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

To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made in relation to their decision to award contracts to Huawei and other companies of the implications of the government of China's National Intelligence Law requiring Chinese organisations and citizens to support, assist and cooperate with the state intelligence work.

Last year, the Government carried out a comprehensive, evidence-based, review of the telecoms supply chain, supported by security analysis from our world-leading cybersecurity experts. This led to our decision, announced on 28 January, that high risk vendors should be excluded from those parts of the 5G and full fibre networks that are critical to security (“the core”), and their presence in the rest of the UK’s networks should be limited to 35 per cent, with further restrictions in sensitive geographic locations.

In making this decision, the Government took into account the full range of issues and risks. This included consideration of the fact that Huawei is a Chinese company that is subject to China’s national intelligence law. The controls we have set out on high risk vendors constitute some of the toughest security measures in the telecoms sector in the world.