of discretion afforded to the Secretary of State, the transparency with which such decisions will be made and the ability of Parliament to scrutinise those decisions. On another issue relating to scrutiny, Parliament is being asked to vote on this primary legislation before significant elements of how it will operate have been published, because secondary legislation will set out specific security requirements that providers must meet and the codes of practice that have been mentioned. Those will only be available after the Bill has received Royal Assent.

We have concerns about the role and the scope of the powers given to Ofcom in this legislation. These are new powers, which are pretty onerous. With Ofcom also expected to be named as the regulator in the promised online harms Bill—when that finally arrives—we are concerned about the resourcing of and the expertise within Ofcom to be able to deliver its statutory duties and responsibilities. We are concerned not so much about the volume of work, but that the administering of this new security regime may require skills that Ofcom, and potentially DCMS, are unlikely currently to possess. The impact assessment with the Bill suggests a combined monitoring cost for DCMS and Ofcom of £7 million to £12 million over a 10-year period. Do the Government really think that this resourcing budget will be sufficient?

Finally, I turn to the issue of diversification of the telecoms sector. In the ’80s and ’90s, as BT was privatised, our telecoms supply chain was allowed to fall mainly into foreign hands, although they were the hands of our allies. Conservative Governments over the last decade squandered the world-leading position that our broadband infrastructure had been left in by the last Labour Government. Successive Conservative Governments have lost, given away or under-invested in our sovereign telecoms capability as that supply chain has become dominated by high-risk vendors. There are of course added benefits to reducing reliance on a small number of global vendors, including increasing competition, driving innovation and improving resilience, but, as BT and others have warned, it will take time to move at scale towards new approaches. 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 that the Government can and should help to accelerate that progress, because in doing so, there is the potential to create opportunities for the UK to take the lead, as well as to create much-needed jobs. The strategy published today will need significant scrutiny. The £250 million announced in the spending review last week is obviously welcome, but it lacks sufficient detail, and we look forward to hearing more about how it will be spent.

The Secretary of State claims that this Bill will give the UK one of the toughest telecoms security regimes in the world and allow us to take the action necessary to protect our networks, and I hope he is right. We will not oppose the Bill’s Second Reading, but we have many concerns that will need to be considered and addressed in Committee. The Bill that the House eventually passes must take steps to ensure that our telecoms supply chain is resilient in the future, or we will be forced to return here in a short time to deal with the next Huawei.

We must be mindful, as with all legislation, that we seek to anticipate the problems of the future rather than just deal with the issues that we face today. We of course fully support steps to remove high-risk vendors from the network, but they must go hand in hand with credible measures to diversify the supply chain. We are in this situation because there are no viable alternatives to Huawei, homegrown or otherwise, and that is, in part, a result of the chronic under-investment and lack of leadership from the Government on digital infrastructure. We have to ensure that this does not happen again.

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[Mark Pritchard]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, and I am delighted that the Secretary of State has set out that there is going to be a new national telecoms lab. I am not sure whether he has decided on the location, but I commend the telecoms expertise of Shropshire and the west midlands to the Minister.

The Government’s own telecoms supply chain review, published by DCMS in July 2019, found that

“the telecoms market is not working in a way that incentivises good cyber security”—

perhaps another example of British understatement. This Bill will end that, and rightly so.

In its October 2020 report, the Defence Committee, ably led by my right hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood), concluded that the current 5G

“regulatory situation for network security is outdated and unsatisfactory.”

I thank all the members of that Committee for the work that they have done in highlighting that.

I welcome the fact that the Bill will strengthen the security framework for technology used in 5G and full-fibre networks, including electronic equipment and the hardware and software at phone mast sites and telephone exchanges, and that it will give the Government new powers to issue directions to public telecoms providers to manage the risk of perceived high-risk vendors. It is right that the Bill will allow the Government to impose controls on telecom providers’ use of any goods, services or facilities supplied by high-risk vendors.

I very much welcome the Government’s new powers to limit and remove high-risk vendors, such as Huawei, about which we have heard so much already, from the UK telecoms network. I also very much welcome the new and revised timetable that the Government have announced today for doing this. In saying that, I hope that the Government are not being overly ambitious, as we heard from other hon. Members, but it is right to establish the principle today and move more swiftly on this key issue of national security and diversity in the marketplace.

I welcome the Bill incentivising better security by financially penalising providers that operate below minimum security standards, but I hope—the Minister is here—that a carrot-and-stick approach will be the default DCMS and Ofcom approach, rather than just a stick, as it is the private sector’s co-operation that will help us to move forward on this. It is very much key to the market diversification that the Government want and, more widely, to the partnership in cyber-security resilience in both the private and public sectors. We do not want to have enmity with the very people that the Government need to work more closely with in dealing with these issues.

The Bill makes Ofcom responsible for monitoring and enforcing telecoms providers’ compliance with their security duties where providers do not meet their obligations. I gently ask the Government whether they feel that Ofcom has the necessary teeth. Will Ofcom outsource or buy in any additional and required expertise?

The Bill, rightly, does not allow vendors to have access to the UK telecoms network denied, removed or limited for any reasons other than the protection of the UK’s national security, again making sure that we are not putting up new barriers to new entrants to the marketplace. It is also welcome that the Bill does not give the Secretary of State the right to limit or remove vendors to protect or improve the commercial interests of other vendors in the marketplace. I hope that the Minister will elucidate this important point so that there can be, from today, investor, shareholder and commercial safeguards that will allow any of those reading Hansard in the private sector to be reassured.

I would like to ask the Minister some questions. How will the Government ensure that Ofcom has sufficient staff with the necessary skills to undertake this work before it assumes its new responsibilities, which are separate from the point of buying in or outsourcing? Even if someone is buying in or outsourcing, they need to have the skills to know what they are outsourcing to and for, and so it is with buying it in, making sure that they are getting the right people in.

How will the Minister’s Department ensure that Ofcom is provided with the necessary information and relevant data on what is a new area of expertise and work for it, particularly in this detail? I welcome the fact that the Bill requires the Secretary of State to lay before Parliament a copy of all designated vendor directions and designation notices, except where doing so would be contrary to the interests of national security. However, when such information cannot be laid before Parliament, as was alluded to by my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis), the Chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee, will the Minister undertake to provide that information to the Intelligence and Security Committee so that Parliament and the public know that there is sufficient and adequate oversight?

Finally, as the shadow Secretary of State asked, given the recent experience of the Australian Government, what can the Minister say today on the record to deter any temptation by the Chinese Government to take any similar retaliatory measures against the UK? Does he agree that if they were so tempted—I hope they would not be—perhaps the £20 billion trade surplus for China might focus calmer and more reasonable heads in Beijing today?

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

I hear my hon. Friend’s point, but does he not agree that one of the greatest bastions against this behaviour by the Chinese Government would be for all members of the free world, particularly the Five Eyes, to come together both to condemn their behaviour and to themselves talk about introducing sanctions against China if it carries on behaving like this?

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[Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

I welcome the Government bringing forward this Bill now, and I congratulate them on having listened, which is not always something that Governments can be accused of. The Secretary of State and his Minister, whom I welcome—the Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, my hon. Friend the Member for Boston and Skegness (Matt Warman) —have listened to many concerns, and measures to address them are now embedded in the Bill.

China recently said that if there was any further interference, it would poke the eyes out of the Five Eyes. This Bill puts the missing fifth eye back into the Five Eyes, because we have been laggard, lazy and late on this, and I think this would probably be the case across the board, so perhaps that is a positive. The right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) made a very good speech. He was right to say that this is not about China. There are plenty of security risks, as my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis), the Chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee, said. Russia is a massive security risk to us and has probably carried out more cyber-attacks on us than anybody else. That is debatable, but it has a very big criminal network that attacks us the whole time.

