Telecommunications (Security) Bill
Debate between Tom Tugendhat and Oliver DowdenMonday 30th November 2020
(4 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Telecommunications (Security) Act 2021 View all Telecommunications (Security) Act 2021 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
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.
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.