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

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what steps he is taking to work with telecoms standards setting bodies overseas to encourage and develop best practice in the security of open networks.

Technical standards are a crucial part of our work to diversify the supply chain. Specifically, the Government’s 5G Supply Chain Diversification Strategy identified ensuring UK representation and boosting UK participation in global standards setting bodies as key objectives which can help to promote secure and interoperable standards.

To achieve these objectives, the Government is working closely with industry, the NCSC, Ofcom and a wide range of international partners to increase UK influence and presence at major standards development organisations such as ETSI and 3GPP.

Through the UK’s G7 Presidency the Government led positive conversations on standards with international partners, and will continue to work closely with like-minded partners in order to forge a consensus on these issues.