Telecommunications (Security) Bill — House of Commons, 2020-11-30
Topic: Mixed Topics
Tobias Martin Ellwood (Conservative, Centre-right): Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker—does that mean that I get 16 minutes to speak? That is fantastic. [Interruption.] That is my first intervention, so it is now 17 minutes. It is good to catch your eye in this important debate, Madam Deputy Speaker, and to see present so many colleagues who were there at the start of the journey—I referred to this in the first intervention I made—when we first discussed Huawei in the Chamber The Defence Committee looked at this subject because the security of 5G is now critical, given our ever-growing reliance on data movement. To establish a new security framework for the UK telecoms sector and to ensure that telecoms providers operate a secure network and resilient services and manage their supply chains is absolutely fundamental to our new way of life. The completion of 5G over the next decade will be nothing short of revolutionary. Every aspect of our lives as we know them, including how we communicate, socialise, work, travel and manufacture things, will become increasingly dependent on lightning movements of wireless data. The advantages of such scope and scale in our growing online world have very much been appreciated during this pandemic, but, equally, we must recognise how our reliance leaves us very much exposed to those who might choose to cause us harm The backdrop of this was of course the lively debate, which I have referred to, over Huawei. Perhaps that was a wake-up call on just how powerful and tech savvy China has become. The Minister and the Secretary of State have made it very clear that this is not just about China—other non-state and state actors are now developing capabilities to interfere with our online world—but I make it very clear indeed that what we are discussing today exposes the wider uncomfortable reality of the gradual geopolitical shift in global power from west to east. In our lifetimes, China is on course to become more powerful economically, technologically and militarily than the United States of America, and how we handle this so-called Thucydides trap is yet to be reckoned with. This is a usually disruptive transition of influence from one ruling power base to a rising power with eventually more dominance—a transition that history suggests is rarely peaceful. The only example of a peaceful transition is that from the British empire to the American superpower. If we are honest, this Bill is about exactly that. This is the starting point of a bigger conversation about how we manage such a transition. We are placing protections on our country against China, which we privately no longer trust, but I have to say that, publicly, we may be in denial about what we need to discuss We should finally come to terms with the fact that China has not matured into the responsible global citizen that, a decade ago, we hoped it would be. Instead, China offers a competing authoritarian ideology, leveraging its colossal economic growth to undercut western competition and ensnare dozens of countries into infrastructure projects and high-tech plans on terms that they can ill afford. Our growing dependence on the online world has created a new virtual theatre of war. The actual character of conflict has been changing in front of us: it is less about terrain, and now more about data. We are becoming increasingly vulnerable, with cyber-attacks, disinformation campaigns, interference in elections, manipulation of social media, data theft, online espionage and sabotage. These are the new battlegrounds that we must prepare for and defend against. Our international rules-based order was crafted in the pre-digital age. A major cyber-attack, for example, could cause more damage than a dirty bomb, but would not technically trip a NATO article 5 response. International law must catch up, and this legislation is a small line of defence in a far wider geopolitical battle that we need to embrace Britain is rightly seeking to remain on the cutting edge of this fast-developing digital world, but this can only be achieved with greater protection and, indeed, investment in our critical national infrastructure. Our 5G capability must leave no virtual backdoors left open. Consequently, phasing out high-risk vendors, such as Huawei, from our 5G programme is the right call. However, we have to ask the question: why is it that a decade ago there were 12 vendors that can provide this support, yet today there are only six? There are two in Europe, with Ericsson and Nokia, two in the far east, with NEC and Samsung, and then of course two in China—Huawei and ZTE—and there the question lies. What we need to do about it is to make sure we have that capability to move forward in a secure environment We must accept that Huawei has grafted its way into our telecoms network partly because the UK vendor market is not diverse enough. Regaining the secure technological capability on which our new digital world will depend requires more than just legislation to block high-risk vendors from entry; it needs the advancement of our own technological capabilities. Open RAN has been mentioned, but it is still a long way off. OneWeb has been purchased as a possible capability for communications. We have yet to hear what the Government plan to do with that. Ultimately, we must recognise that Huawei, ZTE and others are so powerful because they are state funded. Perhaps it is time for an Apollo moment: when the United States knew it was losing the space race, a combination of state aid and the commercial sector allowed it not only to catch up with but to overtake the Soviet Union. We need the same penny to drop here and to recognise what China is all about It is good to hear growing talk of the D5 trusted alliance of nations. It has been mentioned as an advancement of the Five Eyes community and I very much welcome that. We need to provide an alternative to the cheap solutions that the Chinese are rolling out, which continue to be peddled across the road. They are high-tech versions of the one belt, one road programme. Only with greater western resolve can we design and build the secure foundations for the profound new technological world we are about to experience I will underline the elephant in the room: what do we do about China? Unless we in the UK and collectively in the west address China’s conduct, there will be a geopolitical clash. That is inevitable and will slide us towards another cold war We should make it clear that the UK has huge respect for the Chinese people. Our histories are intertwined, perhaps more than many of us appreciate. The opium wars, the ceding of Hong Kong, the Boxer rebellion, the century of humiliation—perhaps Britain glosses over many of those historical footnotes, but for those in China, they influence their thinking and their attitude towards the west today However, today, the west is recalibrating its view of China. China’s conduct in the pandemic, from its initial efforts to hide the outbreak to rejecting any independent investigation, has exposed a dangerous agenda that we can no longer ignore. During China’s incredible economic ascent, western policy focused on deepening engagement in the hope that China would evolve into a responsible global citizen that embraced hard-fought principles of liberty, democracy and open trade. It is clear that the Chinese Communist party has something very different in mind. As it has increased its economic power, Beijing has deliberately shunned international accountability and rules. It may be gaining superpower status, but it avoids any sense of duty to uphold core values of freedom and the rule of law. Knowing that its conduct repudiates those values, it now pursues a geopolitical authoritarian agenda, as illustrated in the crackdown in Hong Kong, the terrible treatment of the Uyghur minority and its manipulation of the digital world, which mimics its one belt, one road initiative With countries becoming locked into long-term commitments with reduced autonomy and little prospect of withdrawal, more and more countries are becoming ensnared in China’s authoritarian sphere of influence. The US now publicly confirms that China is a strategic and geopolitical threat to the west, while here in the UK we have yet to say so, though I am pleased that the Secretary of State pointed out concerns about China I hope that the full publication of the Government’s integrated review will confirm that China now is a geopolitical threat. We require a turning point—another Sputnik moment, where we no longer pretend and we do not just legislate on high-risk vendors, but hold the regime behind the state-owned companies to account. I hope that, with the changing of the guard in Washington, there will be a rejuvenation of the west’s collective resolve about what we stand for, what we believe in and what we are willing to defend. The next decade will be very bumpy indeed. If we are to avoid another cold war, protecting our telecoms infrastructure must be the first step of many.