Telecommunications (Security) Bill (Fourth sitting)

James Sunderland Excerpts

Committee Debate: 4th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 19th January 2021 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

Thank you. The first question is from James Sunderland.

[James Sunderland (Bracknell) (Con)]

Q Thank you for the opportunity to ask the first question. Welcome and thank you for giving us your time. I note from the biographical notes that all three of you have clear commercial backgrounds with what appear to be British-owned firms. I am very pro-British myself, as you would expect as a British MP, so may I ask your opinion on the extent to which the telecoms Bill will offer opportunities to British firms?

Mike Fake: I think the diversification strategy is important. It is great to see the national telecoms centre proposal and the £250 million for research and development. One concern is whether that will be enough. Listening to earlier parts of the hearing last week, BT said that they it invests £500 million per annum and Huawei has a revenue of probably $120 billion per year. Sorry, did I say, “million”? I meant billion. What do they invest in research and development? Probably $2 billion a year. The opportunity I see is that we have a short-term focus for network equipment manufacturers to replace high-risk vendor equipment, but it will be difficult in that period for other new entrants to get their share.

The opportunity is to foster new entrants in technologies in the UK telecoms supply chain, and to leverage innovative solutions for manufacturing scale in the UK. Another issue is that there is a lot of focus on the radio access part of 5G, but that is only one small part of the network. There is optical fibre connectivity from the masts, and transport to the network’s core: that is critical to the network’s security and performance.

Helen Duncan: When I started my career, the industry was dominated by big names such as STC, Plessey, GEC and Racal. They all received funding from defence organisations such as the Royal Signals and Radar Establishment at Malvern. They used a lot of the spin-offs from that technology to develop their telecoms capability. That all ceased in the 1990s after the Berlin wall came down and cost-plus was abolished and so on. It is significant that independent industry research shrank in those times. We are now, at last, seeing a bit of stimulation going back into British industry thanks to the catapults, like Andy Sellars’, and this could be an opportunity, if not to return to those days, to put some investment in and to develop the talents we have in this country.

Dr Cleevely: The Bill is a great opportunity, as the other speakers have said. In technical jargon, it is a necessary but not sufficient condition. It does provide some great opportunities. I am an investor and have created a number of British companies of which, like you, I am very proud. We do, however, need to think carefully about how the market actually works. A number of speakers before us talked about the way in which the number of suppliers has come down in this business. We need to be careful in thinking about how we intervene to set the rules of the game and to encourage certain kinds of behaviour. I am very familiar with one example that relates not only to Government but also to large corporates: the notion that you go through a procurement department that is forcing you down on price, and it does not have the notion of innovation as one of its key performance indicators. The notion of innovation, on the other hand, is built into a lot of the systems that are employed in other countries, primarily the United States, as a way of evaluating whether a technology should be procured or not. We need to think rather more carefully about how we foster that development and growth of smaller companies into larger companies, particularly with this view about innovation.

For example, Ofcom is an economic regulator—one of 11 or so economic regulators in the UK. It has always, below the radar, treated innovation as one of the things it ought to be fostering. I would suggest, for example, that alongside the consideration of this Bill, we think about how we push innovation rather more firmly and put some money behind it in terms of procurement.

[Dean Russell]

Q I would like to understand what the impact would be of bringing forward the 2027 deadline with regard to many of these measures. If I could ask Mike in the first instance, please?

Mike Fake: Obviously, we have got two things to do here. We need to replace the existing vendors’ equipment, but in parallel, if we can invest in the UK supply chain—we have a very healthy supply chain in the sense that there are a lot of companies which provide optical components and subsystems into the equipment manufacturers. We need to do both things at once. We need to swap out the equipment, and also invest in the new companies coming up, so that in the future we can have a much more future-proof, innovative, secure and leading network.