I accept that. However, the difference is that China is now the driving force for our introducing this Bill, because it poses a very different kind of threat. The fact is that China has juxtaposed the ability to dominate in a market sense, which sucks us in—I will come to project kowtow and the mistakes that were made—while at the same time forcing us to often turn a blind eye to some of the work it did, which we do not do with Russia and some of the more immediate threats. It is a peculiar and different challenge, which is now embedded in the Bill.

My right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East made the important point that the nature of our exposure has been known about for some considerable time, and we should not have ignored it. I thank my colleagues who joined the Huawei interest group early on, in winter last year, and who have campaigned to try to tighten up these security measures. Following that, the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China was set up, which is now made up of politicians on the left and right from 38 countries, and they are asking us to tighten up our security co-operation and ensure that we get this right.

This Bill is long overdue, and it is welcome, but I want to highlight three issues in it. First, although it is not in the text of the Bill, the Government have now announced that they accept 2027 as the end point for Huawei as a provider that may be high-risk and that no new Huawei equipment may be installed from September 2021. That is very welcome. In fact, the September 2021 date is better than I would have expected at this point, so I congratulate the Government on being very clear about that. That is a more important date than 2027, in effect, because it opens the market and allows others to recognise now that they have a possibility of re-entering a market that was closed to them by one company in particular—there are other companies in China—that has manipulated the normal rules of market adherence and subsidy. It has been a disaster for us not to recognise that on that basis alone, forgetting the security risks as well.

I am, however, concerned by another point about the process, which leaves the Secretary of State to make these decisions going forward, against criteria that are laid out, and I will come back to that. I think my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East said, “Who will be the advisers? Who will advise?” That is absolutely right, and the Secretary of State should listen to the Chair of the Committee on that point. It is important to structure who will advise the Secretary of State and how that will happen. Perhaps the Committee can have a very strong look at that and advise the Government on how to structure that.

There should be a more formal structure embedded in the Bill, otherwise it will be too easy for a Secretary of State, under pressure from the Business Secretary or a Chancellor, such as one we once had, who was very keen on a golden era, to be leant on and told, “Do you really need to go down this road?” That will happen. I sat as a Secretary of State, and I can tell the House that all that stuff happens, and anyone else will say that, too. A more structured approach would not allow the Secretary of State to miss the right people on advice. That will be very important.

The descriptions in the proposed new sections of the Communications Act 2003 under clause 16 of the Bill are important, and I will come back to those, because the list gives the Secretary of State plenty of scope. Tightening up the advice means that that scope will not therefore be wasted.

We are here because of the mistakes of the golden era—the great kowtow, as I would rather call it—where we too often ignored the realities of what was going on in security terms for the sake of this great drive that we would benefit massively from the opening up of trade with China. There was also a mistaken belief: too often, liberal democracies and all of us who believe in freedom of speech and the general freedoms believe, rather arrogantly, that all we have to do is open up markets and everyone else will realise that their system must be wrong and therefore they will change it.

That was the great belief. I was told it endlessly in government, “Don’t worry about this sort of stuff. China will change once they realise exactly how wonderful it is to trade with the west.” Well, they did not. They do not want to change, because they think that their form of government is a better form of government. They will say, “We are opened up to the markets. We are getting the benefits of the marketplace.” China was invited to join the World Trade Organisation back in 2001. There have been real problems since then with market forces, but I want to come back to the security elements.

The worry is that others of the Five Eyes spotted what was going on long before us, and we ignored a lot of the evidence that we should have been tightening up much, much earlier. We should have been concerned. I cannot remember which Member said that security should be the No. 1 consideration, over everything else. We lost that—I hate to say that—and considered it just one of the things we might look at.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

I am not one for doing the Government’s job or supporting them, but I do not think we did that actually, in terms of the Huawei cyber-security evaluation centre. We were ahead of other countries that did not do that, including the United States, and let Huawei into their country networks without any checks whatever. But the issue has to be security. I know that the right hon. Gentleman has strong views about China trade, but security has to be at the heart of things, which I think is where we have been up to now.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

I have to say that I do not agree with the right hon. Gentleman on this. Although the Huawei cyber-security evaluation centre was installed, when I sat and listened to people from it making a presentation to us earlier in the year, it was almost as though we were watching people who were kind of squeezing their own genuine, real opinion, which would have been coming via GCHQ, about how the real threat was formed. Their arguments did not stand up, even in the face of people who were not every day working on security.

The truth is we need to be careful, and it should have been a tighter position from the word go. The very fact that the Government are bringing this measure forward now suggests that that was not the case. [Interruption.] Listen, I am critical of my own Government. I resigned from the damn thing at one point. I have to say that I therefore do believe it is possible for great Governments, like mine, to get things wrong.

[Dr Julian Lewis]

In defence of the Huawei cyber-security evaluation centre, its sixth annual report, from September this year, is absolutely devastating in its criticisms of Huawei’s failures to be secure or to make improvements when insecurities have been highlighted.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

I agree completely. The point is that when we were talking about this earlier on, it was clear that that was, underneath it all, the centre’s real opinion, but it was kind of moving and modifying. It was also used in a political way, by the way, which I did not think was right. An opinion is either there or it is not; do not get people in to brief Back Benchers about what they should be thinking. I thought that was wrong.

We are absolutely in the right place at this point and the Bill goes a long way towards achieving that. However, we need to do some other things that could be in the Bill. For example, the Bill is about security but it does say on the front that it goes slightly wider than security: the Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, my hon. Friend the Member for Boston and Skegness (Matt Warman) signed the bit that says:

“In my view the provisions of the Telecommunications (Security) Bill are compatible with the Convention rights.”

That convention is the European convention on human rights. We need to ask ourselves whether that idea applies to many regimes—not just China—and companies that come from those regimes that may be guilty of human rights abuses.

I asked the Minister previously, in a private context, whether he would consider including in proposed new section 105Z8 of the Communications Act 2003, on designation notices, the inclusion of the ability, where it may arise, to do something in the area of genocide and the involvement of companies in that process. There is very strong evidence in a couple of cases—particularly in the Uyghur case—of the use of slave labour, which should result in those companies being outlawed. The Minister may argue that this Bill might not be the appropriate vehicle for that because it is specifically about security, but every Bill has on its face that we abide by human rights laws. I am not trying to widen the Bill’s scope; I am giving the Minister the opportunity to have that extra element as part of his possible designations. After all, we are dealing with countries and nations that have, particularly in China’s case, torn up much of the book on co-operation and diplomacy.

Let me raise a final point before I conclude. My hon. Friend the Member for The Wrekin (Mark Pritchard) has gone, but he mentioned Australia. One of our Five Eyes partners, Australia, had the temerity to ask for an inquiry into the covid outbreak. Since then, the Chinese have attempted, in essence, massively to beat up Australia in a very undiplomatic and aggressive manner. It started with abuse of the individuals who asked for an inquiry and then went further into abuse of the Government. Subsequently, it has gone on to sanctions: the Chinese has now broken WTO rules, with sanctions of more than 200% on Australian wine.

In the past couple of days, the Chinese have produced what I think is called a meme—which is a mocked-up instrument on the internet—that shows something about an Australian soldier trying to kill a child. This is appalling behaviour and I want my Government, at some point, to be very clear that such behaviour is simply not to be borne. Although we have said that we stand with China, the key thing about this sort of thing and our co-operation with our Five Eyes partners is to do more than stand with China: we should condemn behaviour like that that deliberately targets and demeans a democratic nation that goes by the rule of law and human rights, which is something that China does not do. I do hope that the Minister will pass on to his colleagues that no matter what we do with this Bill, we need to make sure that we stand up with our Five Eyes partners, now that we have the National Security and Investment Bill and are moving in that direction, and never allow any one of them to be isolated and picked off one at a time. I commend the Bill to the House.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

The next listed speaker has withdrawn, so we go straight to the Chair of the Defence Committee, Tobias Ellwood.

