UK Telecommunications

Stewart Malcolm McDonald Excerpts

Tuesday 28th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Dominic Raab]

My hon. Friend is right to reference the flaws and the criticisms that have been pointed out and made in relation to Huawei, but it is precisely because we have the Huawei cyber-security evaluation centre oversight board that we can get the right balance between acknowledging the risks, acting on them, and ensuring that we can proceed with investment decisions that are in the country’s national interest.

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald (Glasgow South) (SNP)]

The Foreign Secretary talks about Huawei as though it is some kind of Chinese answer to John Lewis, but this is a Faustian pact with the Chinese Communist party, and he needs to be honest about that. On the regulatory aspect, it strikes me that the Government are getting things the wrong way around. They are going to introduce what he referred to as a robust regime for telecoms regulations, but surely that should come before giving a green light to allowing something as dangerous as Huawei into the 5G network. What if the new regime decides that what the Government have just greenlighted is too dangerous? Is there an opportunity to stop it?

[Dominic Raab]

With respect, I do not think that anyone has described John Lewis as a high-risk vendor. The reality is that the Government announced last July one of the world’s toughest regimes for telecoms security, so that work is already in train. It will require operators to raise their security standards to combat the range of threats—whether cyber-criminals or state-sponsored attacks—and we will ensure the legislation contains the full panoply not just of powers, but of enforcement mechanisms.