Telecommunications (Security) Bill — House of Commons, 2021-11-08
Topic: Technology
Julia Louise Lopez (Conservative, Centre-right): I am pleased that the Bill has returned to the House from the other place and for the chance to speak to it. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Boston and Skegness (Matt Warman) for his tremendous work in bringing it through the House earlier in this Session and in the last The Bill will create one of the toughest telecoms security regimes in the world. It will protect networks, even as technologies grow and evolve, shielding our telecoms critical national infrastructure both now and for the future. As the House will be aware, the Bill introduces a stronger telecoms security framework, which places new security duties on public telecoms providers and introduces new national security powers to address the risks posed by high-risk vendors I will briefly summarise the changes that have been made to the Bill. Lords amendments 1 to 3 were tabled by my colleague in the other place, Lord Parkinson. Lords amendment 4 relates to reporting on supply chain diversification and Lords amendment 5 relates to reviewing actions taken by Five Eyes nations regarding high-risk vendors. I will speak first to Lords amendments 1 to 3 The important role of parliamentary scrutiny has been raised in debate throughout the passage of the Bill. In the other place, particular attention has been paid to scrutiny of our strengthened telecoms security framework. In its report on the Bill, the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee noted that the new codes of practice were central to this framework, as they will contain specific technical information for telecoms providers. The Committee recommended that the negative procedure should be applied to the issuing of codes of practice. We carefully considered the Committee’s recommendation over the summer, and tabled amendments 1 to 3 in the other place to accept them The amendments will require the Government to lay a draft of any code of practice before Parliament for 40 days. Both this House and the other place will then have a period of time to scrutinise the code of practice before it is issued. These amendments demonstrate that we have listened and that we are committed to every aspect of the framework receiving appropriate parliamentary scrutiny. I commend these amendments to the House I will now speak to Lords amendment 4, regarding diversification. This amendment would place an annual requirement on the Government to report on the impacts of their 5G telecoms diversification strategy on the security of public telecommunications networks and services. It would also require a debate in the House on that report. The Government cannot support the amendment for two reasons. The first objection relates to the flexibility necessary for diversification. A reporting requirement of this nature is restrictive and premature. This is an evolving market that is rapidly changing, and we need the flexibility to focus our attention where it will have the greatest impact. While our focus is currently on diversifying radio access networks, once that part of the mobile network has been diversified we will move on to focus on other areas. Committing to reporting on specific criteria would limit us to reporting against the risks as we find them today and would not afford us the flexibility that diversification requires.