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[Anthony Mangnall (Totnes) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to be able to speak in this debate and to follow my hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Chris Loder), who was so kind about me it almost makes me think he has set me up for a fall. It is also very good to be able to follow my right hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Alun Cairns) who we might think, having listened to his speech, has every single high-tech industry in his constituency. If that is the case, I am sure he will be willing to share some of it with the south-west.

My maiden speech was made during consideration of the Telecommunications Infrastructure (Leasehold Property) Bill, and the shadow Minister was good enough to attend. After that, I have taken a keen interest in this topic and the issues of national security that surround it. The Minister has consistently met me, members of the inter-parliamentary alliance on China and those who had concerns about Huawei, and I thank him for doing so. The result that we have got today is a real progression and benefit to our national security network, and also an example of what we can do when the House works together in a consensual way.

We know that the international landscape is now far more varied and dangerous, and that it seeks to exploit domestic networks. A recent example of this was highlighted in a Bloomberg article that cited Nortel, a Canadian company that was so badly hacked—reportedly—by Huawei in 2000 that it led to the collapse of the company over a period of 10 years. Some 5,000 employees were working in my constituency in the early 2000s. That shows that a company supported by the Chinese state can have a dangerous impact on companies around the world, as well as on our own state infrastructure.

The steps in the Bill are very welcome. Not only will they check the dominance of international companies such as Huawei, but they will identify potential future threats. As right hon. and hon. Members have said, this is not an anti-China Bill or an anti-Huawei Bill; it is about national security and identifying future threats that we may face. It is also an opportunity to focus on our domestic market and what we can do to create new businesses and opportunities and use our homegrown talent. As the Secretary of State mentioned, the £250 million national telecommunications lab will be a perfect opportunity to cultivate and innovate new technologies and encourage new people to go into the sector. My hon. Friend the Member for The Wrekin (Mark Pritchard) was kind enough to suggest that it should be based in his constituency, but I might also suggest that it comes down to the south-west and Paignton in my constituency, which has the high-tech EPIC centre focused on photonics. I will put that in there, and I hope to meet the Minister to discuss how we might make that happen.

As we know, how far we can go with this depends on how our willpower is positioned and our determination to cultivate British talent, skills and innovation. The diversification point has been made several times, and much has been said, but we also have to be conscious of the need to create the environment that will see new entrants into the marketplace. Relying on Ericsson and Nokia is all very well, but we can and will be able to develop new companies with our Five Eyes colleagues—the same point was made by the US Secretary of State earlier this year, looking at opportunities to build new companies together. Where diversification is limited, there are correct measures to guide and limit high-risk vendors in our telecommunications network, and those are contained in the Bill, notably in clauses 15 and 23.

I also take the point that the right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) made about parliamentary oversight. I hope the Chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis), will forgive me for suggesting that if the Government are unwilling to bring forward proposals for parliamentary oversight, they could go to that Committee so that it could scrutinise them. I apologise for adding to his workload, and I hope he does not think that that is a poor suggestion.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) mentioned convention rights, including human rights. One of the biggest grievances many of us have had in terms of Huawei’s role in our telecommunications infrastructure network relates to China’s violations of human rights. The Minister might say that this is not the right time or the right Bill to look at human rights, and if it is not the right Bill, I hope he will say in his closing remarks when the right time to address this point is. I know there are other opportunities, alongside the National Security and Investment Bill, but I would be keen to hear at which point we might address human rights.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

I am listening carefully to my hon. Friend’s excellent speech. The Minister will note, as I pointed out to him, that this Bill is signed off on the basis of the application of rights, including human rights. Every Bill has the right to be amended.

[Anthony Mangnall]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his experience and knowledge in guiding me on that point. Of course, I accept that he is right on that matter. In that case, how might we address the issue I have raised?

We have righted a wrong. We have addressed an issue on which we have been seen as out of kilter with our international allies. Now, we have the opportunity to go further and to pass this fantastic piece of legislation. We can harness the international community and, as with the Augean stables, clear up the mess. We can make sure that, in future, we have a robust and secure telecommunications infrastructure network that is the pride of Britain.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

I hear what my hon. Friend says, but surely he would concede that, as this Bill deals specifically with vendors and the vendors are themselves located, originally, in countries that may have been guilty of these abuses of whatever nature, should those companies be found to be using slave labour—such as some that are already referenced in this Bill—that would be a reason not to have them. Would he not think that they were high-risk vendors for the very simple reason that they abused those human rights?

[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.

UK Telecommunications

Iain Duncan Smith Excerpts

Tuesday 14th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Oliver Dowden]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to raise this point. The United Kingdom prides itself on the rule of law, a rules-based system and consistency, and that will remain the case, and of course we will welcome Chinese investment and investment from around the world. What has changed here are the US sanctions, and, as a result of those sanctions, we can no longer rely on Huawei equipment. Therefore, it is in the national interest to introduce this ban on new purchases from the beginning of the year.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

I welcome the decision to eradicate Huawei from the 5G system, but I think that the Secretary of State can do it quicker than he says. I was listening to the “Today” programme the other day, and the head of BT said seven years, yes, but it could be done in five. Let us bring it forward to five, and make sure that it happens quickly. There is no reason why that cannot be done. The key point I want to make is that there are two contradictions in the Secretary of State’s statement. Having said that he is getting rid of Huawei in 5G, it is apparently fine for it to continue in 4G and 3G; it can go on for as long as anyone. It will be upgraded in software upgrades for the next decade. If it is a risk in 5G, why is it not a risk to us generally? Secondly, on human rights, we know that Huawei has lied in its declaration under the Modern Slavery Act 2015 that it has had no involvement in slavery. We know that now from Xinjiang Province. If we can prove that and are able to demonstrate it to this Government, will this Government ban Huawei altogether?

[Oliver Dowden]

My right hon. Friend raises the distinction between 4G, 3G and 5G. First, 5G is the new technology. It is the successor to 3G and 4G. Indeed, as he said to this House previously, the reality of the 5G network is that it is fundamentally different, and it is a recognition of that fundamental difference that we are imposing these rules in respect of 5G. Of course, over time, 5G will be the replacement network and then, in turn, 5G will be replaced by 6G and, in all of that, Huawei will be absent.

Telecommunications Infrastructure (Leasehold Property) Bill

Iain Duncan Smith Excerpts

Report stage & 3rd reading & 3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 10th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Chi Onwurah]

In that case, I am sure that the Government will adopt this amendment, which means that the infrastructure that is put in place under the Bill has to be open to other competitors so that one operator cannot capture a building. That is the intention of the amendment; it is not the intention of the Bill. The amendment ensures that tenants are not locked into services provided by a single operator, requiring that the infrastructure can easily be shared.

Amendment 6 recognises the distressing recent reports of hacked baby monitors and suchlike, and poor cyber-security practices that leave many residential users open to cyber-attacks. The amendment is aimed at supporting customers and bedding in best practice for the era of the internet of things, which will increase citizens’ data trails exponentially, and therefore the opportunity for cyber-threats, digital surveillance and data exploitation. People, not technology and things, must be at the heart of the internet of things. Through this amendment, we want to ensure the distribution of materials on cyber-security education for new customers getting a telecommunications service as a result of the powers exercised under the Bill.

I started by saying that this is a mediocre Bill. On a scale of zero to 10, in terms of impact on our telecommunications infrastructure, it is about 0.5—with a good wind behind it. It does no harm, but it does very little good. Our amendments seek to change that, delivering for tenants, for competition and for national security.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

I rise to speak to the amendment standing in my name and in those of my colleagues.

The reason we have tabled this amendment is that we are genuinely concerned, like the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah), that this country has got itself far too bound into a process in which we are reliant on untrusted vendors—in this particular case, Huawei. We recently heard a Government Minister express the view that Huawei is a private company. Let us be absolutely clear at the outset: this company is not a private company. Ultimately, it is essentially almost completely owned by Chinese trade unions, and they, of course, are completely locked into the Chinese Government. This an organisation wholly owned by China.