Pushing the timescales forward, we have to recognise that in the short term we are going to be stuck with two alternative vendors that we need to swap out, but if we can invest in the up-and-coming, innovative, small SMEs and really foster those, as the previous speakers have said, I think we have got a real opportunity to change things and to have a world-leading, British, high-UK content network moving forward.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dean Russell]

Q During my previous career as a physics researcher many years ago, I was fortunate to work at places such as the Advanced Photon Source synchrotron facility in Argonne, Illinois. I worked extensively in the semiconductor space, looking at materials such gallium nitride and other group III nitrides. What I learned back then, working very extensively with American scientists and scientists from around the world, was the importance of that root-and-branch look at semiconductors, innovation and having a decades-long view. From your perspective, how much does that fit in with a joined-up international approach to create diversity, both at the end stage and at the really early research stage?

Doug Brake: That is absolutely right. This is a long-term effort. I worry about some who tout ORAN as something of a silver bullet that we can make a quick transition to, that it is a flash cut for existing equipment providers to an open RAN sort of system—a more modular and diverse ecosystem. It is something that is going to take a number of years. I honestly worry that it is late for ORAN to be incorporated into 5G, at least on a broad scale. For greenfield networks, it is a different story and it might make sense to go with these open and modular systems from the get-go.

I worry that this is much more a conversation about putting in the tools, resources, testing facilities, the labs, R&D, et cetera, to put us on a path for years down the road so that this becomes the industry standard. I do think, absolutely, that this is the time to be looking at those early stage investments to be driving further and, frankly, looking down the road to 6G, to be able to put in place the policies and efforts to transition the industry to this more diverse future, and put those in place now for years to come.

[James Sunderland]

Q Thank you for coming in. A quick question: can you put in layman’s terms what the roll-out of 5G anywhere means in broadband terms? Can you also place that in terms of rural areas?

Doug Brake: I worry that sometimes 5G is conceptualised as a singular technology or a singular thing. It is not a monolith; there are a number of different component technologies and a number of different flavours. Depending on whether you are doing a fully 5G network, a stand-alone network or a non-stand-alone network, it is a very different sort of system. There are also a lot of differences between what spectrum is used to deploy the network—if you are using low-band, mid-band or high-band spectrum or a combination of all three. It is hard to answer that question in generalities.

A number of different component technologies and architectures will be rolled out over time. At a high level, the real advantage of 5G compared with 4G is in its flexibility. It is able to tailor its connectivity to a number of different applications’ needs. It can offer extremely high throughput and much faster speeds. It is very reliable, with very low latency. For example, if you want to stream a football match while travelling on a train, it can do that quite well, or quite a bit better than LTE and 4G today. At the same time, you can also change very obscure technical parameters to make for simple communications that require very little battery on the device side to be able to communicate. If you want to have massive deployments of sensors for smart agriculture, or something like that, that have battery life in the order of decades, it can do that. The hallmark is its flexibility.

Given that flexibility, it is anticipated that 5G is going to be much more deeply integrated within the economy and trade sectors, and will be a key tool to boost productivity. There is an important hope that we see a broad deployment, not just in urban areas but in rural areas. Again, I go back to that note on differences depending on the spectrum that is used to deploy—unless it is of interest, I do not want to get too bogged down in the details, but there are real differences in what we would expect to see deployed in urban versus rural areas. But, again, we would also expect to see very different use cases in those areas. Admittedly, there will likely be a performance difference between urban areas and more rural areas. But at the same time, like I said, the use cases look very different—you are not likely to have massive crowds of people all looking to share video from a stadium or something like that in rural areas. There will be a real difference in the roll-out, but I worry that sometimes the challenges with that have been overstated.

[Chi Onwurah]

Q Thank you very much for joining us, Doug. It is particularly interesting to have your American perspective. As you may have heard, my first job as a hardware engineer was with Nortel, a Canadian-American company that had just bought one of the last UK companies in this area. Nortel ended up seeking chapter 11 and having most of its IP bought by Huawei. What are your views on how we got ourselves into this position of not having a single UK or US supplier that can supply to our UK networks? How do you think we can work together to rebuild our telecoms sectors? You talked about pursuing transformational change and an industrial strategy to do that. What might you say to the Minister about how the UK Government should be working with the US, and about what sorts of vehicles there might be to work together and with other allies to achieve that?

