Huawei decision an unnecessary risk, says Shropshire MP Owen Paterson

The north Shropshire MP is among a group of politicians who have tabled an amendment to the Government's Telecoms Infrastructure Bill going to Parliament today.

The amendment would bar high risk vendors from UK networks by December 31, 2022.

Mr Paterson said he hoped MPs would support the amendment.

"It is a completely unnecessary risk," he said. "It has angered our intelligence partners and may prove disruptive to international trade at a time when the success of UK trade policy is crucial.

"The most obvious concerns are those of national security. Huawei is not a private company. It is, in effect, a state-owned corporation intimately involved with Chinese intelligence services. Allowing Huawei a role in building our 5G network is effectively allowing China to build it.

"Even Communist Vietnam has shunned Huawei on security grounds. Our Five Eyes partners – the US, Australia and New Zealand – have already blocked it and are furious with the UK’s decision."

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Mr Paterson said the Government had limited the extent to which Huawei products may be deployed, restricting them to the “edge” rather than the “core” infrastructure.

"This strategy relies on an assumption that the core cannot be compromised from the edge. But this assumption is completely false," he added.

"An enemy could, for example, disable our 5G network by shutting down the aerials or routers at the edge, which could be straightforwardly achieved by remotely activating an extremely hard-to-detect 'kill switch' embedded in edge components.

"The strategy to restrict Huawei to a 35 per cent share of the edge thus offers very few security benefits over allowing them 100 per cent access to the entire infrastructure. We could no more imagine that a prison was secure if 35 per cent of the wall was built by prisoners."

He said the Huawei decision also put a UK-US trade deal in jeopardy.

"It is hard to see why the Government is in such a rush to press on with 5G. The decision becomes even harder to justify when we consider the relatively limited benefits of 5G over 4G. 5G allows faster transmission rates and increased network capacity. But the range of specific applications for which 5G would make a material difference now is relatively unimpressive."

"We need to reflect on the future of our digital infrastructure and the problems which over-reliance on Chinese manufacturing has entailed."

Mr Paterson said the problem did not stop with Huawei.

"Almost all digital equipment, whatever its branding, is manufactured in Asia and is consequently of unknown security safety."