It is often bandied around, including by some of the security guys the other day, that this is somehow all to do with market failure, as if out of nowhere companies from the west in the free markets—the free world—no longer wanted to get involved in this process. That is completely and utterly without foundation. The single biggest problem we have faced is that, nearly two decades ago, the Chinese Government set out to ensure that they dominated the market. As this organisation has access to nigh-on unlimited funds, it has spent that period underbidding every single time in these processes, from 2G through to 4G and now, as we understand it, 5G.

[Mr Ellwood]

I commend my right hon. Friend and the others who have put their name to amendment 1 for raising the profile of this difficult and complex issue. I think the Government should be on warning that while the amendment may not be pressed to a Division because of what the Minister says later, this House believes that we need to wean ourselves off Huawei. Does my right hon. Friend agree that there is an easy way out of this? There are six global vendors when it comes to 5G: ZTE, Huawei, Ericsson, Nokia, NEC and, of course, Samsung. The last two are not allowed to operate outside Japan and Korea. If they were invited to do so, that would enable us to push away Huawei and ensure that our national infrastructure is protected.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

I agree with my right hon. Friend, and I was going to come to those points.

As I saying, if we look at this strategy, we see that when this all began, there were something like 12 companies in this marketplace. One by one, they have disappeared. Why have they disappeared? They simply cannot compete with Huawei’s pricing. These telecoms companies—telcos, as we call them—have bit by bit found themselves going to the cheapest bidder, providing the technology is as good as the others. By the way, it is certainly not an argument that Huawei has better technology; there is no evidence of that whatsoever. In fact, I think Dr Ian Levy said a year ago that he thought Huawei’s security issues were a shambles, and that is correct. Huawei does not somehow have extra brilliant technology. What it does have, however, is money, which allows it to bid down.

The hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central said that she is a believer in free markets. She will know that the free market relies on companies being able, when they sell their goods, to make enough money to reinvest and improve the quality of their goods. That is how a proper rules-based market works, but not with a company like this, which is able to strip that away. One by one, these companies have gone, not because of market failure but because it has been a policy position of the Chinese Government using Huawei to dominate this market over nearly two decades.

[Sir Mark Hendrick]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

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[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

I will give way to the hon. Gentleman, but not for long.

[Sir Mark Hendrick]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. In America, the break-up of the Bell Telephone Company led to the creation of the “Baby Bells”. Companies are changing all the time. Telecommunications companies across Europe are changing and restructuring all the time. This is no different.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

With respect to the hon. Gentleman, I have no idea what he was intervening over. There is a free market, and when a free market operates we have competition because companies are set up to solve problems and sell their goods. When a company has unlimited funds and can undercut the others, there is no money for them, they cannot operate and they will go out of business. It is fairly logical for anybody who understands the free market.

[Mr David Davis]

It is not just subsidy that supports Huawei and undermines its competition. At least some members of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service believe that Huawei started by stealing Nortel’s technology, which ended up destroying Nortel and putting Huawei in a dominant position.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. I was going to come to that, but now that he has mentioned it, let us kill this one completely. The reality is that there has been a whole series of attempts—successful ones—to steal technology from other companies in the field, thus driving them out, by finding the edge they have on technology and selling it at a cheaper price. The bidding that took place under the previous Labour Government was raised earlier. I am not blaming the Labour Government for that; that just happens to be the way it was. But the amount paid by those companies was astonishing—about £24 billion to £25 billion—and it left them bereft of cash and desperate for cheap product.

[Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)]

Has my right hon. Friend given consideration to financial/non-financial tariffs that could be applied to Huawei on our exit from the EU, after the transition period, to try to level the playing field? Does he think that the 2022 deadline is realistic?

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

I am always flexible on the date, providing there is an intent and commitment to eradicate the involvement of high-risk vendors in our system across the board, full stop. I think that is a reasonable position, and I will wait to hear what the Government have to say; they will expect me to intervene to ensure that that is as clear as possible.

[Tom Tugendhat]

The position that my right hon. Friend is arguing for is one that many Government Members and many people in this country agree with—namely, that we should be supporting domestic industry and looking to partner with countries and companies that share not just the technology but the values that underpin that technology. The Government are right to be looking at investing in infrastructure, and we all welcome their investment in broadband, but should some of that investment not perhaps be in UK infrastructure?

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

I agree with my hon. Friend. This is the other sad part of what has been going on for over a decade. We have watched quietly—it does not matter which party has been in power—as all that ability has been stripped out of the UK. Our last provider was some years ago, and it has gone, so we now rely on the Huaweis of this world. Furthermore, all the microprocessors and the chips are not produced here; they are mostly produced in the far east. My point is simple: if this was of strategic importance to us, surely we should have all got together and decided that we need to have these facilities here, so that we can control future development.

The National Cyber Security Centre has produced its security analysis for the UK telecoms sector. Despite all the talk about how it can control things, it is quite clear in paragraph 5.5.2 on page 13 when it says:

“Without government intervention, the NCSC considers there to be a realistic likelihood that due to commercial factors the UK would become ‘nationally dependent’ on Huawei within three years.”

I say to my right hon. Friend the Member for Elmet and Rothwell (Alec Shelbrooke): I put down a date two years from now in my amendment, but the NCSC refers to three years. I want to know what the Government think the risk is and how they will eradicate that.

[Anthony Mangnall (Totnes) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

I am conscious that Madam Deputy Speaker does not want me to speak for too long, so I will give way briefly.

[Anthony Mangnall]

Is my right hon. Friend aware of the Made in China 2025 strategy, which aims to see China extend its influence in telecommunications networks across the world? I find that extremely worrying, and it makes me think that Huawei is not only a high-risk vendor but will become an increasingly risky vendor for our networks.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

We have looked at the past, we are where we are and now we look to the future. That suggests that we will become completely and utterly in thrall to providers that we cannot possibly trust. That is a big security risk, and it is a statement of absence of thought by any Government. If defence of the realm is our No. 1 priority, this becomes demi-defence of the realm, and I am simply not prepared to put up with that.

[John Redwood]

I thank my right hon. Friend for highlighting and leading on this crucial issue; I fully support him. Will he confirm that there is technology outside China that would do this job perfectly well?

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

I am glad that my right hon. Friend raises that point, which I was going to come to. He is right. There has been a whispered suggestion to many of my colleagues and, I am sure, others—I do not mean that anyone has set out with malicious intent, but with practical intent, I suspect, to head off any would-be vote in the wrong direction—that we have to use Huawei because there is no other way of doing this, but that is simply untrue. Yes, there were 12 companies once upon a time and they are much reduced in number now, but I am aware of at least three that have been involved in 5G development or are capable of doing 5G development in what I call the free market world, with all of us, and they are Nokia, Ericsson and Samsung. In fact, Samsung has been involved in the South Korean 5G network anyway, and every one of them says, “We can do this.” The question then is that this will add cost, but I am sorry to say that, in reality, when it comes to security versus cost, my view is that security wins every single time.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

I will give way in a second, but I am conscious that you want me to make some progress, Madam Deputy Speaker.

I worry when we start compromising security. I worry—and this is the point I want to make—that we have no friends out there any more on this issue. The Canadians, the Americans, the Australians and the New Zealanders all disagree with us. I know there is sometimes a habit in this country of people quietly and smugly saying, “Well, we’re better than they are”, and I understand that. It may be the suggestion of the Security Council—[Interruption.] Well, you know what it is like. I learn a lot from my nationalist colleagues. [Interruption.] I do; I used to live there.

The point is that when people say that smugly, the answer is, “No, we’re not.” The Australians are adamant that they do not believe it is possible to manage this process, and everyone else from the Americans onwards says the same. The Japanese are absolutely seething with us over this because it undermines them, and they are of course very close to what they consider to be a threat. Then we get others, people whom we are not necessarily close to, such as the Vietnamese, who do not even want to do this because they recognise that there is a real threat. My point is that, once we add this all up, there is simply nobody out there who agrees.