Doug Brake: That is a great question. We talk now about needing diversification and seeking entry of a US-UK equipment supplier, but the question and lessons from history are about why we need this in the first place. In the past, we had quite successful telecommunications supply companies, especially in the US. The president of our organisation, Rob Atkinson, set out to answer that question. You may have seen an article in the American Affairs journal, titled, “Who Lost Lucent?” It is a long and interesting article—I will not go into all the details of history. I would say that it is fair to characterise the failures and decline of Lucent as a complicated story, but it stems from a combination of unique challenges imposed by the Anglo-American economic system, systemic failures of US Government policy—particularly with regards to anti-trust and some of the regulatory policy throughout the 1990s—and very strong and aggressive foreign industrial policies, particularly with regards to China, to acquire market share.

I am happy to go through that in some detail, but feel free to cut me off if I go on too long. You are absolutely right to say that we had Lucent and Nortel. Lucent was absolutely massive—it was three times larger than Nortel—and originally spun off from AT&T’s equipment arm, Western Electric. It had the famous Bell Labs. Throughout the ’90s, it was the largest telecoms equipment company and was still growing dramatically overseas, but due to a number of strategic decisions within the company and decisions within the US Government, it ended up really suffering as a result of the dot.com bubble.

Setting aside all the competitiveness questions, particularly with regards to Chinese companies, a hands-off, free market globalised system reigned in the US and UK throughout the ’90s. It was finance-focused capitalism that saw Lucent and Nortel cut their R&D budgets and staff dramatically, particularly as a result of the 2001 crash—much more so than some of their international competitors. With that financial system, it was harder for those companies, which were designed to be growth companies—much more so than a valued company. They were focused on growing quarter after quarter and meeting their financial targets, which made it very difficult to focus on long-term growth. You can contrast that with Ericsson in Sweden, where the Wallenberg family control a lot of the voting shares. Ericsson was able to focus on much longer-term value creation, and they did not cut staff or R&D by nearly as much as Lucent did.

Before that, I think there are a lot of lessons to be learned from the aggressive anti-trust action that broke up Bell Labs and restructured the entire industry. Up until the restructuring of the US telecom market in 1984, Bell Labs had a fantastic situation in order to generate innovation. It had the commercial drive, focus and flexibility that is often lacking in a Government research lab. It also had a long-term focus and an interest in broad technological change, which many R&D efforts in industry do not see. It had steady revenue from telecom rates. There is a complicated story there. It is hard to tell what concentration is good for innovation and where competition is really the order of the day, but it seems clear that the decline of Bell Labs was a real loss.

Telecommunications (Security) Bill (Second sitting)

James Sunderland Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 14th January 2021 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

Who would like to have the first question?

[James Sunderland (Bracknell) (Con)]

Q26 Gentlemen, good afternoon to you and thank you for coming in. A very quick and easy question: how do the challenges of maintaining security in a mobile network differ perhaps from those of a fixed network?

Matthew Evans: I am happy to take that question. From the principle point of view, the principles of cyber-security are the same regardless of the network: having security built in by design, but also having a zero-trust principle and good assurance that your defences are looking inwards as well as outwards. On a principle basis, they are very similar.

Hamish MacLeod: I have nothing to add to what Matt said.

[The Chair]

Thank you. Who is next?

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

Thank you. I am going to Mr Sunderland. I will come back to you if you want to come back later.

[James Sunderland]

Q I note from the briefing notes that I have here just how much global experience Mavenir has, and that perhaps sets you gentlemen apart from the previous witnesses. Could I therefore ask you this, please? Is there anything, in your experience in this field—particularly, perhaps, in America and the far east—that may require to be better reflected in the legislation?

[The Chair]

Is this question for all the witnesses?

[James Sunderland]

Yes, please.

[The Chair]

Who do you want to go first?

