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

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what advice the National Cyber Security Centre gave to mobile network operators on precautionary steps for limiting network disruption after the imposition of sanctions on Huawei by the US Administration before his oral statement of 14 July 2020 on UK Telecommunications, Official Report, Official Report, column 678.

In conducting their technical assessment the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) consulted with operators and the telecoms sector industry to understand their views of the impact of the US Foreign Direct Product Rule (FDPR) Sanctions of May 2020. This was accompanied with statements to all operators that reiterated the NCSC’s longstanding advice for ensuring network resilience by maintaining spare equipment throughout the lifetime of the network deployment and ensuring product components are kept up to date.

With the announcement of the new sanctions, the NCSC also wrote to operators who use Huawei in the day-to-day management of their networks which outlined considerations that any prudent operator should have been taking into account in light of the escalating situation with the announcement of the US Sanctions.