I therefore very simply say this: no matter how intelligent, brilliant and great our security and cyber-security services are, how is it that they are right and everybody else is wrong? In fact, at a briefing the other day, I saw them trashing the Australian view of this. I simply say, fine, but the reality is that we are alone on this matter, and I think that that is a very bad place to be in relation to our closest allies when it comes to security.

[Damian Green]

My right hon. Friend is being generous in giving way. Is not the point that Britain’s reputation in this area is very high, and if Britain takes the wrong step and allows Huawei to dominate our telecoms infrastructure for decades, other countries will think that it is the right thing to do? In particular, smaller countries around the world will think, “If the British think it’s okay, then we’ll do it as well”, and this could be the route by which China dominates telecoms infrastructure in many countries around the world for decades to come.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

You know what, I think that is almost the most powerful point. We have a leadership role in this, and many countries look to us. The reason why it is so important, I believe, that Huawei captures this market is very simply that it knows it will be able to go around to all these other countries that have lesser security than us and say, “Well, you know, the British have got a brilliant reputation, and they’ve said it’s okay, therefore what are you worried about? You don’t even begin to know half of what they know, so now we’ll just sell our goods over here.” The eventual aim of this is to capture most of these networks, and when it has done that, as the National Cyber Security Centre peculiarly said, we may be completely in hock to it because all the other companies will have fallen away, and we will be left with the invidious choice of not doing 6G because we cannot risk it and do not have anybody else to go to. Now is the time to restore our faith in those companies, and give them a chance to compete and to produce the product. They are less risky—I accept there are always risks, but they are far less risky—than the high-risk vendors.

[Mr Owen Paterson (North Shropshire) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that there is a compelling urgency now? There are significant customers for this equipment that are looking to see what the Government decide. If we fudge it today and we do not have a very clear target date to end the involvement of high-risk vendors, they will be compelled by commercial imperatives to buy from the cheapest vendor, which is Huawei. It is really urgent now to have a clear end date by which we will get to zero.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

My right hon. Friend is correct. I will quote what happened in the debate we held in Westminster Hall, because we heard a really significant final statement. The Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, my hon. Friend the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Matt Warman) said—quite rightly, by the way, as I think this is a very good starting point—that

“we will work to move towards no involvement of high-risk vendors.”—[Official Report, 4 March 2020; Vol. 672, c. 299WH.]

I want to conclude—and allow others to get into this debate—by simply saying that three things need to happen today. I recognise fully, and I say this to the Secretary of State, having done much the same kind of stuff as him, that it is not easy. I recognise that, strictly speaking, this is not the correct Bill to try to force through the whole change, but my view is any port in a storm. This amendment is a boat in a different port, but perhaps if he so wants, we can move it into the correct port when he brings through the relevant Bill.

I need some absolute clarity from the Secretary of State, as I think do my colleagues. First, we must plan and we need to know that it is the Government’s intention to move to essentially rid ourselves of high-risk vendors from our system. There also needs to be a concept of timescale in this. I want the Government to recognise and to accept that we have to set ourselves the task to do this. I accept that the Government have already said they want to do it with their Five Eyes colleagues—that is a start, because they have not said that before—but we need to work with our real allies to get ourselves into the position where we can actually go on to rid ourselves of these high-risk vendors. I accept that that is not without difficulty, so the Government need to make that pledge very clearly, and they need to give the timescale by which they will have achieved it and commenced the process of winding out those high-risk vendors.

Lastly, if the Government do not want us to try to create trouble on this Bill, they must give an absolutely lock-tight commitment that the Bill relevant to this will return before the summer—categorically before that, and an early as possible, perhaps in May—so that we can properly see these commitments plus others written into that Bill, and we can understand that those are the Government’s intentions. It is absolutely critical for me—I will make my mind up on this only when I have heard the words of the Secretary of State—and we need to know, that it is the Government’s intention to rid ourselves of high-risk vendors such as Huawei; that it is the Government’s intention to do that in the Bill that will come before us; that they will now work aggressively and at speed with our Five Eyes colleagues, inviting them in immediately to create, with all of us, a system that allows us to do that at the earliest opportunity; and that they will commence the absolute beginnings of that retraction before the end of this Parliament. I give way a little bit on those timescales, but I think I am being fairly reasonable.

It is not normally given to me to make any demands, and I am not doing so. I am simply urging my right hon. Friend, his colleagues and anybody else from the Government who is watching—I genuinely understand the difficulties they are in—to please stop lecturing us and saying that there is no other provider and to stop lecturing us about this somehow killing broadband roll-out—it does not. Most importantly, they must remember that the security of the realm is the No. 1 priority, and that is why I have tabled the amendment.

[Ronnie Cowan (Inverclyde) (SNP)]

I will not take up too much of the House’s time—I have no intention of grandstanding on this issue—but it is always a pleasure to speak on behalf of the Scottish National party and to ensure that Scotland’s voice is heard in this debate about a key part of the UK’s infrastructure. It goes without saying that digital connectivity is absolutely vital as we seek to grow and evolve our economy. Indeed, full fibre roll-out and the 5G network underpin our progress towards the fourth industrial revolution.

The UK Government, who have responsibility for telecommunications, have a responsibility to ensure that this key driver of our future economic prosperity is appropriately protected and managed. I am pleased that, at a devolved level, the Scottish Government have taken strong action to support digital connectivity. Last month, the Scottish Finance Secretary announced that spending on digital connectivity projects is to double—up to £63.4 million in 2020-21. I want this investment to succeed in providing Scotland with world-class digital infrastructure.

With that in mind, the SNP welcomes the Bill before us today. The SNP acknowledges that the proposals will unlock opportunities for telecoms operators in Scotland that are being prevented from fulfilling consumer demands due to access issues.

The SNP also supports the introduction of laws that would benefit contractors by reducing the costs associated with the delivery of digital infrastructure to multi-dwelling units. The UK Government are entirely right to address any barriers to commercial deployment, and this will complement the Scottish Government’s ambitious plans for digital roll-out, particularly through the R100 programme.

I caveat my support by adding that the SNP will continue to monitor developments relating to this Bill. However, I am aware that Scottish Ministers stand ready to engage with their UK counterparts and I believe it would prove beneficial in making this legislation a success in Scotland.

On the amendments, I want to draw particular attention to those addressing high-risk vendors. We cannot ignore the National Cyber Security Centre’s determinations on Huawei, which it considers to be a high-risk vendor. We cannot ignore the fact that as a Chinese company Huawei could be ordered to harm UK interests under China’s national intelligence law of 2017. Once a virus is placed into our digital system, it cannot be contained by the Government washing their hands of the problem while singing “God save the Queen.”

We now find ourselves in the strange and contradictory position of admitting that Huawei is a potential threat to our national security yet granting it an important role in the development of our digital infrastructure. The UK Government can play around with the semantics of the situation by saying that Huawei will be limited to the periphery or to being a minority presence, but it is deeply irresponsible to dismiss the expert advice.

Sir Richard Dearlove, who led MI6 from 1999 until 2004, said

“we must conclude the engagement of Huawei presents a potential security risk to the UK.”

--- Later in debate ---

[Oliver Dowden]

It would be fair to give way to my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green first.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend. Let me bring him back to the Government’s position. Is it correct, and does he agree, that the position of Her Majesty’s Government is now to move towards no involvement—I repeat: no involvement—of high-risk vendors in our system and that that, in the five-year period that he is talking about, will be the purpose of what they engage in?

[Oliver Dowden]

I think we are all in agreement—certainly on the Government side of the House, and I believe that many Opposition Members also agree—that in an ideal world, there will be no need for any high-risk vendors at all. However, what we have to do, as a first step to getting to that point and within this Parliament, is ensure that we have developed the supply chain capacity. The point has been made by many right hon. and hon. Members that there is a lack of capacity on the supply side at the moment. That is why we are making this very strong commitment—by the way, this relates to the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis)—which will involve considerable expenditure by the Government to ensure that we work with our Five Eyes and other partners to develop new supply chain capacity in our political and national infrastructure in this Parliament, so that we can then commence the process of ensuring that we move away from high-risk vendors.

