Telecommunications (Security) Bill — House of Commons, 2020-11-30
Topic: Defense
Joanna Meriel Stevens (Labour, Centre-left): The right hon. Gentleman makes a valid point This Bill gives huge powers to the Secretary of State under the auspices of national security, but it does not define what that means. The Secretary of State will be responsible for making national security judgments and decisions in relation to potential high-risk vendors. The impact assessment suggests that he will not do so unilaterally and that he will consult with the NCSC, but it is incumbent on the Government to explain why they consider that the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport—I mean nothing personal to the right hon. Gentleman in saying this—is the appropriate decision maker on issues of national security. Would it not be better for the Secretary of State to conduct a multi-agency review prior to using these national security powers, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) has suggested in relation to the National Security and Investment Bill, which hands similar powers to the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy The lack of a definition of national security in this Bill raises particular concerns about the significant level of discretion afforded to the Secretary of State, the transparency with which such decisions will be made and the ability of Parliament to scrutinise those decisions. On another issue relating to scrutiny, Parliament is being asked to vote on this primary legislation before significant elements of how it will operate have been published, because secondary legislation will set out specific security requirements that providers must meet and the codes of practice that have been mentioned. Those will only be available after the Bill has received Royal Assent We have concerns about the role and the scope of the powers given to Ofcom in this legislation. These are new powers, which are pretty onerous. With Ofcom also expected to be named as the regulator in the promised online harms Bill—when that finally arrives—we are concerned about the resourcing of and the expertise within Ofcom to be able to deliver its statutory duties and responsibilities. We are concerned not so much about the volume of work, but that the administering of this new security regime may require skills that Ofcom, and potentially DCMS, are unlikely currently to possess. The impact assessment with the Bill suggests a combined monitoring cost for DCMS and Ofcom of £7 million to £12 million over a 10-year period. Do the Government really think that this resourcing budget will be sufficient Finally, I turn to the issue of diversification of the telecoms sector. In the ’80s and ’90s, as BT was privatised, our telecoms supply chain was allowed to fall mainly into foreign hands, although they were the hands of our allies. Conservative Governments over the last decade squandered the world-leading position that our broadband infrastructure had been left in by the last Labour Government. Successive Conservative Governments have lost, given away or under-invested in our sovereign telecoms capability as that supply chain has become dominated by high-risk vendors. There are of course added benefits to reducing reliance on a small number of global vendors, including increasing competition, driving innovation and improving resilience, but, as BT and others have warned, it will take time to move at scale towards new approaches. Network operators need to be confident in the maturity, performance, integration and security credentials of new vendors and technologies before they are deployed in their main networks. We agree that the Government can and should help to accelerate that progress, because in doing so, there is the potential to create opportunities for the UK to take the lead, as well as to create much-needed jobs. The strategy published today will need significant scrutiny. The £250 million announced in the spending review last week is obviously welcome, but it lacks sufficient detail, and we look forward to hearing more about how it will be spent. The Secretary of State claims that this Bill will give the UK one of the toughest telecoms security regimes in the world and allow us to take the action necessary to protect our networks, and I hope he is right. We will not oppose the Bill’s Second Reading, but we have many concerns that will need to be considered and addressed in Committee. The Bill that the House eventually passes must take steps to ensure that our telecoms supply chain is resilient in the future, or we will be forced to return here in a short time to deal with the next Huawei We must be mindful, as with all legislation, that we seek to anticipate the problems of the future rather than just deal with the issues that we face today. We of course fully support steps to remove high-risk vendors from the network, but they must go hand in hand with credible measures to diversify the supply chain. We are in this situation because there are no viable alternatives to Huawei, homegrown or otherwise, and that is, in part, a result of the chronic under-investment and lack of leadership from the Government on digital infrastructure. We have to ensure that this does not happen again.