UK Telecommunications Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateLord Wood of Anfield
Main Page: Lord Wood of Anfield (Labour - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Wood of Anfield's debates with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport
(4 years, 10 months ago)
Lords ChamberI thank my noble friend. I have already talked about the Huawei cyber security oversight board and its governance. In the discussions I have had with officials, no question has been raised about the adequacy of the governance. As a noble Lord set out earlier, the board needs to work through the conclusions with Huawei to make sure it is satisfying some of the points which have been raised. I will certainly take away the issue she has raised and check whether, in the course of carrying out these changes, there is anything further we should do on the governance structure.
My Lords, is this approach of separating access to core and non-core parts of the network now a general policy with regard to companies from other countries, wherever they are from? If so, would we apply the same principle if it were, say, a company from North Korea, Iran, Russia or any other country which applied to participate in the future?
As I said earlier, if the noble Lord looks at the documents, he will see that the process sets out clearly how a high-risk vendor is defined, which was one of the points raised by his Front Bench. The requirements that a company does not meet—there is a list of them—determine how it will be considered a high-risk vendor. Once it is considered a high-risk vendor, and if a provider wanted to include it in the networks, that would trigger involvement by the NCSC in working out how its involvement could be mitigated. So, there are a number of steps that I would expect, based on today’s announcement and where we are with the providers and rollout of 5G. I have made it clear that we want to reach a stage where there is no need for any high-risk vendors in our system. However, we are some way off that, which is why the NSC has taken the decision it has taken today.