--- Later in debate ---

[Oliver Dowden]

The rationale, as decided by the National Security Council, on advice from the agencies, was that that was a sustainable point—a cap from which we could start to work down. As my hon. Friend well knows, of course, there is a degree of arbitrariness in any number, but on balance it was decided that 35% was the appropriate place for us to land.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Oliver Dowden]

I will give way one more time, but then I must proceed.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

I am trying to help my right hon. Friend, believe it or not. I understood from the discussions that our position was clear. I accept that the engagement of the Five Eyes is a new position. I congratulate them on that. But critical to that is that the point of our engagement will start with, as the Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, my hon. Friend the Member for Boston and Skegness (Matt Warman), said, moving towards no involvement of high-risk vendors. If we start by having diversification, we have no position for our Five Eyes partners. But if our purpose is to get this right for no involvement—I want the Secretary of State to say that now. If I do not get that—others can do as they like here—it will be my purpose to press the amendment to a vote.

[Oliver Dowden]

When the telecoms security Bill comes forward, we will have the opportunity to have exactly this kind of debate. This is an amendment to a Bill that is about ensuring that we get broadband into blocks of flats. I completely appreciate why my right hon. Friend and others have chosen to table the amendment. The concerns of hon. and right hon. Members have been clearly heard and understand. This can be dealt with in the telecoms security Bill, but ahead of that, in recognition of those concerns, we already setting set out a pathway. First, we have made clear our intention to reduce our reliance on high-risk vendors as that diversification takes place. That gives further clarity to the House about the diversification process set out in the announcement from the National Security Council. Further, we have said we want to get to the position where we do not have to use them at all, which gives a sense of the clear endpoint and trajectory. But we are saying that in order to get from point A to point B we need to develop capacity, which is why we have said we will work with Five Eyes and other partners to develop this new supply chain capacity in our critical national infrastructure. Beyond all that, I recognise that this gives rise to tremendous questions about the basis on which the National Cyber Security Centre reached its decision. That is why for the first time we are saying that other than the ISC other Committees will have a chance to scrutinise and hold it to account for that decision.

Huawei and 5G

Iain Duncan Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 4th March 2020 Westminster Hall

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the security implications of including Huawei in 5G.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Paisley. I am pleased to see so that many right hon. and hon. Members want to speak, so I will be as brief as possible.

The Government’s decision to go ahead with Huawei in the 5G network in the UK—it is clear from the evidence—has angered our allies and perplexed many of us who see this as an avoidable risk. In the rush—I believe it is a rush—to go ahead with the 5G system for the UK using Huawei’s products extensively, the UK Government have brushed aside the concerns of all our most important allies and the people we generally rely on. There is an overwhelming body of evidence indicating that Huawei is an untrusted vendor, which should not be given any further opportunity of access to our most vital communication networks.

The decision of the UK Government leaves us, at the moment, utterly friendless among our allies. After all, Huawei is effectively a state-owned corporation in the People’s Republic of China under the Communist party. Huawei Technologies is 99%-owned by Huawei Investment & Holding, which in turn is completely owned by Huawei Investment & Holding’s trade union committee. According to Chinese law, trade union committees are classified as public or mass organisations, which do not have shareholders, as they are recognised under Chinese law as legal persons or entities in their own right. An example of a public organisation would be the Communist Youth League.

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

The relationship between Huawei and the state is the same as the Communist Youth League to the state. Therefore, is it not baffling that the Government continue to argue that Huawei is a private company, given that, by the western definition, that cannot be said in any meaningful sense?

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

I agree. That is exactly the point I was making.

[Damian Green (Ashford) (Con)]

I was on a radio programme a couple of weeks ago with a director of Huawei in this country, who happens to be a former permanent secretary. I was surprised to hear him describe Huawei as being rather like John Lewis, in that it was owned by its employees, and that we had all got this wrong. Does my right hon. Friend agree that that is an absurd characterisation of Huawei?

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

It is either absurd or I will have to review my purchase from John Lewis. My socks might even be bugged! My right hon. Friend is exactly right. I want to make this point, which often goes missing in this debate. Huawei is also seen as a national security threat. It continues to deal extensively with Iran without full public knowledge of how; it built a mobile network for North Korea; and it is providing security surveillance and censoring systems to authoritarian regimes, not least the Chinese Government.

It has long been documented that Huawei has a long and intimate history with the Chinese security services, and there are issues around the security systems that have been provided for them, which are now being used, I think, to supress the Uyghur people. I have real concerns about that.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

I want to bring to the right hon. Gentleman’s attention a recently published report from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, “Uyghurs for sale”, which reports a horrific programme of exporting Uyghurs from Xinjiang to other parts of China. According to the report, Huawei is one of the companies that has benefited as a consequence.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

That is shocking. If true, it is an absolute indictment. The British Government and other western Governments must speak up more about this and say that what is going on there is simply intolerable. If that were any other Government, it would be shocking. It is time that we call it what it is.

If all that is not enough to make one concerned—it should be—I hope that the UK Government, my Government, have noticed the following:

“A superseding indictment was returned yesterday in federal court in Brooklyn, New York, charging Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. (Huawei), the world’s largest telecommunications equipment manufacturer, and two U.S. subsidiaries with conspiracy to violate the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act”.

That is a very serious charge, which was made a matter of weeks ago, yet the UK Government announced that although they recognise Huawei as an untrusted provider, we would not stop network providers using Huawei equipment in the new 5G system. Instead of banning them, as our allies have done, we would place limits on the locations and the extent to which Huawei products may be deployed in our 5G network, to reduce Huawei’s involvement over time to the figure of 35%.

[Mr Owen Paterson (North Shropshire) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that by conceding that there is a problem and that it must be limited to 35%, the Government are admitting that the only safe option is to go to 0%? We have infuriated the Americans and our other allies in the Five Eyes. We know the Foreign Secretary had a bad time in Australia. Should we not have a concerted programme now with the Five Eyes allies to get to 0% over a short period of time?

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

I completely agree. I think the figure of 35% has been plucked from thin air. I will come on to the reasons why it does not work. Imagine that in 1939 we had been developing our radar systems and decided to have one of the Nazi companies in Germany directly involved. Oh, but we reduced their involvement to 35%, so they only controlled 35%. I wonder how ridiculous that would have seemed.

[Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. I am not an expert in this field, but as the technology catches up, the Government intend to reinject our technology into 5G. I assume that once the Chinese are in there, we will never get them out.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

That is the point. Each time, we are told that they will reduce, but, in fact, we get more and more addicted to them and are unable to change.

When the Government announced the figure of 35%, they made the point that the plan to exclude Huawei products from the core of the 5G infrastructure meant that we would solve the problem by restricting them only to the edge, as it was described. This position critically rests on the assumption that the core cannot be compromised from the edge. Most cyber experts whom I have spoken to know that this is an unsafe assumption, because they know that the whole 5G network can be attacked starting from the compromised edge, given the nature of change to the technological capability of the edge.

The edge components can be compromised. Indeed, there is some evidence that such attacks have already taken place on a limited scale elsewhere. For example, a hostile adversary might disable our 5G network by simply shutting down our antennas and/or routers at the edge by remotely activating the malware already buried inside many of those processors. Those embedded in the edge will have kill switches, which are currently nigh on impossible to detect and, therefore, to mitigate.

[Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. One facet of living in a free country is that we are free to make our own mistakes. This is the first big mistake that we have made. As a former Armed Forces Minister, I want to reinforce everything he has said. Given what I learned when I was in office, the idea that we can keep them securely on the edge is complete and utter nonsense.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

I agree with my right hon. Friend and he will see that in the course of my remarks I will point out that we—alone, it appears—are taking an enormous gamble.

