Telecommunications (Security) Bill (Seventh sitting)

Debate between Sara Britcliffe and Chi Onwurah

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 7th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 26th January 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Chi Onwurah]

I beg to move amendment 15, in clause 14, page 21, line 28, leave out from beginning to end of line 30 and insert—

“(3) The reports must be published not more than 12 months apart for the first 5 years, then not more than 5 years apart.

(4) The first report must be published within the period of 12 months beginning with the day on which this Act is passed.”.

This amendment requires the Secretary of State to report on the impact and effectiveness of clauses 1 to 13 every year for the first five years after the Act is passed, and then every five years following.

The amendment reflects another of our key concerns about the Bill, which is the level and extent of appropriate scrutiny for such broad and sweeping powers. It seeks to ensure appropriate scrutiny. Clause 14 requires the Secretary of State to review the impact and effectiveness of clauses 1 to 13 at least every five years. Our amendment would require the report to be published every year for the first five years after the legislation is passed, and then up to every five years after that.

As we have said, the Bill gives the Secretary of State and Ofcom sweeping powers. We want to ensure both that they are proportionate and that there is accountability. As we have previously emphasised, we are sure that the Minister and the Secretary of State are inclined to exercise the powers in a proportionate and accountable way, but they will not be in their posts forever, and perhaps not for the entire first five years of the legislation’s operation, so it is important that the Bill requires that Parliament be able to scrutinise its effectiveness, as that is so important to our national security. In that sense, this amendment follows amendments 5, 9 and 10 with respect to the requirement for appropriate oversight and accountability.

I emphasise—I am sure that you will understand, Mr Hollobone—that in some ways we are here because of a lack of effective parliamentary scrutiny of the presence and growth of high-risk vendors in our networks. It was only when Parliament became aware of and was able to give its full-throated input on concerns about the dominance of high-risk vendors in our telecommunications market that the Government took action. We do not want to be in the position of finding again that there has been a dramatic change in the security of our networks without appropriate scrutiny.

Clause 14 states that the Secretary of State must

“carry out reviews of…impact and effectiveness”

and that the report must be laid before Parliament for parliamentary scrutiny. However, we are to wait up to five years before it will be made possible to give parliamentary scrutiny to a Bill that is so important to national security, as both the Minister and the Secretary of State, and indeed the security services, have emphasised. We are not to review its effectiveness for five years.

[Sara Britcliffe (Hyndburn) (Con)]

Does not the clause state that the period is up to five years? The review could be done during that period; it would not have to be at the five-year mark every time.

[Chi Onwurah]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right. The clause enables the Minister or Secretary of State to choose to lay a report more frequently. Again, I do not want to impute anything against the Minister or the Secretary of State, but given the importance of the subject and of parliamentary review, why not ensure that it is more frequent?

I am sure that the hon. Lady will agree that Parliament has many things to consider, and so does the Secretary of State. There is competition for parliamentary time, particularly in a pandemic and in view of the challenges that we shall face in the next few years. How can I put this? We have concerns that the priority may slip in the face of, for example, economic challenges, investment challenges and recovery challenges. We want to be sure what is happening. We are the party of national security and we want to ensure that, in this context, national security is brought to Parliament to be debated, discussed and reviewed at least every year.

Telecommunications (Security) Bill (Seventh sitting)

Debate between Sara Britcliffe and Chi Onwurah

Tuesday 26th January 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Chi Onwurah]

[Sara Britcliffe (Hyndburn) (Con)]

[Chi Onwurah]

Telecommunications (Security) Bill (Third sitting)

Debate between Sara Britcliffe and Chi Onwurah

Committee Debate: 3rd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 19th January 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Chi Onwurah]

Q Thank you very much for that. The Bill does not create any incentives for network operators to diversify their supply chain, or place any requirements on them to make notifications of changes to their supply chains or their networks that could have security implications. There is no proactive requirement on network operators to do that, or to actively participate in standards development—and we have heard about the importance of standards development and the huge presence of China in that space. Do you have any thoughts about how we could address those incentives, and also the power of standards development?

Dr Drew: The two essentially go together. If you look at the membership and those who take part in ITU standard setting committees and groups, you will see a predominance of not only state representation from China, but also representation of Chinese companies.

I think it needs to be made clear to our providers the benefits to them of being able to set standards; I believe this has been overlooked. The easiest way to do that is to simply look at some of the technical standards that have been set or lobbied for in this group by companies such as Huawei and ZTE, which are essentially entrenching their technical standards into a global standards body—that obviously gives them an advantage in producing that output. I think our companies could benefit in exactly the same way, and they would certainly benefit from taking part.

On having providers be more proactively involved, I think it would make complete sense for these actors to be made to inform Ofcom, or whichever regulator is chosen, of significant changes to their supply chains. It would be akin to having a black box where we go, “Okay, this black box must output something secure, but we don’t need to know how it gets there.” I think we should know, as much as is possible, who is involved in the supply chains to reach our eventual telecoms network.

[Sara Britcliffe]

Q Good morning and thank you for joining us, Dr Drew. In July last year, the Secretary of State made it very clear that the ban on procurement by the end of last year would have an effect on the roll-out. My question is: what will be the impact of the Bill on telecoms providers and infrastructure roll-out, as well as the 2027 deadline?

Dr Drew: It is undeniable, as the previous witness stated, that this Bill will increase costs and potentially slow down the pace at which development of these technologies, to the standards that are now being asked for, can be done. I have been asked similar questions before about what is the cost of us not getting to 5G roll-out as soon as possible. My general response has been to point out that although 5G is a backbone technology that provides access, we have very few practical applications of the speeds and connectivity that this network will provide us with.

It is something that you might see on your phone, but the increase in speed from having a 5G connection will be almost so fast as to be unnoticeable to the normal user. We have not got to the point where we have large city-wide technologies that will draw on this infrastructure, such as traffic management, health systems and economic production systems.

Although there might be a delay and an increase in cost—which again, I think we should try to meet in a way that incentivises more players to come into this market—I think this delay is not crippling. That is because, at the moment, although the 5G technology itself is maturing, the uses of that technology are still immature and I do not think we are losing out too much if we have a slight delay, with the benefit of reaching greater security.