Telecommunications (Security) Bill

Tom Tugendhat Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons & Carry-over motion & Carry-over motion: House of Commons & Money resolution & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion & Programme motion: House of Commons & Ways and Means resolution & Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Monday 30th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

I welcome both the Secretary of State’s direction and his much earlier than expected announcement of no new installations. Does he agree that this fundamentally changes the incentives on any boardroom for using any kit—in this case, Huawei—that is a risk? The cost is going to be laid with the company—that they will have to remove it anyway—which changes the pricing structure that any other company would have to bid for.

[Oliver Dowden]

My hon. Friend makes a very important point, and I will be coming on to that in a minute. It is actually happening now because telecoms providers and mobile network operators know three things. They have to remove Huawei equipment in respect of 5G by 2027 entirely. They cannot purchase any equipment from the end of this year, and—I will come on to this shortly—we have double locked that, as it were, by having the installation requirement. Mobile network operators are already working on that assumption.

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[Oliver Dowden]

I say to the hon. Gentleman—[Interruption.] I beg his pardon. It is the right hon. Gentleman. I stand corrected. I say to the right hon. Gentleman that, first, this Bill and the measures in it implement what we announced as a Government in January and July, which, in turn, was based on the advice of the National Cyber Security Centre and GCHQ. In relation to whether I, or any Secretary of State, has sufficient powers in the Bill, I refer him to clause 16(2), which inserts new section 105Z8(4)(a) to (l) into the Communications Act 2003, which sets out a very wide range of bases on which I can designate a provider as high risk and take measures, so I am confident that I have those sufficient powers.

We must never find ourselves in this position again. Over the last few decades, countless countries across the world have become over-reliant on too few vendors, thanks to a lack of competition in the global telecoms supply chain. While this is a global problem, today this Government are officially leading the way in solving it. Alongside the Bill, we have published an ambitious diversification strategy—the first such strategy to be published anywhere in the world. It sets out our vision of what an open, competitive, diverse supply market for telecoms will look like, and the measures we will bring forward to develop an innovative and dynamic market.

We want to make progress as quickly as possible, so today I can also confirm that we are committing £250 million to kick-start this work. That includes funding and building a state-of-the-art national telecoms lab, which will bring together suppliers from across the world to test the performance and security of their equipment. We are also running a 5G open radio access network trial with the Japanese supplier NEC in Wales to help the entire UK benefit from this exciting new industry. That, of course, comes on top of NEC establishing a global open RAN centre of excellence in the UK just last month. We also know that Vodafone has recently announced that it intends to deploy open RAN technology across more than 2,600 of its sites—the largest commitment of its kind across any European network.

[Tom Tugendhat]

The Secretary of State is rightly focusing on open RAN and the opportunity to partner with others in the democratic and law-abiding world. What has he done to reach out to countries such as South Korea, whose Samsung system could provide for the UK, and to encourage Nokia, Ericsson and Fujitsu in Japan?

[Oliver Dowden]

I am pleased to say that the Minister for Digital Infrastructure has met every one of the parties my hon. Friend named; indeed, I have met many of them. Essentially, we are working across three strands. First, we are working with the existing vendors—there were three, now to become two—to secure them and make sure we do not lose a further one. We are also working with new potential incumbents such as NEC and Samsung. In addition, we are working across a range of countries, in particular the D10, to ensure that we work together to improve standards in telecoms.

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[Jo Stevens (Cardiff Central) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to speak in this Second Reading debate on the Telecommunications (Security) Bill on behalf of the official Opposition. Labour will always put national security first, so we are pleased to finally see this Bill brought forward by the Government. All sides of the House agree that the first duty of any Government is to protect their citizens, and we have confidence in our national security services, which go to such lengths to keep us all safe.

I say I am pleased to finally see this Bill brought forward because it has been clear for a long time that there were serious questions over whether high-risk vendors, specifically Huawei, should be allowed to control large sections of our country’s telecoms networks. But let us be frank: until this year, the Government had failed to face reality. I agree with the shadow digital Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah), who said here in July that the Government’s

“approach to our 5G capability, Huawei and our national security has been incomprehensibly negligent.”—[Official Report, 14 July 2020; Vol. 678, c. 1378.]

As long ago as June 2013, the Intelligence and Security Committee report on “Foreign involvement in the Critical National Infrastructure” made it absolutely clear that risks had to be properly identified, assessed and managed, and that processes and procedures had to be put in place to achieve this, and those needed to be completely robust.

I am sure that Conservative Members will be keen to mention that Huawei first entered the UK network in 2006 under a Labour Government, but as is very clear from the ISC report, that decision was one taken by officers, and Ministers were not told about it at the time. In fact, they were not even told that a contract had been signed until a year later, seemingly because those officials felt that to invest in Huawei brought significant trade, financial and diplomatic consequences. Since that decision, much has changed with the situation of the UK’s relationship with China. The Conservative party have had ample time not only to begin that removal process, should it have wished to, but to invest in the diversification that could have meant we had a homegrown alternative ready to use. It is only today, after 10 and a half years in government, that this diversification strategy has finally been published.

We know that the political background to this Bill has much to do with the power of many Conservative Back Benchers—many are here today, and I am looking forward to hearing all the contributions to the debate in due course—but it is as much to do with what had been a desire to satisfy the now outgoing President of the United States as it is with the safety of our critical national infrastructure, and this political soap opera has been an unnecessary distraction.

[Tom Tugendhat]

The hon. Lady will forgive me for picking just a very small hole in her argument. One of the very few policies on which President-elect Biden and President Trump, and indeed even Speaker Pelosi, do absolutely agree is the challenge of China and digital infrastructure, and particularly Huawei, so I am not entirely sure this can be put down to satisfying the Trump Administration. Indeed, it is something on which we agree with Australia, Japan, South Korea, Germany, the Czech Republic—I can keep going—while France banned it in 2009. This is not just an American issue.

[Jo Stevens]

I accept that it is not just an American issue, but it was the right thing for the wrong reasons, essentially. As I say, this political soap opera has been an unnecessary distraction when it comes to the serious matter of extracting high-risk vendors from the network, which has been slow and fragmented.

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[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

This is one of those unusual moments when almost everything I wanted to say has been said, so I will be exceptionally brief.

The Minister has done a very good job in listening. There was a time earlier this year when many of us thought that this could become a very difficult issue for the Government. I have to say that the Minister and his entire Department have done a fantastic job in listening, not just to those of us on the Government side of the House but to those on the Opposition side, and making sure that the points we have raised have been addressed—and, if I may say so after the statement today, much sooner than I think many of us expected.

I would also like to say thank you to the Minister for the effort he has put into reaching out not just to companies around the world—Nokia, Ericsson, Fujitsu, Samsung and a few others—to replace Huawei, but to UK companies to make sure that, at some point, we will be talking not about foreign companies supplying UK markets but about UK companies supplying foreign markets. On that, I will merely say thank you and sit down.