The second reason the Government prayed in aid of their decision on 5G was the fact that it offered three main benefits: faster data transmission rates, shorter delays and increased network capacity. While faster data transmission rates can improve user experience—there is no doubt about that—for most people, 5G will not significantly impact their experience. Tasks such as viewing a movie will not be perceptibly different from 4G. In any case, the data speeds offered by 5G—100 megabits per second to 1000 megabits per second—are in the range offered by more conventional superfast fibre broadband. In many cases, the desired performance can and should be achieved by other means. Completing the roll-out of superfast fibre broadband, which my Government have constantly promised to complete to the level it should be at, is the No. 1 priority. Further, that will affect the ability of 5G to operate.

[Julian Knight (Solihull) (Con)]

This comes down to a rather taxing conundrum. On the one hand, we have the intense concern of our Five Eyes partners about potentially allowing China into our security and societal networks; on the other hand, there is the economic opportunity cost of excluding Huawei from 5G. In the final analysis, does my right hon. Friend agree that security and democracy trump economics in all circumstances?

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

I am really grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. He is absolutely right; at the end of it all, our point is that defence of the realm comes first.

[Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)]

The right hon. Gentleman is making a really first-class speech. Of course, the argument about 5G or 4G is rather esoteric in parts of my constituency, because far too many of my constituents have zero G; I will just put that on the record. However, when we buy the box of tricks from the Chinese, if I can call it that, is there not also an issue, in that we are losing something here? That is because in this country we must maintain our skills in all of this stuff, and I believe that in going down this route we are going down a very dangerous road indeed in that regard.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right and I will come back to that point in a short while.

Although the Government claim that 5G will increase network capacity, there are concerns about the proliferation of the connected internet of things—the IOT devices—and a dramatic increase in self-driving cars with next-generation telematics. That is the key point.

There may be response-time critical benefits—in fact, there certainly are—in future with 5G, such as how self-driving cars share safety-critical information with one another. However, these applications overwhelmingly lie in the future and importantly will rely on a wider set of technological changes and significant changes in social attitudes; we must bear that in mind. This pressure that we can do things tomorrow, or within a few years, will somehow be another one of those gains that are used to leverage the idea that we have to make this development.

[Damian Collins (Folkestone and Hythe) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend makes the very important point that if 5G is the technology of the future, it will drive many things that people use on a daily basis. Does he agree that we should not accept critical infrastructure for this country to be built by companies that we have no trust in and about which there are serious security concerns, and that if we do not have the capacity to build that 5G system now, we should build coalitions of companies that can work together and be credible alternative providers of this important technology?

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right and prompts the question: who has been asleep on their watch? That goes right back to the time when the Labour party was in government and was not even told by civil servants that they had made the decision to approve the involvement of 5G. Saying that is not to blame Ministers; it was the fault originally of civil servants.

Even if the Government disagree about the urgent need for such developments or disagree with my argument about this issue, surely, as my hon. Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins) said, security is a greater priority. Government policy must consider the wisdom of proceeding to deploy vast numbers of IOT sensors in our environment, offices and homes, unless and until current legitimate security concerns about this issue have been laid to rest.

[John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for securing this extremely important debate. First, may I say that it is quite clear in this Chamber that there is bipartisan support for his position, as indeed there is in the United States among Republicans and Democrats on this issue, and as indeed there is in Australia with the Australian Liberal Government and the Australian Labour party on this issue? Therefore, one must ask: why are the Government pursuing this course? I ask that because the right hon. Gentleman is slightly in danger of accepting the argument that somehow Huawei is light years ahead of other companies in this field. It is probably a few months ahead, given the nature of this industry, which is always changing rapidly, and companies such as Ericsson, Nokia and Samsung are clearly developing, too. What those companies really need are orders, which are what Huawei has had from the Chinese Government, to pull through their development.

[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.

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

I, too, praise my right hon. Friend for making a very strong speech. Does he agree that the two successful roll-outs of 5G so far have been carried out in South Korea and Japan—by Samsung and Fujitsu respectively—and neither of them seems to have included Huawei?

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

Yes, I agree. My hon. Friend makes a very good point. In fact, I have read a note from Samsung declaring that it is completely feasible to do this work without any involvement from Huawei. Indeed, Samsung made very clear its belief that Huawei is a direct threat to our national security because its system is not a trusted one.

Far from Huawei having some insurmountable technological lead, it seems, when one starts to investigate, that the quality of its work is no better than anybody else’s, and in some cases somewhat worse. I recall even Dr Ian Levy, the technical director of GCHQ’s National Cyber Security Centre, saying about a year ago that Huawei’s security was “very, very shoddy”. He also said that

“it’s engineering like it’s back in the year 2000”.

We need to take stock of this nonsense propaganda that Huawei is light years ahead as an organisation. Yes, it has a lot of people in research and development, but the reality is that its development has been about money.

The Government say that telecommunications companies are all reliant on Huawei. It was said earlier in the debate that telcos are absolutely reliant on Huawei, so delay would leave them significantly out of pocket. According to that line of argument, however, I would argue that reducing Huawei’s involvement to even 35% would leave telcos out of pocket, so we are already halfway there, as it were. It seems daft to try to make that argument.

Of course, the reliance on Huawei comes as a result of it having constantly bid well below other market competitors for UK and other business. After all, there is a long history of the China Development Bank providing low-cost financing for Huawei customers, and that approach is updated every few years. A recent report estimates that, when one takes in tax breaks, grants and low-cost land acquisitions, the subsidy comes to more than $75 billion. No western company in this sector will be able to compete on those grounds.

Despite all that, it is not common knowledge that at least one very significant UK service provider has contacted me to say that it has already made clear that it will not use Huawei in its 5G network. O2 suggests that the idea that these systems cannot be created without Huawei—my hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat) mentioned this earlier—is complete and utter nonsense.

The NCSC’s guidance does not even mention services. I understand that Huawei is now taking over the managed services for another operator, Three, which opens up yet another huge area to gather information from. If someone has a map of a radio network, they will also have a map of everything connected to that radio network. They will know what each piece is, what it does and how to attack it.

Yet our dependence on Huawei goes even deeper—much deeper than many people realise. I have just noticed that Huawei is present in the emergency services network, which is often referred to as the blue lamp or blue light service. The service is part of our critical national infrastructure, but the issue did not come out in the statements. I am astonished that that would be allowed. We can imagine how dangerous any form of disruption would be to that service. It beggars belief. Then I discovered that MI5 uses a systems provider that is heavily dependent on Huawei equipment. These decisions are barking mad.

[John Spellar]

The right hon. Gentleman mentions Three. My hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North West (Alex Sobel), who is much more technically proficient, has looked that up for me. Three is owned by a company in Hong Kong.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

The point I am making is that the systems and everything else that is being used are making things very vulnerable. The right hon. Gentleman makes my point exactly.

I am worried about the Government mobile system, which I understand the Government are working on. As usual for the civil service, it has some ghastly acronym. It is called gomo for short, which rather describes the process that we have been going through so far with Huawei. The Government have decreed that it will be one supplier only. It stands to reason that unless the Government block untrusted providers from the system, we will likely be handing over control of yet another vital and sensitive system to the organisation under discussion. That is a big question for the Government. Will they ensure that when that contract is let, the supplier will not have any input from untrusted providers such as Huawei? The Minister needs to answer that question.

[Mr Francois]

And can John Lewis bid for it?

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

I do not think John Lewis is in the market, but we can check that. I have not been there for any telecommunications.

I say to my colleagues and to you, Mr Paisley, that the situation is an utter mess at the moment.

[Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)]

I have been listening carefully to my right hon. Friend’s brilliant speech. As far as I can see, so far he has knocked down the Government’s arguments on technical grounds, diplomatic grounds, security grounds, practical grounds, commercial grounds and public safety grounds. After listening to his speech, there are no grounds on which to accept Huawei involvement in our national infrastructure. Can it be, therefore, that the Government’s only argument for accepting Huawei’s involvement is fear of China’s economic and geostrategic power? Giving in to that may be expedient, but does my right hon. Friend agree that it would be geostrategically wrong to kowtow to the Chinese Government?

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

My right hon. Friend is right. He also comes to a point that I will make shortly. My concern is that there are other logical reasons in play, which I want to talk about in a second.

[Richard Drax]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

I will give way one last time. I am aware of Mr Paisley’s guidance.

[Richard Drax]

I am so grateful. This is my second intervention, and then I will sit down and shut up. On the list that my right hon. Friend just gave, one thing he did not mention was trade. As the UK leaves the EU, we desperately seek our friends and allies to make a good trade deal. As I understand it, the US is now thinking not to sign up to a trade deal if 5G is linked to any part of it.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

There is no question that the US Administration are very exercised by the UK’s decision to go ahead with 5G and Huawei. In fact, I cannot think of any other time when we have been so separated from most of our allies that we respect. The thing I cannot get is that even Vietnam, for God’s sake—a communist country next door to China—will not have Huawei in their systems.

[Tom Tugendhat]

They knows their neighbours.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

Indeed. We are all neighbours in the global environment, as the dreadful coronavirus shows us.

The problem is compounded—this is not really spoken of in these debates, and the Government never make any mention of this—is a deeper and further problem. It exposes the degree to which western Governments, including our Government, to a degree—I am talking about successive Governments; this is not a shot at my Government, as the issue goes back further than that—have taken their eye off the ball. Much of the available equipment, including electronic sub-assemblies, is of unknown security provenance. At present, beyond existing contracted functions, we have little to no idea what else lies in our installed systems. UK Governments and others—I particularly want to focus on my Government—have done little to tackle the problem. Understanding what is inside the chips and processors is critical. Any malware needs to be detected. Surely, after all these years, we could have worked to ensure as much as possible that products deployed into secure or critical national infrastructure are auditable, so that we understand what is in them. What better way to do that than by collaboration with our Five Eyes allies, to ensure that we drive security much deeper? Nothing has happened, however.

We are in a mess, and the only way to get out of it, as my right hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Mr Paterson) said, is to ensure that Huawei’s involvement is reduced from the Government’s present position of 35% down to 0%. I recognise that may take a little time, but that should be the purpose of the Government over the next two years.

Successive British Governments—this is the point that my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) made—have tried to get close to China in the hope that we can take advantage of their markets. I recognise that that is not unreasonable, but in so doing, we seem to be playing a dangerous game. After all, this totalitarian regime is not an ally of ours, and we get confused about that at times, even if the Foreign Office is reluctant to admit that China poses a threat to us, for fear of upsetting the Chinese Government. That threat is not just in its cyber-attacks on our systems, but also in the way in which it does not obey the international rules-based order in trade. That point has been made today. By the way, no other country does a level of business proportionate to its population as much as Australia does with China. Australia is not frightened of saying no to the procedure, and I do not see anybody trying to beat it up on trade. Sometimes I wonder if we do not project the sense of power or force that we should.

As the UK leaves the EU, we should avoid kowtowing, as my right hon. Friend so rightly said—that wonderful Chinese act of placing one’s forehead on the ground in front of one’s respected superior—to China or anyone else. The British Government should commit to reducing and eradicating our dependence on Huawei, in line with our allies. That is really important. After all, defence of the realm is surely our first priority, and that goes for cyber-space as well. If defence of the realm is our first priority, what the Government are proposing today is not defence of the realm, but semi-defence of the realm, and that simply will not do.

[Ian Paisley (in the Chair)]

We have had a 26 minute-speech or thereabouts and 15 interventions, some very substantial, which have maybe taken the ardour out of some people already. I have 11 speakers to get in, including the Front-Bench spokespersons for the Government and the Opposition parties. I will therefore be time-limiting Members to four minutes, to allow all the speakers on my official list to speak. However, if they take interventions, that could be reduced or may knock a speaker out.

--- Later in debate ---

[Matt Warman]

As I say, we want to get to a position where we do not have to use a high-risk vendor in our telecoms network.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

This is a very important point. I want to know, and I think the rest of the House would like to know, whether it is now Government policy to drive to 0% involvement by Huawei and other non-secure vendors. Is that now the policy—not just to 35%?

[Matt Warman]

Our aim is not to be reliant on high-risk vendors at all. I appreciate that my right hon. Friend would like me to set out a timetable for that, but I cannot do that today.

There are major market problems we need to address and they are common to all western nations. We have to remain hard-headed and evidence-based. We want to ensure that, as new technologies develop, we have a vibrant and diverse ecosystem of suppliers that we can rely on. The decisions we have made in this area are the right ones because they are based on hard evidence.

5G Network and Huawei

Iain Duncan Smith Excerpts

Monday 27th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Warman]

The right hon. Gentleman is right to highlight the evidence to which the ISC has pointed, and of which I hope the House will take note. When it comes to sovereign powers, when we assess our national security, there are of course some industries that we should consider of strategic importance. We do that in some areas; I suspect that in future we will consider whether we should do it in others.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat) on his urgent question. Given that we are, in a sense, at war—there is a cyber-war going on in which China is arguably the biggest participant; maybe Russia as well—the idea that we should think of giving a company that is heavily subsidised by China, a country that has set out to steal data and technology non-stop, the right to be in what is essentially a very delicate area of our technology seems utterly bizarre. I was led to believe that the Government would not make that decision. I hope that they will now reject Huawei immediately.

[Matt Warman]

I cannot pre-empt the decision, as my right hon. Friend knows, but it is important to say that our agencies have managed the relationship that he talks about over a number of years and will continue to do so. We should of course pay tribute to them, and I look forward to seeing a decision made that fully engages with all their advice.

Football Association and Bet365

Iain Duncan Smith Excerpts

Thursday 9th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Nigel Adams]

Yes, I do. The hon. Gentleman is correct: we would like to see far more live sport on terrestrial television. However, it is worth pointing out that the games we are discussing are one of three tranches of games. They are not FA cup games that kick off at 3 o’clock on a Saturday. They are not games that are chosen by the broadcasters for live broadcast. As the competition goes on, there will be fewer games. However, that is largely irrelevant. Let me deal with the issue at hand. It is worth pointing out that, as I have mentioned previously, it is an issue across all sports. We want to do all we can to ensure that there is more sport on terrestrial TV, but we have to be mindful of the fact that the rights holders can conduct their commercial deals themselves. However, they have to be responsible. The hon. Gentleman will know that our manifesto said that we would review the Gambling Act 2005. I am glad that the Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Helen Whately), who is responsible for gambling, is in her place and I am sure that we will come to the House in future to clarify when that review will take place.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) on obtaining the urgent question. In a sense, it does not really matter what the FA says to explain. The evidence is clear. The all-party parliamentary group on gambling-related harm conducted a series of inquiries with the chief executives of several gambling companies. The biggest area of risk is their drive to get more and more people into VIP rooms, where they give them incentives, such as tickets for football matches. What we are discussing is all part of that. The biggest abuse takes place in that process, whereby companies drive people who gamble a lot into higher levels of gambling because that is where their profits lie. It is not good enough for the FA to say, “Well, we didn’t really mean this and we’ll review it.” The Government give the FA financial assistance. I urge my hon. Friend, as Minister for Sport, to tell the FA that unless it moves on the matter pretty damn quickly, we will review its financial support.

[Nigel Adams]

My right hon. Friend has a long history of campaigning on this issue, and he is absolutely correct. On his first point, the Gambling Commission is looking into the matter. As for the financial assistance the Government give the Football Association, I understand the Football Foundation receives about £18 million, and my right hon. Friend will be aware of our manifesto commitment to £500 million for grassroots football. I assure him that that will be on my agenda when I meet the FA next week.