[James Sunderland]

Mr Baker is the obvious candidate.

John Baker: I think the legislation, as you have it written, is good and supportive. The underlying thread of this is all about open interfaces. Having open interfaces fully specified makes the ability for testing of elements in the network simpler and easier, because you open up the testing community, the vendors, to produce interoperable equipment, so you can compare equipment side by side. This has been the basis of the whole open RAN discussion. Open RAN is about open and interoperable interfaces. If you follow that philosophy through into this Bill, you should be able to test each of the elements and the network end to end, from a security perspective, so we are fully supportive of the activities that you have in place.

[The Chair]

Anyone else?

Stefano Cantarelli: I will just add that of course, when we say “open interfaces” and “open and interoperable”, “open” means standardised and well known, not open in the sense of open sources or whatever else people can think of. As far as the Bill is concerned, I believe that it is quite appropriate for the specific actions and conditions that will be triggered. I would just suggest that you make sure that it is followed up by secondary legislation to make sure that in some cases there are very tangible and specific examples that will be able to make it a bit more specific and will give directions within the framework that the Bill itself provides.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

Thank you. Mr Robson, do you want to add anything to that?

Julius Robson: I think it is very important. One of our angles on this security Bill is that we see diversity as important not just for building resilience, but for delivering on the promise of 5G, which is to take mobile—which currently is about voice and data for people—and deliver it into organisations, to have e-health, smart industry and connected communities. To do that, you need a diversity in service providers. It is fair to say that mobile operators have done a great job of the outdoor national network, but perhaps not so much delivering into enterprise.

We want to ensure that when we implement new policies, like the telecoms security Bill, we are not introducing large barriers to entry to those smaller players that will come in and diversify our network. This talk of making everyone auditable is a workload that will drive us back towards a monolithic industry, where you have a small number of service providers, and only the largest vendors are able to service that. We need to ensure that whatever policy we implement looks forward and is workable for this diverse ecosystem that we aim for in 2025 and beyond, not the monolithic one we have today.

[James Sunderland]

Q Dr Bennett and Mr Robson, thank you for coming in. I have listened intently to what you have said, and it is fascinating. May I offer an alternative view? First, the Bill itself creates new powers for the Secretary of State to make regulations. Section 105A is a duty to take proportionate measures, to identify and reduce risks. Section 105B is a power to make regulations imposing duties. Section 105C is a duty to take appropriate and proportionate measures in response to compromises. Section 105D provides for powers to respond to a compromise itself. The Bill is all about giving the Secretary of State powers to do things; it is not a panacea. So may I ask you to comment on two things? First, what you have referred to this afternoon is valid, but it will be covered in secondary legislation or in powers taken by the Secretary of State after the primary legislation has gone through. Secondly, the Bill should be seen for the framework that it is, and not as a panacea, which it is not.

[The Chair]

Who wants to go first? Dr Bennett, I think that was mostly directed at you.

Dr Bennett: I appreciate that it is a framework, but it is a framework that does not say that powers in certain areas are going to happen and how you might do it. I think the Secretary of State and the whole industry actually needs a lot of help to do this. The whole tenor of wanting to have things like the telecoms diversification taskforce and the 5G diversification strategy is absolutely right, but as you do that you are bringing in people to do these things who have less resources than the people currently in there. As Mr Robson said, they can afford the expense of the barriers to entry, whereas smaller players require assistance from the Government to enter this world without going out of business because of the impacts of the cost of compliance.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

Do you want to come back, Mr Sunderland?

[James Sunderland]

No. Thank you for the answers.

[Chi Onwurah]

Q I am the shadow Minister for the Bill. Let me start by welcoming you and thanking you very much for your expert input. I particularly welcome you, Dr Bennett, for your expertise and the fact that you are the only female witness we have today—it is clear to me, as someone who worked in engineering for 20 years, that the sector’s gender balance has not improved. I hope that Parliament can do more to ensure more balance in witnesses in future.

