UK Telecommunications

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Tuesday 28th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Morgan of Cotes]

I thank the noble Lord very much indeed for his points, which are based on great experience. He is right that we talked yesterday about the expected strategic defence and security review. While of course the decision took account of wider factors, as I have said, this is a decision about the telecom supply chain in this country, where the rollout of speedier connectivity is already happening and where we are not able, at the moment, to limit the use of high-risk vendors in those networks by providers who are already rolling this out. This decision was not taken overnight; this Government and the previous Government have been discussing it for quite a number of months. That is why the decision needed to be taken, and the factors talked about by the noble Lord were taken into account in the discussions to date.

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome the Statement. The noble Lord, Lord Campbell, raised the matter of the American viewpoint. Is it not the position that the Americans regard China as their enemy and number one rival in a superpower world rivalry that some of us would regard as slightly out of date? But that is its position. Here, of course, we do not have the same viewpoint. In the networked world, we are taking a rather different, more subtle position. Does that not therefore mean that, provided we are very careful in the way that the Minister described, we can take a more balanced view than the Americans? Is it not really as simple as that?

[Baroness Morgan of Cotes]

I thank my noble friend very much indeed. He has boiled it down to a very simple point. He is absolutely right to say that we have taken the decision that is right for the United Kingdom, while, of course, listening to the views of allies around the world, including the United States. It is important that we make the right decision for the UK, for our connectivity and future networks. We are confident in the decision taken to ban Huawei from the core part of the network and for it to have limited access to the periphery of the networks. Although other countries have taken the view that that is not possible, the National Security Council’s advice is very much that it absolutely is.