Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make it his policy to (a) publish a plan for the functioning of competent authorities to reconcile the public health and environmental effects of 5G technologies and (b) consult on that plan before the European Electronic Communications Code 2018 is transposed into UK law.

The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport has led on this work in the context of the European Electronic Communications Code Directive. The Directive was finalised and published in December 2018 after negotiations and is required to be transposed into domestic legislation by 21 December 2020. A public consultation was launched in July 2019, closing in September 2019 with a Government response published in July 2020. The draft transposition statutory instrument was laid in Parliament via the affirmative procedure on 12 October and passed by Parliament on 10 November. No further body was required to be created or designated as a competent authority as part of transposition as Ofcom acts as the telecommunications regulator in the UK.