I have questions for both of you, but let me start with Dr Bennett. I was impressed by your structured list of things that are missing from the Bill, because we are here to scrutinise the Bill and see how we can improve it. I think you talked about the breadth of the security challenge and how this Bill, as it stands, might not meet the full breadth of it. You had four areas, and I think you have run through two of them in more detail. Could I ask you to summarise again the areas that you think are missing? In particular, could you talk a little bit more about the need for improved scrutiny? Could you just summarise that and then go into more detail on the ones where you have not yet?

Dr Bennett: I said that the areas that needed to be covered were network architecture, which is the Bill’s focus, the security of the asset databases that make up the network, how to ensure security of the data passing over the network, the maintenance of security over time, and the operational costs and other impacts of compliance. I have touched on all of them, but perhaps not very much on the operational costs and impacts of compliance.

The more diversified your network, and the more small vendors there are, the harder it will be for them to maintain the level of scrutiny, record-keeping and general security that is required as their bits of the network develop and the interfaces they have with other bits of the network change over time. That is an area where the Government should consider giving help to people to cover those costs. I have said that audit is needed of the assets in the network. The costs of being audited and of dealing with audits are very high, and they are costs that small companies may not have the resources to meet.

If the Government suddenly say, “All components from supplier X must now be removed from the network because of x, y and z,” it is incumbent on the Government to have some funding to help people to do that and to ensure that that really does happen, because it could be a step too far if you have a lot of very small suppliers that do not have the resources of skills, time or money to do it. You need to think about that and about how you can ensure that they are not squeezed out of the network—this diverse network that we want—by those costs.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

I think I might interrupt you there, because we have only until 4.45 pm. I would really like to bring in Mr Sunderland, the Minister and the shadow Minister, so we need very tight questions and very succinct answers.

[James Sunderland]

Q Gentlemen, I have been a massive fan of RUSI for many years, and clearly I am a recent convert to the British Standards Institute, so thank you for coming in. I have two quick questions, which should be quite straightforward.

[The Chair]

One quick question, I think. Seriously.

[James Sunderland]

The important question from me is: what will be the reaction to the Bill within the Five Eyes community?

Dr Steedman: I will lead on that. I think the Five Eyes community will welcome the Bill, and it may well begin to set a model for the way that the UK and like-minded nations can create a pro-innovation market framework which has sufficient regulatory powers, backed up by industry standards, to deliver the environment that we want and that will, particularly in the UK’s case, stimulate new entrants, SMEs and innovation. That is a really critical part of future diversification, because we have no incumbent major players based out of the UK, so we need to stimulate our own industry as well.

Charles Parton: I do not have a great deal to add to that, other than, as a side note, that I do not think we should underestimate American bipartisan attitudes to the whole question of China and technology. I think we are going to have to take that into account in the broader context, because they are long-standing allies and sharers of the same values as us.

Telecommunications (Security) Bill (First sitting)

James Sunderland Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 14th January 2021 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

Three Members have indicated that they would like to ask questions. We will take them in the following order: James Sunderland, Miriam Cates and Kevan Jones.

[James Sunderland (Bracknell) (Con)]

Q Gentlemen, good morning. Thank you for coming in. As a military man, you will forgive me for asking a very simple question. Are you satisfied that the framework of this Bill, as it currently stands, satisfies the full requirement for national security, and if not, why not?

Patrick Binchy: I think, initially, it is not for the industry to comment on and define national security and risk. That is for the Government. However, we absolutely support whatever is put in place beyond that. I think that this Bill, in the way that it is structured, very much helps with that, because not giving a definition, and the way that it will be able to include additional vendors and additional technologies, gives it the flexibility to move forward and to adapt to threats, whether they are technical or through suppliers in the future. In that way, it is well constructed.

Irrespective of the Bill itself, we work with the security bodies on a regular basis—on a day-to-day basis—and we continue to do that, to protect the British public from any and all security threats. And I would add that the UK is actually very well advanced in terms of protecting itself and its security posture.

