UK Telecommunications

Rupa Huq Excerpts

Tuesday 14th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Oliver Dowden]

Of course, I would be delighted to come to my right hon. Friend’s Select Committee and outline in further detail the steps that we are taking. In essence, those are to secure the existing supplies and then get new ones in, and we are making good progress on that. Ultimately, it is the Open RAN solution, which means doing things such as launching a flagship Open RAN test bed with mobile network operators and establishing an Open RAN systems integration expert centre through the national telecoms lab. We have a whole range of measures that I am happy to talk to him about at length.

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

When I was in China with other MPs a couple of years back, our delegation leader, Ken Clarke, kept going on about how this was a golden era for relations between our two countries. Obviously this is another U-turn, along with school dinners, face masks and the NHS surcharge. Could the Government now apply some consistency to their risky regime standards and stop the UK export of telecommunications spyware and wiretaps to Bahrain, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates—or did taking back control actually mean handing it over to Trump to settle his old scores and being special relationship poodle?

[Oliver Dowden]

I think the hon. Lady knows that we have appropriate export controls in relation to all the things that she mentioned.