UK Telecommunications

Theresa Villiers Excerpts

Tuesday 14th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Oliver Dowden]

The hon. Member is absolutely right to raise the point about a digital divide, and that is something that my Department is working on extensively —for example, in ensuring that there is more handheld equipment and all those sorts of things for people who do not currently have mobile phone technology. We have invested a lot of money in relation to that.

On his point about local authorities, our manifesto commitment set a highly ambitious target of full fibre roll-out by 2025, which is creating huge investment across the country. Indeed, a telecoms provider recently announced 10,000 new jobs. There is lots of potential for new jobs in this area.

[Theresa Villiers (Chipping Barnet) (Con)]

Significant disruption to either mobile or broadband services could have a disastrous impact on essential services, so will the Secretary of State assure the House that everything possible is being done to mitigate and manage the risk resulting from Huawei’s continued involvement in our telecoms infrastructure?

[Oliver Dowden]

Of course, we continue to manage and mitigate that risk, which is why we announced in January the cap and exclude measures, which we are reinforcing with a pathway to having zero Huawei in our 5G by 2027. We will continue to work on the security risks around Huawei, particularly through the Huawei evaluation centre in GCHQ.