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

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, with reference to the oral statement of 14 July 2020, Official Report, column 1376, whether telecoms operators will be able to buy as much equipment as they chose from Huawei until the end of 2020 and then roll-out that equipment into their network at any time up until the end of 2027.

As the Secretary of State said in his oral statement on Tuesday, the National Cyber Security Centre has advised operators to stop buying affected Huawei 5G equipment. It is for the operators to make the commercial decisions to comply with this advice.

The Secretary of State also made clear in his statement that the Government will be requiring operators to remove Huawei equipment from their 5G networks by the end of 2027. There is little commercial incentive for the operators to buy more, new, Huawei kit only to have to remove it by 2027.

The purpose of the timeframe, between now and December 2020, is to provide industry with time to prepare for removal and, if necessary, purchase non-affected kit where this is crucial to ensure repairs and maintenance can continue so services are not impacted.