UK Telecoms: Huawei
Debate between Matt Western and Jeremy Wright(5 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
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Jeremy Wright
The point of the National Security Council is to enable us to discuss matters of national security, and we will continue to need to do that. I suspect that my hon. Friend will have detected in what I have said my view of the importance of those conversations remaining confidential.
Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)
Today’s Financial Times quotes Rob Joyce, a senior cyber-security adviser to the US National Security Agency, as saying:
“We are not going to give them the loaded gun.”
He said of the oversight board:
“For eight years they have had the cyber security centre there and the last several years there have been some really horrific reports about the quality of that activity and what’s being produced.”
How seriously should we take those comments?
Jeremy Wright
Of course we take comments of that kind seriously, but it is important when people reach a judgment on these matters that they are in possession of all the facts, all the evidence and all the advice that we receive from many sources, including the security and intelligence agencies. It is difficult for anyone who does not sit around the National Security Council table to have access to all those different materials, but, as I have said, what is important is that we produce a secure system that will deliver safely a 5G from which all our constituents will benefit—including, importantly, those in Warwickshire. That is what we seek to do, and that is what the review is for.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Matt Western and Jeremy Wright(5 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Jeremy Wright
As I am sure the right hon. Gentleman will recognise, it is important that the Government act collectively on this matter. As I indicated to the hon. Member for Sunderland Central (Julie Elliott), we will shortly see some work by the Cabinet Office, which will deal with some of the questions around transparency that he perfectly fairly raises. However, I hope he will also accept that this Government have given the Information Commissioner additional powers to enable her to take the sorts of actions that he would wish to see taken. Of course, it is for the Electoral Commission and the Information Commissioner to act in these spaces.
Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)