Derek McManus: Similarly, I am the COO of a commercial organisation; I am really not best placed to answer that point specifically. But what I will say is that we run our business by security by design—it is a key part of the evolution of our network and all of our services. I believe that as an industry we are actively engaged with the security forces to deliver a good track record in terms of national security from telecoms. It is important that we continue to do that. Everyone who is connected closely to security knows that it constantly evolves as technology evolves, and the continued collaboration between the industry, the Government and the security forces is essential beyond the completion of the Bill.

Andrea Donà: Similarly to my colleagues, I am not in a position to comment on national security. What I would say is that Vodafone worked very closely with Government on how the Bill best enables us to secure our networks in practice. I think it is very important that we maintain a very close collaboration as we work in implementing the Bill.

We believe the Bill is sufficiently flexible for the Secretary of State and Ofcom to interpret the security threats and issue notices to providers to deal with them. Reviewing the legislation at regular intervals to assess its efficacy in the face of new technological challenges, and also in the light of new strategic aims by Government and that constant review involving the industry, will be very welcome for us. Our continual engagement will enable us to ensure that the new regulations can be enforced in practice effectively to achieve the scope of the Bill.

[The Chair]

Thank you. We will come to Miriam Cates next. Then, after Miriam, the order will be Kevan Jones, David Johnston, Christian Matheson, Dean Russell and James Wild.

Gambling and Lotteries

James Sunderland Excerpts

Tuesday 8th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Nigel Huddleston]

The issues of age verification, product, and the way such things are marketed will be part of this review, and they are also ongoing considerations of the Gambling Commission. This will be a 16-week review. We recognise that in these challenging times of covid, responders may need a little more time to respond to the call for evidence, and therefore the review is slightly longer than normal. We will then produce a White Paper with Government recommendations. As I said, the review is deliberately broad, and the issues raised by the hon. Lady will be part of it.

[James Sunderland (Bracknell) (Con)]

I am clear that online harms are increasing risks to our children, and I note that families have spent much of the past nine months in lockdown. As a parent, I am worried by addiction to games such as Fortnite, when our children could be outside playing. Will my hon. Friend confirm that his Department will consider an outright ban on gambling incentives such as loot boxes, as well as better educating parents, carers and teachers about the dangers of online gaming?

[Nigel Huddleston]

The issues around loot boxes that my hon. Friend articulates are legitimate; hence the call for evidence on loot boxes. That call for evidence ended on 22 November. The Government are currently considering the evidence that has been brought forward, and we will respond in due course. My hon. Friend raises legitimate concerns that have been raised by the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee and many others over many years.

Telecommunications (Security) Bill

James Sunderland Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons & Carry-over motion & Carry-over motion: House of Commons & Money resolution & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion & Programme motion: House of Commons & Ways and Means resolution & Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Monday 30th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[James Sunderland (Bracknell) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Anthony Mangnall). I am delighted to speak in the debate, for two key reasons. First, it shows that the Government do listen to Back Benchers. We have provided feedback all the way through this process, and some of us have some background on this topic. I am therefore greatly reassured that the Minister is here and is listening to what we are saying.

I also commend the Bill for what it is. I am very reassured that the conclusions of the telecoms supply chain review in 2019 are being met. As the world recovers and recalibrates after covid, the UK has a great opportunity to take the initiative and to become a world leader on another piece of vital technology, and I will be firmly supporting the Government on the Bill.

As our defence and national security move ever more online, it has never been more important to secure our lines of communication. With £16.5 billion extra in the Ministry of Defence budget alone, it is really important that the defence sector takes advantage of that, not least in the cyber-sphere. We have heard today of the strategic independence imperative, and I firmly welcome that.

The Bill will do three things. It will allow for better security, which is absolutely important. It will placate our allies, notably in the Five Eyes community, and why not Japan as well? There is a neat link there with the NEC trial that is coming up in Wales. It will also open the door for other 5G providers. I therefore support the UK’s diversification strategy.

