UK Telecommunications

John Nicolson Excerpts

Tuesday 14th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Oliver Dowden]

My hon. Friend’s point is absolutely right: how do we ensure that this is future-proofed? The first thing that we have said throughout all this is that we will depend on advice from the NCSC and keep our security situation under review. In terms of the irreversibility of the decision to remove Huawei from the 5G network, first, it will be in the Bill, so it will be set out in statute. Secondly, by the end of this Parliament the flow of Huawei equipment into 5G will have stopped, and we will be well through the path of the stop, because we have set out the path to the end of 2027. Unless the Opposition are going to say that they will come into office, immediately repeal all this legislation and instruct all telecoms providers to almost exclusively procure from Huawei, we have dealt with Huawei in the 5G network through this announcement.

[John Nicolson (Ochil and South Perthshire) (SNP) [V]]

Well, well, well. Here we go again—another screeching handbrake turn. When we debated this in January, SNP Members warned the Government that Huawei could not be trusted with our 5G mobile network. Security experts were clear: we should not open up the central nervous system of our modern society to a company owned by the Chinese Communist party. With that characteristic combination of error and overconfidence, the Foreign Secretary opined that I had got my analysis wrong “on all counts”, but it seems not: less than six months later, we are witnessing yet another of the volte-faces that are fast becoming a hallmark of this Government. Small wonder, then, that Ministers and Back Benchers are reluctant to be wheeled out in defence of a Government policy on Monday, knowing that they could be required to argue the polar opposite on Tuesday.

Of course it is right that Huawei should be banned from the UK’s mobile networks, but that is a decision that should have been taken long ago. As I said to the Foreign Secretary in January, had the Government acted in 2018 as the Australians did, our mobile operators’ 5G roll-out plans would have been in an infinitely healthier place. As it is, we will now pay the price for the Government’s ineptitude. We know it, the Secretary of State knows it and increasingly restive Tory Back Benchers know it, so how was it that the Prime Minister thought that China and Huawei could be trusted, or at least managed, in January, but not now in July? Was it that a Brexit Britain was too weak and isolated to upset the world’s second largest economic powerhouse, but that the Government have now been forced to acknowledge that they cannot sacrifice our national security even for Brexit?

Countering the intelligence threat posed by China will require more than just the phase-out of Huawei. It will involve a rethink of our investment in native companies. We must now also work to protect our 999 emergency services network from the fall-out of this decision. Will the Secretary of State outline how exactly he will do so?

We welcome this climbdown. What will the Secretary of State now do, after all the Government’s mistakes, to help us to catch up?

[Oliver Dowden]

The hon. Gentleman talks about the January 2020 advice. That advice was based on advice from the National Cyber Security Centre, which was working with GCHQ. With all respect to the hon. Gentleman, I think that those organisations are probably a better source to rely on than he is. As a result of that advice, we were absolutely clear-eyed about the threat from Chinese vendors; that is why we deemed Huawei and ZTE high-risk vendors, why we banned them from the core of the network, and why we imposed a cap and banned them from the most sensitive elements.

It is, though, a fact that the United States has imposed sanctions on Huawei. The consequence of these sanctions, as we have been advised by the NCSC, is that we can no longer rely upon Huawei equipment. It is therefore in the security interests of the United Kingdom to ban any further use of that equipment by ruling out further purchases of it. That is the right thing to do in the national interest. If the facts change, we change our policy, and that is exactly what we have done. We will then enshrine it in law through the telecoms security Bill.

The hon. Gentleman talked about investment in other companies, and those are important points. We are addressing that through the national security and investment Bill, which will also come before the House. Throughout all this, we have been completely clear-eyed about the threat posed by Chinese companies and taken appropriate steps in relation to it.