UK Telecommunications — House of Lords, 2020-01-28
Topic: Technology
Leslie John Griffiths (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for that Statement and for the reassurance given in large measure by what she read to us. Of course, a number of questions are left open and will emerge. Given the time that was available to me to read the various pieces of literature, my questions will be bundled out and no doubt brought into more coherent shape as time passes I note that we are promised "world-leading" primary legislation but are not given an exact time. Yesterday, the word was mañana. Today, in answer to the question of when, the reply is, "at the earliest opportunity." I am becoming accustomed to the various euphemisms for mañana that are put forward in government reports. It will be a new, comprehensive telecoms security regime. I suppose that the various measures that will be necessary to make sure that we oversee activity in this area will be set out in detail. It would be reassuring to have "at the earliest opportunity" unpacked, if that is at all possible, because we are in an area where developments happen so quickly that the more time that lapses, the more behind the action and the curve we become I note that, as the UK’s 4G network relies on Huawei, achieving zero presence today would be near impossible, so I suppose that a reduction to 35% is welcome. But will this reduce over time to wean operators off the Chinese provider, or will 35% be an enduring figure The NCSC’s security analysis, which again I read very quickly, concludes that "threat analysis highlights that our telecoms sector is potentially vulnerable to a range of cyber risks. This analysis is backed up by evidence generated from security testing of telecoms networks and by security incidents." In other words, the risks are high—an added pressure, perhaps, to ensure that not too much time elapses before measures are brought before us. There is talk of the diversification of vendors and the categories under which they might be grouped, but there is not much reference to help us to understand how much home-produced material or producers will come forward. There are a number of players on the global scene. Is the activity lively in our economy and will it produce its own home-produced involvements in the provision of these measures Under the objective factors that help us to identify high-risk vendors, the claim is that we know more about Huawei and the risks it poses than any other country, so, whatever investigations have taken place, it puts us in prime position—according to the claims made here—to know the mind of Huawei, its activities and all the rest of it. That leads me to ask: if that is the case, how do we measure Huawei’s performance against its domestic security laws? How did Huawei pass, given China’s law on compliance with state intelligence services and co-operation with the police in the mass detention of Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang, for example In other words, Huawei gets in at 35%. We welcome that, but suppositions and assumptions are made about Huawei that we still need to have clarified for us. A lot seems to go by on just remarks, assumptions and general statements. Attracting established vendors not present in the UK and new disruptive entrants in promoting open interoperable standards is welcome. But, given the subsidies that Huawei is said to use to get market access, how do we know whether the subsidies exist and how much they amount to, and how will new entrants compete tomorrow when they cannot today? Those are just a few of the questions that occur to me I should say that one or two of the quotations I have used in making my remarks are attributable to members of the noble Baroness’s own party—so these concerns are felt by all of us. So we welcome what is happening today because it does set a direction of travel—but we travel with a few questions that are still waiting to be answered.