As we have heard, clauses 1 to 14 introduce a more robust telecoms security framework. The Bill enables more specific security prerequisites to be set out in secondary legislation. It also gives the telecoms operators’ regulator Ofcom more power to monitor and enforce industry compliance. Clauses 15 to 23 give new national security powers for the Government to manage the risks posed by high-risk vendors, and we have heard much about that today. The Bill therefore gives the Government new powers, and rightly so.

On 14 July, the Secretary of State announced that, from the end of this year, telecoms operators must not buy any 5G equipment from Huawei, with a timetable for removing all Huawei equipment from our 5G network by 2027. September 2021 has also been announced as the new cut-off date for new Huawei equipment in the UK.

What about the wider requirements of the Bill? This is really important, so I urge the Minister to take note. Industry must be given sufficient time to comply with telecoms security requirements, and deadlines must be realistic. The Government, as we have heard, have settled on 2027 as the date by which high-risk vendor equipment is to be removed and this timeframe must be left as it is. It reflects the complexity of the task and slippage will not be welcomed.

I also support the Government’s initial commitment to promote diversification and resilience in the supply chain backed by the initial £250 million from the spending review. That is probably just the start and it may need more funding. I welcome, as I mentioned, the forthcoming trial in Wales with NEC and our Japanese friends.

I will mention Vodafone very quickly. Vodafone has called for greater investment in Open RAN and, of course, Vodafone has been a key contributor to Open RAN. This would reduce UK reliance on mobile network vendors and allow the UK to develop domestic vendors at scale and benefit consumers through greater price competition. That is to be welcomed. Again, it is clear that the more 5G providers there are, the better it is for everyone. As we have heard, the most sensitive core parts of our 5G network must be free of Huawei equipment and must remain so.

Lastly, upgrading the UK’s mobile infrastructure to 5G could be worth as much as £158 billion over the next 10 years. It will also keep us safe. Surely this is worth investing in, so the telecoms bill is absolutely a step in the right direction and I support it.

Professional and Amateur Sport: Government Support

James Sunderland Excerpts

Wednesday 30th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Nigel Huddleston]

I actually met the all-party parliamentary group on boxing this morning. The hon. Lady makes an important point about boxing in terms of social mobility and the importance of inspiring physical and mental wellbeing. I am happy to continue these conversations with her.

[James Sunderland (Bracknell) (Con)]

Forestry England has just launched a public consultation on recreational access to its land. Does my hon. Friend agree that British motor sports have a proud history in our forests and that continued access is fundamental to our world-leading £10 billion motor sports industry?

[Nigel Huddleston]

My hon. Friend makes a range of points. Absolutely, we have to think very creatively about where our sports and recreational facilities where we can be active are—they are not always in the areas or owned by the people we expect. I am glad that such stakeholders take their responsibilities seriously, and I encourage them to open up as much as possible.

Oral Answers to Questions

James Sunderland Excerpts

Thursday 24th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Oliver Dowden]

Clearly, I do not accept the hon. Lady’s characterisation, which is a little overblown, but she rightly raises the point about the risks associated with disinformation should we succeed in achieving the vaccine, which of course all parts of government are working tirelessly towards. I am well aware of the challenge of misinformation about the vaccine and I have discussed it with the Health Secretary. The Minister for Digital and Culture, my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Caroline Dinenage), is working intensively at ministerial level and is engaging with social media companies to ensure we have the necessary measures in place to deal with any misinformation, should it arise at the time of a vaccine.

[James Sunderland (Bracknell) (Con)]

Retail is important, and my constituency contains the excellent new Lexicon shopping centre in Bracknell and many fine shops in Crowthorne, Sandhurst and Finchampstead. Will the Secretary of State outline what is being done to preserve and enhance the high street?

Kidsgrove Sports Centre

James Sunderland Excerpts

Tuesday 9th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Gullis]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I have had many a wonderful conversation with him regarding Bury football club, and if there is a lesson to be learned about what has happened there, it is that it is now even more important that we protect these facilities, especially because covid-19 has affected many league 1 and league 2 clubs. I am proud to have Port Vale football club in my constituency, for which the fabulous Carol and Kevin Shanahan have done amazing community work. I am grateful to my hon. Friend, and I commend him for all the work he is doing for the people of Bury.

