Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what assessment he has made of the accuracy of Vodafone's evidence to the Science and Technology Committee on 9 July 2020, HC450, on the cost of removing Huawei from its network; and what assessment he has made of the implications for his polices of Vodafone's answer to question 145 in evidence to the Science and Science and Technology Committee on 9 July 2020, HC450.

The Government’s advice has been clear that operators need to plan to remove all Huawei 5G equipment by 2027. It will be for individual operators to determine how to achieve that, and therefore the exact nature of any costs and delays will be specific to each operator. In his oral statement of 14 July, the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport provided estimates for impacts on mobile network operators overall in terms of costs and rollout delays.