Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Minister of State, Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, whether he plans to take steps to reduce the risks associated with high risk vendors in mobile networks in the UK.

The final conclusions of the Government’s Telecoms Supply Chain Review in relation to high risk vendors were announced on 28 January and provided the details of the additional steps it will be necessary to take to mitigate the risk from high risk vendors. The review concluded that high risk vendors should be excluded from those parts of the 5G network that are critical to security; that their presence in the rest of the UK’s networks should be limited to 35 per cent; and that they should be excluded from sensitive geographic locations.

Following the conclusions of the review, the National Cyber Security Centre has published advice on the use of high risk vendors in UK telecoms networks.

We will seek to legislate at the earliest opportunity to ensure we have the powers we need to drive up security standards and control the presence of high risk vendors.