Among the constituents who have written in to me, Jayne, who is diabetic, used the early bird swim programme to keep her health in check. She has said:

“The removal of the facility removes much of my own means to self-help to manage my condition. I can’t wait for it to reopen.”

Karen, who has been a regular at the centre since 1995 —this is not my right hon. Friend the Member for Staffordshire Moorlands (Karen Bradley)—has described the impact of the closure:

“It has just left a hole in the community, and once it is up and running again we shall be returning as at the moment we have to travel. Sadly, there is nothing to do in Kidsgrove now.”

Claire has described how the closure has directly affected her family:

“My four children have no access to swimming and sports now as I do not drive, and travel costs can add up for five of us. The community feels let down and forgotten and there’s nothing for kids to do. Many adults use the centre too, and now they feel more isolated.”

As the negative implications of this closure have affected so many lives, it would be impossible for me to utilise every testimony. The impact of this closure has affected the people I represent in three distinct ways. First, the severe lack of recreational activities in the area has created a void in community cohesion and interaction. Secondly, the impact on public health, especially of those with pre-existing conditions, has been drastic, with 63% of Kidsgrove and Talke now deemed inactive. Finally, the closure has penalised those who cannot afford the money or the time to make concessions and travel further afield to exercise.

The issue faced by the sports centre is not the stickiness of party politics, though it has certainly seen its fair share of that. The sports centre needs the Government to commit to help fund its renovation and to unlock funds from Sport England so that in summer 2021 the people of Kidsgrove will once again have access to exercise facilities. Having spoken to Sport England this morning, I know that £100,000 has already been allocated in principle, but only £150,000 at most can be given from its asset fund. Although it may have other pots, such as the social investment and strategic facilities funds, they have been repurposed due to the damage that covid-19 has done to the leisure sector. Any of the £195 million that Sport England announced in April would be absolutely welcome, but Kidsgrove sports centre requires a cocktail of funding. Newcastle-under-Lyme Borough Council has stood up, as has Sport England. Now, I need the Government to do the same.

[James Sunderland (Bracknell) (Con)]

In east Berkshire, Bracknell is very proud to have a flagship ice rink and ski slope. It is important to the community and is used by many people locally and more widely. I have heard recently that there are fiscal pressures on that particular facility, and I am worried that it may close. I do not want that to happen, and I am going to champion my constituents and ensure that it does not. I am confident that, with support from the community, perhaps from the local council and from local businesses, we can generate the funding we need for this facility to develop and thrive in the future. Does my hon. Friend think that this is a legitimate use of public money and that these facilities, important as they are, should be supported by both local and central Government funding?

[Jonathan Gullis]

My hon. Friend will know from the many conversations we have had that I am certainly a non-state-interventionist Conservative, but there are times when the Government must intervene. Kidsgrove has a dry ski slope as well, and I completely understand how important it is to protect such sporting facilities, because once they are gone, they do not come back. I am sure the people of Bracknell will be absolutely delighted to hear that my hon. Friend will champion the ice rink and ski slope. Why should they not be enfranchised to have something that they can be proud of and access in their local area, especially as summer holidays are unlikely to be going ahead as normal? That could be the only source of relaxation for people in Bracknell.

To be frank with the Minister, my constituents are frustrated. Although I remain committed to being a critical friend of the Government, I understand why my constituents are frustrated. Kidsgrove has long been neglected. Around one in 10 children aged four to five in Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent are obese. If that is not shocking enough, the number doubles to one in five by the time they are 11. Around two in three adults in Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent have excess weight—I include myself in those figures—while one in four are obese, with rates higher than the national average. Obesity has been reported as an issue that the Prime Minister wishes to tackle head on since falling ill with the coronavirus. I know that it is also close to the heart of the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon).